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GOAL
* Learn how to create a new series;
* Learn how to edit a photographic series;
* Learn and improve how to build a photographic series be it linked to fiction, reality or both;
* Develop your own visual language and photographic identity;
This workshop in full immersion with Cristina de Middel aims at developping the aptitude of the participant to carry out a photography assignment in an institutional context. This experience will allow the participant to develop his/her capacity to produce a photographic work in a given location and throughout a given limited time period.
A MESSAGE FROM CRISTINA DE MIDDEL ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
AN ALBUM FOR THE END OF THE WORLD
We are living in a time of constant uncertainty. Political, climatic, technological. Everything seems unstable, yet we keep producing images as if nothing is happening.
This workshop starts from that discomfort.
Over the course of almost a week, we will work with a simple and radical idea: to imagine that the world will end at the end of the workshop. Not as a dramatic or apocalyptic gesture, but as an exercise in clarity. If there were only time to say one thing, what would it be? What image would you make if it were the last one? What story deserves to exist before everything disappears?
The proposal is to use this urgency as a creative engine.
This is not about predicting the future, but about taking a position. About connecting with an absolute message, without filters or excuses, and from there understanding one’s own practice more clearly: what we do, why we do it, and for whom.
We will work intensively and collectively, building together a shared project: a final album. A kind of impossible archive that does not aim to explain the world, but to leave a trace of how we are looking at it just before it disappears.
There will be space for intuition, error and contradiction. To try, fail, edit, destroy and start again.
More than answers, this workshop creates a pressure: the need to decide what matters.
And to do it now.
BIOGRAPHY
Cristina De Middel is a Spanish photographer whose work explores the ambiguous ground between documentary and conceptual practices. Trained in both journalism and fine arts, she gained international recognition with The Afronauts (2012), a self-published photobook that reimagined a failed Zambian space program with a blend of fact and fiction. Since then, her practice has consistently challenged the conventions of photographic storytelling, using staged imagery, archival materials, and subtle surrealism to reframe dominant narratives.
De Middel’s projects often engage with sociopolitical issues—ranging from migration and conflict to identity and myth—yet she avoids reductive portrayals, favoring complexity, irony, and metaphor. Her approach reflects a deep interest in questioning the reliability of photography and the responsibilities of visual authorship.
She became a member of Magnum Photos in 2017 and was the agency’s President from 2022 to 2025, becoming one of the few women to lead the historic collective. In addition to her photographic work, De Middel maintains a strong commitment to collaborative and educational initiatives, often working with local communities and artists across the globe.
Her work has been exhibited widely and is held in major international collections. Through both image and narrative, De Middel continues to redefine the boundaries of contemporary documentary photography.
Program
Eyes in Progress proposes a frame of a one week training course during which 9 participants will be placed in a situation of total immersion, in order to produce a photographic series, from inception to end, under the direction of a distinguished photographer.
Participants will be placed in a situation of « artistic residence ». Working days shall be spitted in various sessions: shootings, editing, masterclasses and mutual exchanges on a daily basis.
On the final workshop's day, the participants will have the opportunity to show their series in a local distinguished restaurant of Banyuls, an opening will be organized and they will be able to show and present their works to the audience throughout a musical slideshow.
Moreover, other activities will be proposed, outside of the working sessions, in order to allow participants to appropriate their environment and to arouse their creativity and inspiration.
These sessions will take place in a typical and very charming country house, a so said ‘mas’, located in the hamlet of Cosprons (Occitanie region), close to the border of France and Spain. Located in the bottom of a valley covered with vineyards, not far from the Bay of Paulliles, you will enjoy a quiet and beautiful environment, living among warmful and authentic inhabitants.
Participants will stay in individual bedrooms and healthy meals will be served with - as much as possible - local food and organic.
You will be asked to adapt to a total immersion life, to take risks and to go beyond your limits, in order to progress and to get access to a higher level in your practice of photography.
No later than one month before the workshop, participants will be provided with a dossier with a list of subjects and of contacts on site, to allow you to think about your project and prepare it.
Pictures of the workshops in Cosprons since 2018.
DETAILED AGENDA:
Day One (starting on Sunday, 5pm):
Introduction
Welcome of participants on training site.
Preliminary presentations, each participant briefly introduces oneself to the group, introduction of the invited photographer.
Presentation by Eyes in Progress of the 7 days organization and of the pre-established projects.
Description and presentation of the local environment.
Questions/answers.
First exchanges related to the selected subjects and/or still subjects to further thinking.
Dinner at the Mas for the group.
Day 2 (Monday):
9:30am – 12:30pm
Each participant shows out one or two completed and published series. They will present themselves orally to the group.
1:30 – 3pm
Inception and starting of a photographer’s project
By illustrating her presentation with her own projects, Cristina de Middel will explain how to make the best choice of the right angle of the subject – paying attention to one’s experience and to previous works. She will evoke environment related constraints and the way to take them into account to perform the work. She will provide the participants with key-factors and suggestions.
3 – 6pm
The group goes out together in a local town near by to initiate the shooting sessions. Every participant will be free to achieve an individual reconnaissance outdoor in order to identify some points and/or meet with potential subjects (appointments could have been arranged previously). As far as possible, they will start making some shots. The staff can help in arranging contacts or in making suggestions.
Back indoor, exchanges about the reconnaissance carried on and identified constraints. Final choice of projects with Cristina de Middel.
Day 3 to Day 6 –(Tuesday up to Friday):
9:30 – 11pm
Every morning, Cristina de Middel will make a presentation of one of her projects or of some significant aspect or her professional cursus. The goal of these sessions is to inspire the participants in the realization of their own series.
11 – 17am
Shooting sessions
Every trainee goes outdoors to shoot their subjects. Participants come back to the house in order to get a critical review and improvement suggestions of Cristina de Middel. Daily meetings will be defined so that each participant can spend time with Cristina de Middel in order to develop his/her series.
Through a selection and a discussion with Cristina de Middel around the best pictures of the day, participants will work at developing their series and improving their global approach of the subject.
5 – 6pm
Exchanges in group on shooting and associated problems such as encountered. Synthesis and solutions, presented by Cristina de Middel.
Day 7 (Saturday)
9.30 am – 13 pm
Final editing and sequence
Each participant works on the final editing and sequence of his/her series.
On Saturday morning, participants are invited to give their final selection for the slideshow which will be projected in the evening.
2-4 pm
Slideshow preparation.
6 pm
Exhibition opening and presentation of each series to the audience.
Day 8 (Sunday)
9:30 am – 1pm
Final discussions on the choice of mentor for each participant and on the different choices for participants amongst open calls for awards and residencies in the photography world. Final Q/A session with Cristina de Middel.
1 pm - 2.30 pm
End of the workshop. Departure.
Working language: English and French (according to audience).
