Intensive course. Photobook:
from plot to form

A photo book is a way to tell a story using photos. Everything is important here: from the selected images and the order of their arrangement, ending with the shape and quality of the paper, because even the smallest detail helps to tell a story. Each individual lesson will be devoted to one of the elements of the photobook: creating a narrative plot, composition and arranging the photograph in a spread, creating the form and binding of the book.

Lesson 1. Photobook: plot and history

In the first lesson of the intensive course, participants will learn what a photobook is and how it differs from a simple album with photographs, get acquainted with examples of various books and “zines”, paying particular attention to plots, sequence of images and methods of storytelling. In the course of the practical part, you will create a story for your book: photographs of participants will be taken as a basis, which will later turn into a story.

Lesson 2. Composition: image on a sheet

The second lesson will be devoted to the basics of composition, how to place an illustration on a sheet and the layout of the spread: participants will learn what size it is better to take a photo and how to combine the image with text. As part of the practical part of the lesson, the participants will make two of the brightest and most unlike each other U-turns of the future photo book based on the story created in the first lesson.

Lesson 3. Photobook: format, binding and material

At the final lesson, participants will talk in more detail about the format, binding options, page and cover materials, as well as understand what they need to be taken into account and how they affect the story itself. During the practical part, the participants will come up with a form and create the photo book itself, using the materials developed in the first two classes.

About the teacher:

Victoria Shcherbenko is a teacher of fine art and art history at the school and museums of modern art in Moscow. She graduated from the Faculty of Art and Graphics of the Moscow State Pedagogical University (former Moscow State Pedagogical Institute named after Lenin), the School of Contemporary Art “Free Workshops”, and completed an internship at the Faculty of Art History at the University of Perugia, Italy.

Age: 10+
Group: up to 12 people
Duration of each lesson: 2.5 hours.
Cost of participation: 3500 p.