Constantine Manos: Personal Documentary



About 12 years ago, I had joined a workshop in Havana with Constantine Manos which, if I recall correctly, was sponsored by the Maine Photo Workshops. It was the second photo workshop I attended, and was quite different from the first in which I learned virtually nothing.

Constantine's (or Costa's) workshop in Havana was centered around the so-called decisive moment in street photography...one of the many photographic disciplines I knew absolutely nothing of. It was in the pre-digital days, and we had to shoot film and have it processed in these 2-hour processing shops. I recall that our group had to show Costa individual portfolios, and having taken a good look at mine (mostly portraits of India and Bhutan), he frowned and told me "...your pictures are too simple...".

This advice still resonates with me....and I worked hard to make my photography more complex since then....sometimes succeeding and often failing. Leading my own workshops now,  that's one of the lines I use the most often....

This short movie, narrated by Costa himself, is produced by Magnum In Motion and Leica. By the way, there's a typo...it's spelled Ku Klux Klan.

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