THE COMPELLING PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT

In this four-week course participants will explore the intricacies of conceptually driven portrait photography. Through theoretical insights, practical exercises, and group discussions, students will learn to create meaningful and powerful portraits that transcend mere representation. This short course will be guided by distinguished Perth based Australian photographer Toni Wilkinson whose masterly skills in portrait photography have been recognised in a recent international Monograph publication Tough Pleasures.

This workshop is for anyone looking to expand their image making practice. By the end of this course participants will have developed a deeper understanding of portrait photography, an expanded creative vision, and a portrait showcasing their unique photographic style. **Kindly be advised that session details and pace are subject to potential changes as per the requirements of the participants.

WEEK 1

Understanding Conceptual Portrait Photography

• The Photographic Portrait
• Building Concepts and Themes
• Creating the Portrait

WEEK 2

Exploring Identity in Portraiture

• Identity and Representation
• Conceptualising the Portrait
• Photoshoot
• Analysing concepts and techniques

WEEK 3

Photoshoot/Reshoot

• Review
• Critique and Feedback

WEEK 4

Review

• Critique and Feedback/Class discussion

DETAILS

Dates

• 21 October, 10am – 2pm
• 28 October, 10am – 2pm
• 4 November, 10am – 2pm
• 11 November, 10am – 2pm

Cost

Members $490 / Non-Members $520

Tea, coffee, and light refreshments provided.

NOTE: Workshop fees are tax deductible for practising professionals.

Not a Member? Become a Member and receive discounts for all PCP events, workshops and more. 

Location

The Perth Centre for Photography

357 Murray Street Perth WA

Access: 

The King Street Arts Centre is fully accessible by wheelchair via King Street entrance, although building management locks this after hours and on the weekend. To ensure easy access or for any clarification please contact by email at info@pcp.org.au and we will be happy to help.

Not a Member? Become a Member and receive discounts for all PCP events, workshops and more. 

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR

Born in London, Toni Wilkinson is a photographer based in Perth, Western Australia. She uses the camera to reveal beauty and menace in her images. The works cross genres to interrogate the world from a maternal, feminist perspective and testify to photography’s unique capacity for ambiguity.

Toni Wilkinson’s approach to photography offers an opening for risk and possibility via the image, that is enhanced with each photograph’s relationship to the next. Interconnections and contradictions collide in a practice that thrives on an urgent way of looking.

Toni Wilkinson is coordinator of Photography and Illustration at the School of Design and Built Environment, Faculty of Humanities, Curtin University in Western Australia. Toni has exhibited internationally and widely throughout Australia and her photographs are held in significant national collections such as the National Portrait Gallery, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, City of Perth, Murdoch University, Edith Cowan University, St John of God Health Care and others. She completed her PhD in 2012 and is a current board member of the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

A double gesture of seizing the familiar, but only so as to possibly recreate it, is one of the greatest strengths of Toni Wilkinson’s photography … Such a spirit of ‘staying with the trouble’ resounds in Wilkinson’s photography, as she is able to both arrest our gaze and transform our sense of the shared muddle of images and forms that make up public spaces.
F Russell, Eyeline 87 Magazine, 2017.

This is sophisticated image making. The way these photographs are constructed adds to the desire and seductiveness of the subject matter. They chime with established modes of picture making from Renaissance painting (often using similar composition to images of the Virgin Mary) to commercial advertising with its slickness and clarity, clever lighting and visual repetitions in silhouette that make for a quickly read image. It is after this fast absorption of the image that the nuances come into play. The pictures demand a longer look.

Excerpt from Susan Bright essay, We are all exiles, living within the frame of some strange painting, on Toni Wilkinson’s acclaimed Tough Pleasures series.