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- Aerial view
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- Modernist apartment
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- Pool
Silver Breath: An Immersion in Light, Design, and Time
This is more than a photography workshop; it is an act of disappearing from the world’s frantic pace. For five days, Sacramora 12 becomes your private sanctuary: a design village in the heart of Romagna. You will live within a masterpiece of Italian rationalist architecture by Rita Rava e Claudio Piersanti, surrounded by iconic italian design pieces and the art of Philippe Artias.
The Experience Guided by Andrea Calabresi, you will return to the origins of vision. From physically understanding light through a camera lucida to building your own pinhole cameras and creating lumen prints in the lush park.
This retreat is suitable for everyone. No previous experience is required. It works for those who are experienced and for those who have never touched an analog or digital camera. It’s an experience for those who want to slow down and see differently.
The group is small by choice: maximum 8 participants.
Hospitality and Cuisine The retreat celebrates Italian conviviality. Meals are served as a set menu featuring local produce and regional wines, designed to fuel both the body and the creative dialogue. Partners and families are welcome to enjoy the park and swimming pool while you create.
Five days to rediscover the time you stopped seeing.We live immersed in images and starved for vision. We produce, publish, scroll. The photographic gesture has become automatic—a reflex, not a choice. And somewhere along this road, something was lost. Not technique. Not the right light. Time. The ability to stand before something and let it happen.
Silver Breath is a response to that loss. Five days. A designed secluded park. Light as the only tool.
We invite you to disappear from the rhythm of the world. We return to the beginning: to the processes the first photographers used when photography was still a question without an answer. Lumen prints, handmade cameras, portraits with very long exposures—like in Fox Talbot’s time.
These are not technical exercises. They are practices of restoration. Of time. Of attention. Of the physical pleasure of making something with your hands that you can’t undo with a tap.
What You Learn
During Silver Breath you will not only learn a technique. You will experience the rediscovery of an attention and a way of making that is outside of time.
Over the five days you will learn to make lumen prints — images formed through direct contact between sunlight and light-sensitive paper, without chemistry, without a camera. You will build a pinhole camera with your own hands and use it to photograph: still life, landscape, portraits with very long exposures. You will experience contact printing and the fixing problem — the same one Talbot faced in 1839.
But above all you will learn to give yourself back the time to remain in front of a scene, in front of a person, in front of a sheet of paper slowly transforming in the sun. You will learn what happens when you remove speed and let light determine your making, on its own terms.
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- Arranging materials
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- Composition
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- lumen print fixing
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- Lumen print
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- Lumen print
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- Contact from lumen print
Who Should Attend
principianti, intermedi, avanzati
Next Dates
8-12, June 2026 — Italian and European edition
September 2026 — International edition
Teacher
Andrea Calabresi
Program
Evening of Day 1 — The desire to hold the world still
Arrival, aperitivo, first gathering, then dinner. The history of photography as a history of desire — from Dürer’s grid to the camera lucida, to the moment light finally stays. We use a camera lucida to physically understand what was missing before photography existed. No other tools yet.
Day 2 — Light writing itself
Lumen prints. We gather objects from the garden, lay flowers and leaves (or anything else we like) on light-sensitive paper, and wait for the sun to do its work. Images form without chemistry, without a camera. Every result is unrepeatable. We face the fixing problem — the same one Talbot faced in 1839.
Day 3 — Building a camera
We build pinhole cameras from cardboard boxes. Morning to build, afternoon to photograph in the garden. First images on paper negatives. The camera is not purchased: it is understood.
Day 4 — The slow field
The central day. We photograph in the garden with the cameras we built: still life, landscape, and above all portraits — long exposures, dictated by the light.
Day 5 — The final sharing
Contact printing in the morning. Collective review in the afternoon. We select the images. We set up the private exhibition in Sacramora 12’s spaces. We present our work at sunset. A journey that closes where it began: with light.
Day 6 – Collective breakfast, salutation.
Materials
You need bring nothing but the desire to step outside the rhythm of the world for a few days. Photographic paper, basic chemistry, materials for the pinhole cameras — everything is included. The one thing that appears on no list is attention. That you bring yourself.
Price
Fees & Accommodation (Total for the retreat)
Course Fee: € 1,660 (includes all materials, tutoring, and all meals).
Guest Fee: € 900 (includes all meals and access to the estate/pool).
Accomodation fee (price per room/apartment)
MINI – (2 people, ensuite bathroom) €550
POP – (2 people, ensuite bathroom) €610
MODERNIST – (Spacious design apartment: up to 4 people: 2 rooms, 2 bathrooms) – €1300
GALLERY – (2 people, ensuite bathroom) €625
GALLERY MAXI – (Spacious design apartment up to 3/4 people: 1 room + 1 pass trough room, 2 ensuite bathrooms) €950
OPENSPACE – (Spectacular 130sqm loft for 2 people) – €1550
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- MINI
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- POP
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- POP
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- GALLERY
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- MODERNIST
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- OPEN SPACE
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