|
|
|||||||||||
Do Embedded Photojournalists Actually Work for the Pentagon?
Eye on Image-Making: Cousin Lou Comes to Visit
   |
James Steinberg
said:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I recently was asked to teach a module at a well-known college here in the UK which hands out degrees in photography. 
| Does it even warrant mention that art moves in cycles? I defy you to find a single book on the market today that does not ultimately cover the same subject matter already covered a hundred times before. A million times before, if one does not count the science-fiction section. That does not preclude any of the aforementioned works from being art - even ART - and somehow, I would imagine a theoretically 'practicing' artist would be well aware of the reasons why. That you would put forward so stale and weak a critique as "this has been done before," is just sad, and makes clear to me to what extent your words on photography need to be taken with a more than a pinch of salt. |
T.B.
said:
| I'm a photography student at university in the UK, and I have to say my lecturer sounds very much like the 'lecturers of old' you are describing. Harsh critisism is certainly something he has, and most tutorials end with him conluding you need to reshoot, but he knows the business and craft, and he gets results out of all the students. I would also look at how many students finish the 3 years. In my course I would say only a third of people who start the course finish it, and the numbers steadily dwindle in the second and third years. |
Sean Duffy
said:
| This is simultaneously the most crotchety and awesome thing I have read about photography ever. |
Name
said:
| Oh my lord, that is the most satisfying photography rant I have had the pleasure of reading since I dropped out of art school. Ah yes, ART SCHOOL PHOTOGRAPHY... the endless student shows filled with b w shots of homeless people... subway shots... naked breasts.... and I had been hoping for some discussion on colour theory, for some discussion of the business of photography... for anything real. Instead, I was subjected to 4 years of fluff, of bitter MFA'ed failed-artists sitting around trying to help us "find inspiration." Why would you even enroll in art-school if you were lacking inspiration - it's a bloody prerequisite! Anyways, thanks for the bitterness... much appreciated! |
Dave Bullock
said:
| This is a great article. I am just now transitioning from being an amateur photographer to being published for pay. I have spent years teaching myself photography (with some help early on in the darkroom from my mother). In the last year, I've gotten some help from those photo editors you mentioned! I'm kind of an odd case, I also taught myself programming, which is what I've done for a living for the last decade. Some day I would love to go to school, but that will probably be for some type of engineering. Art School would be interesting, but I'm not sure how useful it would be to me. Anyhow, thanks for the post, it was a good read. =] -Dave |
christopher wray-mccann
said:
| here here, mr. shell. I know of what you speak. while i've never taught a class on your side of the atlantic, i've had the same experiences, with one mentionable difference. here in the states, students pay massive amounts of money for their "education". to put it in perspective, a student here pays as much for tuition and fees as a primary school teacher makes in a year. what a racket. the money would be better spent sustaining them on the long, hard march to creative independence that every photographer must make. no classroom can prepare you for it. you just have to jump. |
Ross Berry
said:
| This is amazingly asinine. Back in my day we got drunk and made real art... If you look at any art movement that drugs or alcohol influenced it was not a direct influence. People do not make great art while they are on drugs or drunk; people often make great art from those experiences. Anyone using the broad sweeping generalization "young people these days" needs to rethink their assertions. From this article it sounds like we should all drop out of school, get drunk, and make commercial art. Yeah, thats gonna have a really positive effect on the art community. |
J
said:
| I'm a photography student at a London College, and I'm so glad I read this. I totally agree with you, what a great article. I'm so glad you said it. |
irspariah
said:
