On 20-21 April the International Summer School of Photography (ISSP) in cooperation with the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Office in Latvia will organise a master class LANDSCAPE AND MANSCAPE: THE EDGE OF RIGA led by the Icelandic photographer Páll Stefánsson. Participants will be working together with Páll Stefánsson, editor and picture editor of the Iceland Review magazine, who is famous for his large-format pictures of Icelandic landscape.
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The master class is open for photographers, photography and art students as well as advanced amateurs interested in landscape photography and documentary photography in general. The working language is English; max number of participants - 15. Participation fee is 30 LVL. The fee covers organising expenses and bus tours (lunch not included). Applicants must submit a motivation letter with a short description of their photography work (up to 1500 characters) to office@issp.lv, adding their portfolio (as an attachment or as a homepage link) with 10-15 landscape/documentary photos. Applications can be written in Latvian or English but sufficient knowledge of English is required for the master class. Qualified applications corresponding to the selection criteria  will be accepted on the first come - first served basis.  Application deadline is 10 April 2012, 24:00.
Contact info: office@issp.lv, ph + 371 27842875 , + 371 29711721.
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PHOTOGRAPHER PÃLL STEFÃNSSON was born in North Iceland in 1958. After photography studies in Sweden he joined the Iceland Review magazine in 1982 as a photographer, later also as a photo editor and editor-in-chief. Páll Stefánsson has published more than 20 books and has done advertising and commercial work for such organisations as Leica, Hasselblad, Panasonic, IKEA, Volkswagen and UNESCO. The latter chose him as one of the 20 photographers to document the world heritage places. Páll Stefánsson has had exhibitions in all the world’s continents except for the Antarctic. His large format Icelandic panorama exhibition at the Museum of Natural History in New York was attended by a nearly million people. Páll Stefánsson’s works have been published in a number of  international  printed media, including Time, National Geographic, Newsweek, Geo, W, Sunday Times Magazine and German Vogue.  Â
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As of 20 April, Páll Stefánsson´s images of Icelandic scenery will be exhibited at the Nordic Council of Ministers´ Office in Latvia, 13/3 Marijas Str, Bergs Bazaar, Riga (exhibition opening on 19 April, 18:00).
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Páll Stefánsson will hold a public lecture on 20 April, 18:00, at the film theatre K.Suns. Entrance to the lecture is free.
The Icelandic photographer has travelled nearly all around the world working on such long-term documentary projects as “The Future of Football†and his upcoming book “World’s Ten Most Polluted Placesâ€. The two-day master class in Riga and BolderÄja will get the participants acquainted with Páll Stefánsson’s works, also featuring a review of the participants’ portfolios and a one-day field trip with practical photo assignments, joint evaluation of the results and the lecturer’s feedback. The master class will focus not only on the traditional landscape photography  but on the so-called “manscape†or man-made landscape as well, exploring the relationship between nature and man-made structures and their visual representation. "