Course description
Once upon a time journalists were reporters, putting the news down in black and white, as it happened, certainly sometimes letting themselves be prone to expressing their own opinions or view, but generally reporting the facts. But for some time now, that kind of classic journalism has expanded within itself, including disciplines and philosophies historically opposed to the craft of journalism.
Very often today journalists show the facts using a pathos worthy of a playwright, with parallels, symbolism and metaphors which create a literary work from what should have been a simple and direct news article. This technical and artistic ability is defined in today’s modern terms as STORYTELLING, a working methodology that involves various different fields, amongst which photography, with a particular focus on Photojournalism.
In photography, the term Storytelling is new, but not the meaning it contains. The Italian translation is “narrative” or “narration”, indeed abroad we mean more specifically the “science of narration”, and referring to photography we could opt for “the art of narration through images”, a definition amongst photographers historically known as EDITING. So, making a small summary of the situation, we can proceed in the following way:
Storytelling:Photography = Photography:Editing
of which
Storytelling=Editing
Based on these concepts, the photography school of the Centro Italiano Florence offers a serious and professional course in Editing and Storytelling, aimed at both the Beginner, and Professional photographer. It’s an educational and instructive path through “the art of narration through images”, dealing with the study and understanding of constructing and editing a static film, a story through photographs, enabling the student to propose his or her work to any audience, both commercial and authorial.
Program:
The Objective:
Commercial path.
Authorial path.
The central idea: Conceiving a photographic project and developing the theme.
Subject, arguments and themes.
Awareness of the story’s central idea.
The intention: Aesthetic, Documentative, Conceptual.
The Photographic Shoot:
The central idea behind the shoot.
The intention of the photographic shoot.
The analysis of what has been photographed:
First edit, emotional choice.
Second edit, conceptual choice.
Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis:
Analysis of the narrative structure of American Photographer Walker Evans.
Eisenstein Montage Theory:
Montage of Attractions.
Intellectual Montage.
The Dialect of Opposites:
Analysis of the narrative structure of “The Americans” by Robert Frank.
Reduction and Edition:
The Pile, The Group, The Series, The Sequence.
Editing for Construction or Destruction.
Pillars and Partitions.
Choosing the narrative structure:
Aesthetic, Documentative, Conceptual.
Choosing the philosophy of the narrative:
Descriptive narrative assumptions, chronological temporal, emotional poetic, formal aesthetic, conceptual.
Sequence trend:
Static, Cyclic, Sliding, Incongruous.
The Rhythm of the sequence:
Regular, Syncopated, Irregular.
The Three Unities – Aristotle:
Unity of Action, Unity of Place, Unity of Time.
Classical Order:
Introduction, definition of context, opening, build-up of history or conflict, continuation, climax, resolution, closure.
Presentation of a Photographic Portfolio:
Title, Text and Captions.
Mounting of a Photographic Exhibition.
Level: Basic.
Duration: 1 month.
Start date:
April 28, 2025
April 27, 2026
Hours: 4 hours per day, from Monday to Friday, a total of 20 hours per week.
Classes: groups of minimum 2, and maximum 6 participants.
Class schedule may change depending on availability and season.