| Also, in these modern times, it is less and less talent and skill than connections and nepotism. Look back behind these new talents, and witness the pedigree rather than skills that drive these "success" stories. |
Nathan K
said:
| So apparently back in the day photography was all about being drunk or stoned, and getting edited by people who are also drunk and stoned. And it was good. That was quality photography. What I believe I am reading here is a sour man off on a pointless rant who is fighting to stay relevant in an ever-changing industry. it is no longer 1960, Mr. Shell. Wake up. |
rabbitfighter
said:
| fuck your art community. |
Peter Riviera
said:
| Blah, blah, blah. Once again we have some old crotchety man blasting the 'young' people for not being like him. Photography, like all art forms, rises to greatness when the artist is able to express themselves making their emotions felt. Some are subtle, some are in-your-face. I've seen art emerging from Photoshop that blows me away, while other stuff sucks. Photoshop is simply the new canvas and paintbrush (or darkroom and chemicals), just because it's new doesn't mean it's any less meaningful. Most importantly, just because some old, one foot in the grave, guy doesn't 'get it', who gives a rats ass? |
matthew blake powers
said:
| You know... you remind me of a photography instructor I had back at university. Very 'old school' and stuck in his ways - completely against the digital revolution. It's a good and horrible thing. You do, indeed seem a tad sour at the whole debacle, but as stated above - it is no longer 1960, although the same things are cycling back around. Instead of ranting and complaining about your thoughts about us 'younger people,' why don't you step up yourself and start "giving green and naive rookies like myself a helping hand and good practical advice"? All I am saying is this, instead of bitchin' about it, how about some action? Or would that involve more than writing an online article?... |
Greg
said:
| This is awesome. You are awesome. |
CCNA Discovery
said:
| These people sure have talent! :) |
Name
said:
| Har har... I love how some of the comments here seem to think the article is saying that "photoshop is evil" and "getting stoned is the way to become a good photographer." Geez, the original post is only 9 paragraphs long... is it that hard to get the point? It's about craft, experience, and artistic control. The problem is that at art-school you get people with none of the above, learning to explain away their over-exposed, pointlessly manipulated mistakes with a lot of abstruse drivel. |
tony v.
said:
| i'm ot a photographer myself, i know the equipment, i know the techniques.. but i lack the 'eye' for anything but macro work.. and despite my young age, i'm rather anti-digital. what i am, is a commercial designer. while many people refer to the work i do as 'art' i emphatically disagree. what you're discussing here is in that region; when the sixties rolled around and this style that's cycling through first got attention, it was because creative minded people were playing with the rules (either on purpose or by drunken/drug addled/unlearned mistake.) and coming up with cool shit. today, it is NOT artists making the work you see. they may delude the thought, they may dress it up in pretty words and rationalizations, like that 'art moves in cycles' horse shit... when's the last time someone who painted anything like the washed out, oval faced portraiture hanging in stuffy museums made it big? it's certainly due for its cycle. the cycles are horse. what we're seeing is aesthetics. today, those color schemes that seem to violate color theory are all the rage, the super sharp focus, the weird focus forces, odd blurs, psychotic lighting, despondent subjects.. this is all the rage. and its a product of our lives; the washed out colors are reactionary; the age range thats most targeted by advertisers today is the range that was blinded in the 80s by neons and primaries and color clashes (in music videos for the clash!) and it won't sell product to use those old color motifs, it 'dates' product.. additionally, most of us are moving on to flat screens and LCDs for our tv and pc.. which wash out brightness and blacks and narrow the contrast band, making these odd tone ranges more the norm for us. there's science and aesthetics behind all this. but mr. shell, you said it best, there ain't art. and those schools are marketing schools at best, since they dont push any limits beyond our capacity to be bored and sold. |
Rather not say.
