We are sitting in Shenanigans – The P.M. of the Domain, his students and me - discussing things photographic when I realise how backward this place is.
IT seems that in their intro to photography class they still use film – poor dears don’t they know what century this is? It is no wonder they have such a hard time trying to compete with those more advantaged students who not only get to use digital but are allowed to use any digital camera whatsoever. How can one possibly grasp photography not only using some outdated method of image making but being restricted to one camera that everyone is required to use.
They were speechless in awe when I announced that our Photo I was all digital even more so when they saw the new Photo I syllabus and found more to do with word than pictures. One asked what do we actually look at?
Poor things.
It seems that here in the deep south where people cannot afford the latest gigapixeled camera, the poor students are all required to use only a plastic camera in photo I. How sad, I thought as I heard the choice being justified by forcing the students to see and be aware not only of their surroundings but of light and their framing choices. I simply nodded my head as we all know now that any art making process has little to do with actually making anything but more on how one talks about the theoretical implications of the act if one actually made a photograph.
I felt sorry for the time these poor students were spending on trying to control the medium when if they are only read more and photographed less they would know that control is out of their hands and in that of dead and near dead nounverb using French philosophers – who probably only used a camera during their August holidays in Deauville.
And besides a well made photograph is so passé.
It gets worse. I found out that many of these students actually believe that the medium is useful for something beyond their own navel and have just returned from Haiti where with other non art students tried to come to understand the culture and society. What’s more they make photographs, write papers, and in following years go back and share this with those they met while down there. It seems that this is has been going on for quite a few years now.
Don’t they know that they should be going to “designer” tourism countries? We of the more enlightened send our students off to Vietnam, Cambodia and China so that they can condescendingly look at what is being made there and pretend it is of equal value of Western Art.
This trip has been quite an eye opener and cannot wait to get back North where people are less anal and in 15 weeks we have to cover more than one subject in our Intro to Photo so that our demanding students don’t get bored.
Science and Art
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The teaching of the sciences and the arts needs to be conjoined and
sustained from the earliest stages of education. In the Foreward to
Platinotype my frie...
7 months ago
5 comments:
Hey now, don't blame us so much as our professors, who are shoving inedible words and ideas down our throats to the point of bulimic consumption, if it comes back up we have to eat it again, and each time it is a little more processed, it perhaps has sat longer in the stomach this time and some acid has eaten at the least moldy bits. When one changes schools or teachers they have to pump your stomach and begin again, this time with a completely new, although just as foul, set of doctrines. If you are lucky enough to be in grad school you have not only learned that you must digest no matter what the consequences are to ones integrity or the integrity of ones work, but also have learned to love it and ask for more. Accepting is no longer enough, you must ASK. Also, one should be aware that as the period of time is shorter, you have to eat the same amount faster. If you can't do this, and lets face it not many of us can no matter how much we may want to, then you spend your failed time silently staring with you tormentors at your regurgitated doctrines rotting on the floor. This is how they weed out the good artists from the great. If you eat fast enough, however, they will even give you money in exchange for ingesting.
This is what we call "education".
1- don't use the word artist
2- it is sad what is come to be expected. my talk was to be a discussion but people came for enlightenment thinking that for some reason i had it. but still it was better than at the WGAS when all i would have to do is speak in noun verbs say what my intention was and then point it out in every image and i would be home free. come to think of it that was the lecture that followed mine but that is another entry.
i am going to tell the quite remarkable students down here that if they act like students they will be treated like students with all the paternalism that is implied.
That is certainly what we were expected to do in NYC with Volk, we were there to listen to the masters tell us how it was, even if the _____ (sub in your alternative word for artist) wanted to talk to us in a different way, we still felt obligated to behave like learners in awe.
I am beginning to feel like I did in the last months at SAIC, I did not know who to believe and what to think about anything, I was so confused that all I wanted to do was get the hell out of its incestuous world, and go somewhere where I could figure things out on my own. At a certain point manipulation becomes effective if only to confuse. I don't like being treated like student, which I am here everyday, but I dislike being seen as a teacher just as much. There have to be alternatives.
maybe you should jump out of the volkswagen
is that a reference to something I don't get, or a causal suggestion of suicide?
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