Highlights from our January Heat Workshop in Amman

Group 4x5 portrait at MMAG Foundation, made by Lina Khalid and Jenna Masoud.

At the end of January, we gathered in Amman, Jordan for the first workshop of our 2023-2024 Heat Fellowship. Focusing on photography that expands discourse around visuality, heat, and the climate crisis, the fellowship features nine photographers whose projects cover topics including climate-based migration, pollution-driven health disparities, and indigenous origin stories and collective memory.

Over the course of five days, fellows worked with mentors Eric Gottesman, Nandita Raman, and Newsha Tavakolian to explore the relationship between ecology and photographic practice, connect with members of the Jordanian photography community, and engage with climate-related projects from the region.

This workshop is the first of two for the cohort; over the next six months, fellows will continue to work virtually with mentors and one another on their projects, before returning to Amman this summer to experiment with site-specific activations of their work.

The nine Heat fellows are Farhana Satu, Gayatri Ganju, Hashem Shakeri, José Luis Arroyo-Robles, Luján Agusti, Mahmoud Khattab, María Valqui, Miora Rajaonary, and River Claure – learn more about them here.

The 2023-2024 Heat Fellowship is part of our Photography Expanded program focused on expanding the parameters of documentary photography and exploring creative models for narrative change. For this year’s fellowship, we produced the workshop in partnership with Darkroom Amman and MMAG Foundation, working closely with Jordan-based photographers and former Magnum Foundation fellows Lina Khalid and Nadia Bseiso. By holding workshops in locations related to that year’s theme where we have strong programmatic partners and alumni communities, we are able to move beyond New York City as the central locus of our work and foster continued connections among our international network.

See more highlights from the workshop below!

Paired project development exercises. Photo by Jenna Masoud.

Dead Sea field trip, led by MF alum Nadia Bseiso. Photo by Jenna Masoud.

The Photography Expanded Fellowship is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Rosenthal Family Foundation, the William Talbott Hillman Foundation, and the Geneviève McMillan-Reba Stewart Foundation.

See More highlights from the workshop:

Slowing Down: Somatic Exercises, Community Building, and Moving Away from Urgency

“I learned, a long time ago, about a particular saying from the continent I grew up on: ‘the times are urgent; let us slow down.’” – Bayo Akomolafe, from “A Slower Urgency”

During the workshop, fellows were encouraged to think more broadly and expansively about their practice and its implications on themselves and others. While much of artistic practice is measured by output, for this program, our metric for success is in how much participants are able to reflect, slow down, reconsider the bases of the form and function of their work. As increasingly urgent global crises demand new paradigms of working, this fellowship is focused on creating space to develop expanded approaches that reimagine what a critical and ecological photographic practice might look like.

Mentor Nandita Raman (center). Photo by Jenna Masoud.

Alumni-Led Field Trip: Nadia Bseiso’s Infertile Crescent at the Dead Sea

In the first of two alumni-led field trips, Jordanian photographer Nadia Bseiso brought fellows to the Dead Sea, where she presented her long-term project Infertile Crescent that examines the impacts of water scarcity in Jordan, documenting the landscapes of several surviving villages on Jordan’s four borders with Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Nadia produced this project as a grantee of the Arab Documentary Photography Program (ADPP), a joint initiative of the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, Prince Claus Fund, and Magnum Foundation that has supported over 85 photographers from across the Middle East and North Africa since 2014.

Nadia led the group to several sites included in her project, offering a window into the local manifestations of intertwined geopolitical and climate crises, and engaging fellows with an example of expanded methods for presenting projects in the context in which they were produced.

Visiting sites featured in Nadia’s Bseiso’s project. Photo by Jenna Masoud.

Learning about local initiative Beit Sweimeh, a women-led alternative agrotourism cooperate. Photo by Jenna Masoud.

Fellows looking at zine of Nadia Bseiso’s *Infertile Crescent.* Photo by Jenna Masoud.

Visiting Darat Al Fanun. Photo by Jenna Masoud.

Connecting with the Jordanian Artistic Community

Throughout the workshop, fellows connected with members of the Jordanian artistic community, visiting the exhibits How to Time Travel at MMAG Foundation and In Solidarity with Palestine at Darat Al Fanun, as well as a screening and Q&A for Emily Jacir’s letter to a friend. At Darkroom Amman, fellows attended presentations from Jordanian photographers Mohammad Zakaria, Hussam Daana, Maryam Khasawneh, Bahaa Suleiman, Moamen Malkawi, Zakaria Hussein, Suhayb Al-Jawhari, and Jenna Masoud.

Alumni-Led Field Trip: Lina Khalid’s 4x5 Workshop at Darkroom Amman

Fellows making 4x5 portraits of one another. Photo by Jenna Masoud.

Lina Khalid shows program mentor Newsha Tavakolian a copy of *Tarweedeh*, a zine made by Lina’s fellow ADPP grantees that features nine ADPP photographers from/in Palestine, including Lina and our other Amman host Nadia Bseiso. Photo by Jenna Masoud.

In the second alumni-led field trip, fellows participated in a 4x5 portrait-making workshop at Darkroom Amman, an educational hub for analogue photography co-founded in 2018 by Arab Documentary Photography Program grantee Lina Khalid. In addition to guiding fellows through large format photography, Lina also presented Zagloul Elhamam, a personal project about her journey with cancer that she made during the ADPP program, and spoke with visual anthropologist Leen Alfatfta about Darkroom Amman’s broader work to support visual archiving in Jordan, including their recent workshop series on Palestinian archives.

The 4x5 workshop was a full circle moment that reflected the value of connections among our international community of grantees and fellows, as Magnum Foundation had previously provided support for Lina’s residency at the Bronx Documentary Center in New York City. There, she learned 4x5 photography from Magnum Foundation Fellow Sean Sirota in order to deepen Darkroom Amman’s program offerings. For Magnum Foundation, the ability to responsively support grantee-driven community projects is a core part of our work, allowing us to continue to invest in alumni as leaders in movements for change within their communities, far beyond their initial grant or fellowship terms.

What’s Next

Building on project feedback from this workshop, fellows will continue to meet virtually with mentors over the course of the next six months and engage in further creative development as a community of fellows. Having spent the first workshop connecting to and learning from the local Jordanian artistic community, they will return again to Amman for a second workshop this summer to experiment with site-specific installations of their projects at MMAG Foundation, and plan for further activations of their projects in their home contexts.