Matera Workshop Review

By: David Addis, Matera Workshop 2016

A teacher myself, I found a master educator in Adam Marelli.

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The Matera workshop in 2016, began with the question “What do you want to learn?”  Adam incorporated our replies into the daily activities.  Our early mornings and evenings were spent shooting … and Matera has a wealth of worthy subjects.  The afternoons were for lectures.  No chalk boards, no PowerPoint.  Just real talks on the fly with what was at hand.

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One afternoon, as we (the workshop participants) were talking about portraits, Adam joined our conversation.  What resulted was an amazing, informative discussion on portraiture.  Adam spoke of lighting, where shadows should fall, how the torso and head should be turned.  Noses and muscle fibers in the neck as shadow boundaries.  The inclusion of hands.  Body parts to include and exclude.  Bending the knees; shooting up to make the figure more important.  Techniques for relaxing your subject.  Teaching that the photographer should move to get the head to turn, rather than freezing the person in a pose.  And on and on.  Extemporaneous.  Coherent.  Memorable.  Later, going off alone, for the first time I found the courage to ask five strangers if I could “shoot” them.  Rembrandts?  Well no; but my best yet!

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Adam thinks about photography remembering the lessons of history.  When I asked for reading material suggestions, his list included biographies of Cèzanne and the 15th-century painter and mathematician Piero della Francesca.  These choices reflect his view that painters since the renaissance have “solved” the problems of portraiture, perspective, and lighting; and that these lessons can be directly applied to photography.  One afternoon’s conversation on deconstructing Henri Cartier-Bresson photographs highlighted the thread that joins Piero through Cèzanne to Cartier-Bresson and modern photography.

 

Adam thinks about photography remembering the lessons of history.

 

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Over many years (74), I have learned that questions posed in emails are never actually answered.  Enumerating my questions, leaving space for the replies, and specifically asking that each question be answered all fail to produce answers.  Invariably, only a partial answer to the last question is returned.  I view this as vestigial original sin.

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So when I began corresponding with Adam, I was completely astonished that he took time and answered all my questions.  Since then, on many occasions, he has replied fully even using audio files.  In the most recent case after a question on the work of Cèzanne, Adam intended to reply in one audio message.  It took four messages to answer, not because my question was so deep, but because he had so much to add.

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If your photography is beyond f-stops and buying better lenses, and your mind is the part needing an upgrade, Adam Marelli is an extraordinary resource.

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If your photography is beyond f-stops and buying better lenses, and your mind is the part needing an upgrade, Adam Marelli is an extraordinary resource.

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