Section
Four: Guides for the Uneducated: Higher Education and Photography
John Szarkowski - Commitment (1962)
Photo director of the MoMA calls on educators to commit themselves to exploring the unknown through photography, thereby inspiring a new generation with equal commitment.
“If we commit our work, then our students may commit theirs, to the business of probing and exploring life, including all those intuitively sensed realities for which we have not yet found formal expression.”
Nathan Lyons - History of Photographic Education with an Emphasis on its Development
in the United States (2005)
1830s
Samuel F. B. Morse returns from France in 1839, perfects his production of daguerreotypes, and
thereafter begins offering commercial lessons in daguerreotype production.
1840s
Dissemination of
daguerreotype technology and processes through
print and private instruction.
1850s
Emergence of
extended network of daguerreotype studios, an apprenticeship system
and the first photo journals.
1880s
Establishment of
the first photography school in the Chautauqua program,
continuing education for adults in NY State.
1890s
Chautauqua
offers a correspondence course with an international subscription.
1900s
University
courses begin to be offered; training is
still largely technical.
1910s
Establishment of
the Clarence White School,
which runs for 20 years and includes among its graduates Margaret Bourke-White and Dorothea Lange.
1920s
Founding of a
photography workshop in the Bauhaus program.
1930s
= Establishment
of the Black Mountain College, a program of holistic education in which
photography was taught as one of the arts, not just as a technical skill.
= Founding of
the Film and Photo League as a branch of the Workers’ International Relief, socialist efforts to democratise
art production and produce working-class imagery
1940s
Moholy-Nagy
lunches the Institute of Design.
1950s and 1960s
= Increasing
numbers of universities begin offering nontechnical courses in photography.
= Emergence of
the workshop format, intensive instruction over short periods for professionals
and amateurs.
Stephen Frailey - Valentine (2005)
This is very
good and deserves quoting at length:
“The
gradual education of a photographer, however, is contrary to this
accessibility. To achieve a degree of significance and originality involves an
unusual degree of commitment and rigor, and an embrace of this contradictory
toggle between the vernacular of photography and its ambitions as an individual
or cultural voice.
Photographic education proposes a shift from the assumed
importance of the subject, to the significance of the interpretation. It often
privileges the mundane and ephemeral and achieves relevance not through the
literal subject matter, but the attitude, passion, and conviction of the
photographer.
The premise of a strong photographic education is the assumption
that all individual voices can be amplified, and that the potential for
photographic distinctiveness is as axiomatic as our status as individuals. And
that photographic practice can accommodate many different approaches, from the
methodical to the impulsive, the cerebral to the instinctive.
The best photographic education is as interested in the inquiry
as in the resolution, and the medium as a vehicle for the lifelong accumulation
of information and knowledge. Curiosity fuels most photographic endeavor;
memory and fear often provide the heat.”
Charles H. Traub - Dos and Donts of Graduate Study
A list of
maxims. Here are two:
“Photographers
are the only creative people who don’t pay attention to their predecessors’ work—if you imitate something
good, you are more likely to succeed.
Whoever originated the idea will surely be forgotten until he or
she’s dead—corollary:
steal someone else’s idea before they die.”
Ralph Hattersley - A Handy Kit for Do-It-Yourself
Critics (1962)
Excellent
article that deserves archiving, beginning with a 34-point checklist of things
to consider when writing a critique, as well as an extensive list of faults to
avoid when cliquish oneself. Here are
two from the latter:
“You
criticize yourself for not making a picture as good as “others you have seen,” not, however, bothering
to define these other pictures or to find a specific example of one and compare
it with your own work (error of the ill-defined prototype).
You are lousy because you don’t make pictures like
those of a particular photographer whose equipment, mentality, geographic
location, economic means, and photographic opportunities are entirely different
from yours (error of measuring yourself with the wrong ruler).”
Lászlό
Moholy-Nagy -
Unprecedented Photography (1927)
Very short piece
calling for extended forms of experimentation (most of them appear to be
technical, rather than compositional or related to content/subject).
“...no dependence on
traditional forms of representation! Photography has no need for that.”
Minor White -
When a Student Asks (1956)
On the
foolishness of educators:
“No
one expects the apple tree to bear oranges; yet we often, much too often,
demand that the potentially great landscapist, for instance, turn his camera
towards the human elements of the world. Why do we rarely demand the opposite?
It seems that we forget that the inner direction of people runs in a rocked
ribbed river; for we persistently do the equivalent of asking all trees to bear
oranges when we demand that all photographers devote their efforts to a
documentation of the human scene.”
