5A1 Art Space will launch the "Seto Masato Photography Exhibition" on May 13, 2023. During the exhibition, a four-day "Dialogue between Mountains and Rivers" photography workshop was specially planned in Guilin, Guangxi. The workshop was taught by Seto Masato, and there were not only humorous and interesting classes, but also creative experiences that subverted the students' learning methods. (The following is a first-person summary of Seto's classroom sharing before the class started.)
Sometimes we feel that the photos we take are photos we like to take, and the photos are mine, but to other people they may not convey what we really want to express. We must remember one thing: photography is not on my own, it should belong to the viewer, to the person who sees it.
The number of years of filming does not represent one's strength in photography.
The course "Grammar of Photographic Language" taught by teacher Lai Wei was grandly launched at 5A1 Art Space. It was taught face to face and the content mainly systematically focused on the grammatical composition of photographic images (elements and rules) and the visual psychological effects of photographic images (German Gestalt psychological effects). It combined with contemporary art photography works to help students analyze photos according to theory, and on the basis of the analysis, they can choose the shooting method and the composition of the picture.
In my workshops, I have learned from experience that the first question many people ask is: "What camera should I buy to make my photos look better?" In fact, I often have the experience that many people take the best photos of their careers on the day they come to my workshops. But the long years of experience accumulated by everyone is still very special. You have so many years of shooting experience, which does not mean that you have so much talent. It is just that you took a photo of that moment 50 years ago. This is very special because the moment 50 years ago was captured by the camera, which is very important, but at the same time it may have nothing to do with the photographer, it was just captured by the camera.
Among my students, there is an 80-year-old student. Even though everyone is using digital cameras, he still uses a film camera when he comes to my workshop. Because he is studying with young people, I have the same requirements for him. I asked him to take out his old photos. The photos he took were probably from 65 years ago. Because of his age, it is a bit shaky for him to use a manual camera, so I said to him: You don’t need to take photos, but you need to bring all the photos (film) you have taken before. It was a lot, but I read them all. I selected the good ones from the photos he had taken in the past, and I quickly let him graduate and helped him organize a graduation exhibition. When I say "quickly" here, it took a year. During this year, I selected and enlarged his huge amount of films. At the same time, I asked him to recall the details of his photos at that time through the photos and asked him to write them down. Because the shooting took a long time, he was very skilled in the darkroom, but because his eyes were ill, he still had difficulty focusing. I helped him focus and asked him to do the enlargement and the next work. Because he was like other young people who came here to learn, but I asked him not to take pictures, I was actually confused. Was I doing the right thing? Because of the confusion, I also asked the person involved, "Do you think this is good?" He replied, "Bravo!" He felt that through this approach, he had gained a new ability and learned to re-examine the photos he had taken in the past.
Master the language of photography
You must have been to many different places and taken many different styles of photos with different themes. Sometimes I even think that the person who knows least about what he is taking photos is himself. Here, I am looking at everyone's photos from an outsider with an objective perspective, so I can give you more objective suggestions. I look at about 20 people's photos every week, and each person has about 200 photos. In this way, I have to look at about 4,000 photos every week, and this has been 45 years. As the experience I have summed up in these 45 years, I have also said that photography actually has a kind of mark in it, which is the language of photography, just like you can see the words good or bad written on it at a glance. If I choose 20 good photos from 200 photos and show them to Professor David Lai, although our views may not be exactly the same, the degree of consistency will be quite high. I showed them to Professor Moriyama Daido, and his choice was similar to mine. Why is this so? As I said, photography has marks, which is something that is clear at a glance. I think this mark or symbol is the foundation of art. Just like a friend recommends a good book to me, if I read it, I will also think it is good. This is probably the so-called empathy. It has nothing to do with who wrote the book or who took the photo. If you can grasp the sign of photography, at the moment of shooting, no matter whether you can express what you want to express as a creator at the moment of shooting, you can know that the photo you took is good. Why can I look at 4,000 photos every day? It is because I have mastered the sign of photography. I can quickly identify the good photos, but you may not have mastered this sign yet, so you can't judge it all at once.
Why should you master the symbols of photography?
What is important for photography is not time, because when we take a photo, it is done in an instant. In my experience, when I see a beautiful scenery, my feeling of being touched also ends, and the picture of that moment has been formed in my mind. We take photos to show others, to show others the photos formed in our mind at that time, and the image formed by the photo is actually slower than the image formed in the mind, because the moment of taking out the camera is later than the moment of shouting "WOW" when seeing the beautiful scenery. This is something that can be done by feeling, and it can be done by feeling back to the moment you are touched. So how to do this? You have to go to many, many places and take many, many photos...
