The First Week of First Times

The first week at the Summer Academy was the week of first times for me. I’ve come to Austria for the first time, for the first time I am required to keep a blogging diary of this sort, for the first time I am surrounded with this many creative people at all times and for the first time I experienced two creative processes first hand. The first one was in the printing studio and you can read about my experience here. The second one was in the photographic darkroom where I learned that light is just like water - it always finds a way in, and that four minutes in the complete dark can feel like forever.

Before I got to Salzburg, it was the first time in a long time that I have spent about 40 hours on the road with very little sleep. Wednesday was the day I started feeling at home for the first time. Tomorrow is my first weekend.

I have also had a personal premiere of the moody Salzburger thunderstorm and the rivers running down the street, which had me miss the first walk around Salzburg dedicated to the act of “Seeing”. Canceled because of the weather, the walk might be repeated in the coming weeks, but what I also missed was William Kentridge’s talk, which is my sole regret this week.

To get back to the exciting experiences, I got to see the etching process yesterday and not see, but rather hear, a film developing process today. I’m ending this week with tired eyes, so I invite you to close your eyelids and take an audio-peek into the darkroom with Valerie Jouve, her co-teacher Nina and students (and journalists!) Anette and Angelica and experience what the developing of 6 pieces of 4 by 5 negatives sounds like! Scroll down for the audio.

Have a lovely weekend!

Ana

P.S. Even though the world's day of ice-cream was yesterday, I've had my first portion of the lovely Eis only today, so there's that as well.