Mary Virginia Swanson - A Brief List of Self Assignments for Artists (2005)
The
self-assignments are subjects for consideration that appear largely generic and
applicable to any number of careers:
know yourself, focus your efforts, know your market, network, support
community efforts, etc, etc.
Aaron
Siskind -
Solving Problems (1979)
Harry Callahan - Learning from the Bauhaus (1979)
Interview with
Siskind on his experience teaching at the Chicago Institute of Design. He and Callahan I the next interview discuss
some of the foundation courses, technical-conceptual curricula built around
themes and problem solving. Sounds like
they were interesting classes.
Gregory Crewdson - The Narrative
Not much here,
really, but some observations on the astuteness of this generation of students
to the role, function, and malleability of images. On that it takes to be a photographer:
“..it is really important that
they have an obsessive need to construct something, to understand something
from their own experience.”
And that struck
me as something about how I live my life, trying to understand being human
through having a variety of experiences (including through photography).
Randy West - Remembering Life Through Photographs
Following from
Crewdson's observation about young students being familiar with photographic
skills and awareness:
“My
students come to school with experience in making imagery. It is not new for
them. However, the process of stepping back and analyzing their work is where
they fall short.”
And some advice:
“I
tell my students that it is their job to educate (or entertain) the viewer. Through
education an artist can keep an audience’ s attention and therefore begin or sustain a
dialogue. It is extremely important to become engaged with the people they want
to talk to—to get
feedback from their attempts and revise the work or ideas when not fully
recognized by the objective viewer. Otherwise they work in a vacuum. Also
important is that artists need to understand that they’ve
chosen art to be their job. A job requires daily work habits. It is not when
the creative mood or inspiration comes to them.”
Penelope Umbrico - The Medium as Subject
As I am finding
with many photographers here, the primary interest is in subverting the looking
process, of challenging the viewer. Is
this because visual artists are sensitive to vision? Is there more to art than thinking up clever
tricks?
Following on
West's comments regarding analysis:
“ ...one of the most limiting
types of remarks is “that
has already been done.” The
comparison to previously made work this way negates intentionality and the broader
contexts that the work can, and should, function in. It gears the discussion
towards classification, denying any purpose, meaning or nuanced reading of the
work. It also denies process, truncating the creative, culturally collaborative
practice that making art is.”
Advice to
students:
“...the most important thing
is the discipline to continue one’s work: to work every day on your project, or at
least something like a few days a week, with the goal to find and develop what
inspires you. A part of that is to always challenge yourself. Ideally one
should reach the point where one’s creative work comes out of a place of necessity—the point at which one
cannot help one’s self from making it.”
Sarah Charlesworth - Objects of Desire
She gets miffed
at the use of a word:
“AB:
Unlike many photographers who use photography to record or document the world,
your work draws upon a variety of symbolic images (sometimes appropriated) from
art history to popular media. What sources do you draw upon to create your work
and how do you sustain your creative practice?
SC: My early work, which draws primarily from existent sources,
does not use symbolic images as much as it explores the way in which
images function as symbols.”
And seems to be
unprepared for the role of educator:
“As a
teacher, I impose no rules on my students and encourage them to define for
themselves a relationship to their world through their artwork. Each generation
of artists or photographers must reinvent a practice of art, just as each artist
and photographer must as an individual. There really are no rules. Neither
convention nor context are permanent, but are created by artists working in a
time and place. The strongest work takes the known world, its art and
photography, and ways of communication only as a jumping off point. The
challenge of inventing a practice takes place within a culture of ideas. I
think it is valuable to be well-informed about art history and photo history
and then to move beyond that to use one's art as a way of exploring the world
anew.”
Rachael Dunville - Essence of Portrait Photography
A graduate
student writes about her interest in portraiture. Nothing here worth noting or quoting.
Adam Bell -
Afterword
“We
all take pictures and assume we understand their complexity. However, the ease
and accessibility of photography often belies the hard work and decisions that
create great and meaningful work. While camera technology is virtually
omnipresent in our lives, the scrutiny and insight of intelligent practice are
often missing.”
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In Conclusion
Excellent
collection of extracts and excerpts from established photographic
practitioners, essayists, and educators, a great book for a beginner's
photography course. Touches on a number of related issues including
the image-making process, the role of photography in the arts and society,
photography criticism, fundamentals of successful art practice, and the role
and function of the educator, among others.
Weaknesses of this collection include several frustratingly short extracts,
the absence of images to support or exemplify the text, and the near total
absence of opinion from anywhere outside the borders of the USA.
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