said:
| Photography is a skill. You can make of it what you want. You won't be able to do squat if you don't have anything to say. There's also a lot of crappy writers out there and a lot of crappy musicians. We all know that and focus on the ones that we think are good. How many times do we force ourselves to listen to bad music? We seem to do it with photography though. Photography has hit its "point of saturation." The next hundred years will be taken up by fishing out the real meaty culturally relevant stuff from the fluff. As a printer for many of the top photographers in Chicago, I get to see into their creative process. It's never about making a cool photograph. It's all about showing what they are interested in all the way from steel mills to sex and drugs and gangsters. |
David N
said:
| He isn't bashing the students, it's the education he disapproves of. He seems quite aware we're not living in the sixties and expect the photography to reflect that... which, in many cases, it hasn't. Brilliant rant, thanks. |
psychic readings
said:
| Thanks for this article, interesting to say the least! |
elyssa
said:
| ever thought that maybe the point of the education wasn't so much to "learn" art, or journalistic photography for that matter, but rather to be in an environment with like-minded folk - an environment where photographers aren't cut-throat and unwilling to share their "secrets"? |
F
said:
| As an art student some 15 years ago I discovered that by including bare ass in my photos I could ensure a good grade. The funkier that ass was presented, the better the grade (and the more of said ass you could procure... at least art school was good for that). After 10 years as an award winning (hey , aren't we all?) staff photojournalist for a large newspaper in the U.S. I realized that most art school photography was little better than harmless, regurgitated, visual scat cranked out by self-induced angst laden, wanna be artists. After 5 years of freelance work I discovered that photography makes a better hobby than business and that if you want to make real money at it you'd better spend more time studying the business end of selling work and churning up clients and less time shooting self-indulgent crap that looks like all the other self-indulgent crap being produced by all the other self-indulgent crappy art students. Now I teach at the college level and conduct some workshops for kids and after so many years of looking at so many images I gotta say to most of the art students out there, give it up. Get a real job for christ's sake 'cause unless you don't need money for the rest of your life (and if you think you don't and haven't won the lottery or don't have a large trust fund... you are wrong. Trust me. Remember when you were a tiny litle kid and didn't really know anything about anything? Well, you are still that kid... I'm serious.), unless you REALLY don't need money... remember that photography makes a great, great hobby. |
been
said:
| well, what's art after all? I learned photography at school, you can see my work here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedroivobeen/ i'm working with alternative processes right now |
Austin
said:
| Yeah, yeah, and you walked ten miles to school each way in blizzards. How many business majors or chemistry majors or political science majors wind up making the big bucks, either? It takes very special talent to become surly and backstabbing enough to rise to the level of, say, a Karl Rove of your field. |
been
said:
| i forgot to mention that i actually drink a lot ("using cheap out-of-date film and going off drinking with friends forgetting that I had left film in the developer" happens all the time) and that if you need to convince someone that something is art, then your art sux |
Tom
said:
| I've been taking photographs since 1959. I've been drunk once in my life and was never a druggie. I always disliked "politically" correct copy cats. I acknowledge greats like W. Eugene Smith but I liked his Country Doctor more than horror pictures of mercury poisoning victims. That kind of photojournalism serves a useful purpose but I have been in 30 countries and all 50 of the United States and find life is seldom as ghastly as SOME photo students or pros would like to have you believe. That stuff sells, so that's what many of them deliver. Note, I said SOME. I discovered long ago that being poor doesn't mean mentally impoverished or a slum resident. Being poor doesn't give you a ghetto mentality as many would have you believe in the USA. I remember some guy was furious because I posted a picture of a Muslim woman in India who obviously didn't like being photographed. A photojournalist who has time to ponder whether he will offend the subject should seek another field of employment. It's about taking the picture and sometimes that means others will take offense. In my case I wasn't being paid and love the picture to this day because it caught one of those precise moments like Cartier-Bresson was famous for. I went to the NY Institute of Photography in 1961 and learned some good technical skills. I soon quit my job as a commercial photographer as I hated taking what somebody else wanted me to take. I went back in the Air Force where I could photograph what I wanted when I wasn't working. Being an amateur has NOTHING to do with the quality of your photography. Being a pro presupposes you have some ability but being an amateur has no meaning except you do it for pleasure. Quality doesn't come with $$. I've taken all sorts of photographs. See my website: http://gallery.mac.com for examples dating back from day one to the present. These days I photograph mostly nature photos but also work as a volunteer for the local police recording them at work. I switched to digital in August 2004. Since then I have owned, or own, a Nikon D70, D70S, D80, D200, D2Xs, D300. Yes, I think the technology helps me be a better photographer but anybody who believes buying the right camera will make a photographer out of somebody who hasn't got the talent naturally, is great for the camera and lens industry, but sadly won't ever become a good photographer because of the camera he/she owns. I don't know anything about today's students or instructors. I look at the NY Times daily and the level of photography is superb and they seem to have outgrown the boo-hoo liberalism I so despise. |
