Annacata Gallery
Sicily, Italy 2019
® Chuck Cannon
I am a traveler and a photographer. While traveling I like to find unique places and immerse myself, capturing images of the unusual & the everyday in way that allows me to tell a story on my return home.
My recent travels with Ernesto and other workshop photographers in Sicily was all I expected and more! Your knowledge and access of the areas visited allowed me to see and experience this part of the world in a way that would not have been possible if not for you. Your reviews and editing of my daily images were most helpful. Your guidance and comments helped me focused my image making and the story of the time and place.
Thank you much. I am looking forward to traveling and making images with you in the future. Cuba in 2020 is already on my calendar. Chuck Cannon
® Daniele Alamia
The fourth year!
It seems to me like a miracle to have been able to persevere on a theme and a story.
When I attend Ernesto’s workshop, Sicily also seems to me to be better than the land I left 20 years ago. Time passes fast and calm and the people who you meet at the workshop immediately become friends. And this year I met exceptional people: Laurie, Chuck, Mark and Morton.
And as always in these events, photography becomes almost a pretext: to find friends, learn extraordinary divine stories, share ideas, dreams, good food and good wine.
This is thanks to the great humanity and sensitivity of Ernesto, a close friend, who accompanies us with sweetness, attention and sincerity in our path of growth. THANK YOU ERNESTO! Thank’s my friend.
The photos? Well, I was very worried, because I was afraid of not finding new stimuli, but perseverance, both of mine and of my teacher, and the critical sharing with the other students, in the end allowed me to have a small nucleus of work also this year. I realised that now I have to focus my attention on other topics. I will try to do my best.
As every year, Ernesto guided us to look inside our hearts as in a mirror.
Thanks Laurie, Thanks Chuck, Thanks Mark, Thanks Morton, I hope life makes us meet again soon.
Thank you Ernesto, my friend! Daniele Alamia
® Laurie Baxter
I want to differentiate between those photographic workshops which take place in exotic locations, where photographers relegate the camera to recording as an act of visually jotting-down where they were and what they saw – not thinkable when working with Ernesto, his type of documentary photography calls for courage and will power. Ernesto’s quest and indeed his challenge to us, his students, is one of ‘deep seeing’. The kind of seeing that eclipses the obvious and reaches for the poetic in order that we might be enabled to record the humanity that is all around us.
A thousand times, thank you Ernesto. Laurie Baxter
® Mark Silverberg
I journaled throughout the day, having just concluded our Sicily Holy Week workshop yesterday, and the ripples continue to wash over me. Firstly, I pay tribute to the artistry, months of preparation and bone-tiring work, and emotional vulnerability of the people of Trapani, Marsala and Buseto Palizzolo. Their processions are profound human, spiritual, artistic, and communal expressions, which continue traditions begun hundreds of years ago. To witness them is inspiring and a deep honor. Secondly, I pay tribute to the humanity and artistry of our workshop participants. I learned much from them; their struggles through life’s challenges, and to evolve their photographic vision and expression. Their creative evolution during our time together inspires me.
Lastly, I pay tribute to our workshop mentor and guide, Ernesto. I signed up for the workshop to challenge my creativity, storytelling and photography to a higher standard, one, which I was frankly not confident I could attain. I ached from this deficit. During our workshop I gained conviction in my capabilities to reach for, and occasionally achieve, this higher level of visioning and imaging. I gained the critical and creative framework to travel on this ever-evolving pathway. I was quite surprised to learn the medicine I sought lay in an alchemic combination of soul, spirit, and photography – a space Ernesto makes possible through his deep humanity and vulnerability, and his loving, challenging and insightful teaching. What lead me to the workshop was questioning my ways of seeing and imaging. What I go forward with is a new way of being and imagination.
I am grateful to have shared our time and this experience together, for the artistic and life learning which enrich my photographic expression and soul. Mark Silverberg
® Morton Lerman
