Listen to Yoda speak

“The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.” — Steven Spielberg

As I mentioned with my prior blog post about my attending a workshop at the Griffin Museum of Photography. On Monday, we had our first session with long time photographer and teacher Arno Rafael Minkkinen. I was nervous about the prospect of attending an in-person workshop after a three years’ hiatus due to the pandemic, I was immediately put to ease by Arno’s warmth and his friendly demeanor. With his first lecture, he used both his work and other photographers’ work to introduce the few visual theories we might wish to incorporate into our practice, and in turn which may strengthen and refine our voice. With Arno’s years of teaching at different Universities and institutions around the world, I find the instruction he gave to be different from the other instructors I had before. His presentation certainly gave me plenty of food for thought. It is too early to say if I could utilize his teachings fully, nonetheless it is nice to learn and add some new tools to my visual language toolbox.

Despite Arno’s long career, he still shows great passion for the medium of photography and his enthusiasm to impart knowledge to his students. With my experience of taking workshops, I feel the best instructors are those who give advice not because they like to hear themselves talk, but because they genuinely want their students to benefit from the hard-won wisdom they have learned over the course of their careers. Thankfully I have been given opportunities to learn from different mentors who share similar traits over the years.

Since the aim of this workshop is geared towards finding the pathway to our own vision, I feel it is important the instructor listens to our needs. During the first session, we were given time to introduce ourselves and explained where we saw ourselves in terms of our photographic development. Here I find Arno to be an excellent listener. When we talked about our struggle of finding our own vision or style, he gave each of us words of encouragement and responses coming from someone who went through the same struggle as we did. A mentor who listens with empathy is a quality I treasure. While they can have all the knowledge, if they are not willing to listen to where you are coming from, they will not be able to steer you in the direction you want to go. Good mentors should be curious what your real interests are. That curiosity is important because you want someone who can relate to you from your perspective. Some people may try to impose their own beliefs or ways of approaching things on others. Thankfully I didn’t get that impression from Arno’s teaching.

It is nice to see the workshop participants making diverse bodies of work. Each of us already got some valuable feedback in writing from Arno prior to the start of the workshop. It will be interesting to see how each of us progress. I always enjoy the camaraderie developed between the participants when attending in person workshops, something I missed for the past three years. I am glad I signed up for the workshop out on a hunch. I am feeling optimistic about this learning experience given the nurturing environment I find myself in.