Eastern Partnership Photography
Ruslan Glushchenko (Belarus)
As soon as our project concludes, the
photo school will begin working on a
commercial basis and will offer photography courses for a fee. Students
will be enabled to take lessons in their
own language from professionals from
their own country – this is especially
relevant for photographers from Georgia, where many young people do not
speak Russian – or from photographers from other countries. Currently
the photography course by Vladimir
Blinov enjoys great popularity, with
students from all over the six EaP
countries signing up for his classes.
The professors lecturing at the online school are professionals who are
well known in both their own countries and internationally, including
the photographers Mzia Lekveishvili
from Georgia and Vigen Mnoyan from
Armenia, and heads of associations of
photographers Anatolie Poiata (Mol-
6
dova), Kakha Pkhakadze (Georgia), and
Sergey Hakobyan (Armenia).
– The project concludes in June
2015. What are the planned activities
for the remaining months?
– The photographs made by the winners of the contest My Country in the
Eastern Partnership and photo plein airs
will be featured in the common Eastern
Partnership Family Album. The photo album will present the six EaP countries
through the eyes of photographers. We
never limited their creativity by giving
a specific theme, because we are aware
that they have various styles and work in
various genres. We aimed to encourage
the photographers who came to those
countries to convey these countries’
diverse and exciting character through
the lenses of their cameras. Judging
by the pictures that we have already
collected the result must be very interesting and presentable. The Eastern
Partnership Family Album will come out
in early 2015. The best pictures will also
be displayed at the exhibitions that will
be organized in the first half of 2015 in
each Eastern Partnership country.
Further, we are also planning to organize a series of workshops for photographers in all of the EaP countries. This
time, the seminars will focus on business
technologies, work with photo stocks,
and protection of intellectual property
rights. It is also planned to hold business
forums, where participants will be able
to establish contacts with representatives of the business community – their
potential customers. News agencies,
magazines and catalogue publishers may
also be interested in working with photographers. Amateur photographers who
wish to become professionals are often
faced with the challenge of reaching
out to potential customers and offering
their services. We hope that the business