Sin Duda Gallery
Sicily, Italy 2016
® Alfredo Forns
I came to the workshop with big expectations of learning new things. Not only did it happen, but my expectations were surpassed.
Beautiful land, people food and passion. Very special group of people and your guidance Ernesto made it special.
We will do it again. Alfredo Forns
® Barbara Di Maio
Trapani, March 28th, 016
Dear Ernesto,
this wonderful and magic experience is about to end and I’m already missing it.
I finally breathed some pure, serene and uncontaminated air especially thanks to the harmony and to the sense of peace that you transmitted to all of us.
To meet a person like you is a great privilege for all, a true gift from the sky.
These days together have literally unplugged me from earth and taken me to an otherworldly dimension in which I lived strong emotions and a sweet internal earthquake.
I wanted to convey all my gratitude and appreciation for the incitement you have given me to work in a more conscious way and for having helped my soul to look at itself in a clearer mirror.
Your special way of teaching, your dedication, your generosity and humbleness are not of this earth.
I consider these days as a new beginning and a base from which I feel I still need to work a lot.
After so much wandering I’m finally home, in the right place and with the right person.
I still thank destiny for that night in which it made me look at your images from Cuba.
An unexplainable force that I cannot explain brought me here.
To have come here in this precise moment of my life has seemed as a true blessing! Barbara Di Maio
® David Myers
Five years. For the past five years I have had the opportunity to participate in Ernesto’s Sicilian workshop around Holy Week. Yes, my pictures are better and the portfolio of work is more tightly edited. But, this only touches the surface of the experience and the value of being with EB throughout the many days walking the streets of small towns, hiking through fields, seeing and critiquing hundreds of pictures, eating gelato, meeting some good people, and talking about photography and perhaps, more importantly about life.
This year’s workshop felt as if I had turned a new chapter in my work. Everything seemed to slow down, the pictures came more naturally, I stopped thinking so much about constructing a picture, I didn’t worry about the number of pictures and focused more on whether I had a few good pictures that were my pictures, I learned more from others in the workshop, and I let myself better engage with the experience, the people, and the landscape. Often, it was like I was in a slow-motion movie or a dream, I could see elements come and go in the viewfinder, elements that in the past would have “fucked up my picture.” I was in a different state of mind. A state of mind that said to be open to the experience, probe, explore, and learn. Finally, it was all making sense, it was coming together, every thing we had talked about. I now know why returning to the same place and being with someone who cares so much about his friends and students is so important.
In recent years, people have asked me “why is someone who is agnostic concerning religion so interested in being in Sicily during Holy Week?” I never could answer this other than to say it was an exploration. After this year and after much thinking, I think I have a better answer. This has been the beginning of a journey where I am using photography to help me understand peoples’ connections to something larger and, to me, something that is intangible and that I do not understand. Ernesto has given me, through his generosity and patience, an opportunity to learn more about myself and my connection to a broader universe of relationships and concepts.
Yes, these are photography workshops, but when you open your heart and mind to the experience that Ernesto offers, they are so much more. David Myers
® Fabiola Forns
There has been always photography for me. Then, there came Ernesto, stirring a lot of lost feelings from my homeland. It was painful, but at the end, it was a good thing.
I am looking at things in another light now. Thank you Maestro for pushing the envelope with me; great things are achieved through tears.
Your guidance, the group solidarity and care, always looking after each other, such gifted persons, all of them, was very refreshing.
We hope to be able to do this again, providing heath allows it.
Grazie mille. Fabiola Forns
® Joanna Mrowka
There is a saying in Polish: All good things end quickly. Unfortunately, it worked in this case. It was a beautiful and carefree time filled with photography, a great company and delicious food. As a mathematician, I will not write much. I highly recommend the workshop. Thank you Ernesto. Joanna Mrowka
® Krzysztof Przybylski
I’ve heard about Ernesto Bazan some time ago thanks to the great Polish photographer Tomasz Tomaszewski. I had a chance to learn from both of them. However the workshop in Sicily is my first only with Ernesto. And I have to say it was a very nice experience. First of all – I thought I’d lose some weight because of walking all over the city day after day… Forget it. The food was so great that even me – not the biggest enthusiast of sea-food – had to admit that it was great. When you add the fantastic company of the other participants we really had a wonderful time.
Ernesto, as always, had a very nice way to explain daily, by looking at the pictures, what photos worked and what didn’t. The judgment sometimes was very hard but he was always able to explain which were the distracting elements and what should have been done better. I’m sure that we all got very valuable lessons that are going to take us on a higher photographic level (I hope…). It was a great adventure. I hope to see you soon. Krzysztof Przybylski
® Lori Barra
When you attend a class of Ernesto’s, be prepared to have your eyes opened wide
as well as your mind and your heart.
It was truly a blessed experience studying with him.
Ernesto and his teachings are wise, magical, compassionate and grounded. He is completely giving of his time, his talent, his life experiences and his vision. You work hard in his class to see more clearly, push through personal limitations and judgements and bad habits. And when you come through the other side you feel light and awake and ready to sign up for the next workshop. It’s a amazing soulful journey. Lori Barra