Tom
said:
| Whoops! Make that: http://gallery.mac.com/thomasbroach |
Patrick Cavan Brown
said:
| Amen. |
peter
said:
| I went to a university and studied something that had nothing to do with photography. I also took a few classes with the fine art photography students. I now work in photography. They work in coffee shops. They took photos of themselves and each other in the same way that Mike described. I think his post is totally valid ... oh, and I graduated a year ago ... so I'm probably one of those 'young folks.' This post couldn't be more spot on ... for art programs that is. There are journalism, commercial and technical programs where I would say this usually isn't the case. |
Adam
said:
| Why would you have to write a 10,000 word thesis on one photo? The photo should speak for itself. I can't imagine Ansel Adams sitting there writing out 10,000 words! |
HDR
said:
| This is why I like working with HDR blending. It's new, nobody teaches it really, and I can explore new territory and discover things myself. |
Jsb
said:
| Unfortunately, teachers like F are why art school sucks so hard. You can't learn art, but you can learn technique, gain new perspective, and hopefully find some inspiration along the way. If you're not going to get the last two of these, (and you won't if you are being taught by someone who is only teaching you because they are burnt out or not good enough to make it in this competitive feild) you might as well just skip the tuition and opt for a few suplimentary classes for the technique. Or just read and test. A lot. After one year of art school, having boring teachers kiss my ass and give me absolutely no constructive critism, just a lot of "great job", "good work" keep at it!", I had enough. I quit, took an assisting job and learned more in one month than I did in that entire year. You don't learn art, you develop it. There may be a few good schools that will actually help you do that, but most are just crap. I've been freelancing for ten plus years and loving it. I learn from my experiences and from other working photographers. I do think that inspiration from photographers from decades of past is fabulous, but when you cross the line and start to emulate their work, it's time to give it up. If you have to copy someone else's style, you don't have the art. There is nothing to develop. |
leif
said:
| one shot and the truth can either fall to it's knees or rise to lead the masses... photoshop can fix both... whad'a you gwan'a do? |
Rory
said:
| If only this phenomenon were isolated to the photography department, but I suspect that this type of atmosphere has penetrated nearly every discipline associated with "art". I think the reason is not so acutely that the attitudes of kids in school has changed, but rather that the term art has changed. The word “art” has been kidnapped by an aristocratic sort of club who propped it up on a pure white pedestal and forced it to drink overpriced Champaign. “Art” has became about the pontification of intangible celebrity rather than the craft. It is not the fault of the students that the examples for which they’ve been taught to strive are so different from the profession they hope to enter. All art books begin at classical excellence and end in modern rubbish. There is a point where the definition of “art” changes from it’s classical definition to it’s modern definition, and it is at that point where this arrogant exploration of self displaces the diligent pursuit of excellence in one’s craft. So I got into digital art in order to avoid what appeared to be a soulless path of peddling self image. |
BC85
said:
| Good Point, but is this true of most university degree courses, in my experience... it is |
leif
said:
| that Rory guy is prettysmart... we should all ignore him. ("prettysmart" is one word as of right... now!) |
Bang
said:
| Ansel adams....heh. Mathematically correct zone system black and whites without soul, blah! |
Tony Porter
said:
| I agree with much of what he says, although with the increasing complexity of top level DSLRs and processing software, technical know-how is now an imperative (certainly to optimise the creative possibilities that digital represents). I am self-taught and have been shooting [mainly] concerts for 8 years. The standard of this type of (most challenging) photography has declined alarmingly, and I see a lot of young photographers clambering around for shots that I know will be sub-standard. Perhaps training should include much more in-work experience rather than reams of written work? The fact remains that one must have an inate feel and talent for the craft which no amount of training can provide. |
arthur
said:
| Photography is not art; photography can create art. Going to art school is like going to genius school. Photography is a skill like any other. |
Requiem
said:
| To those nancy-boys spewing at the writer...he knows exactly what he is saying. Phtography was not, is not and will never be serious enough a subject to warrant a degree. In professional journalism...it is simply used to drive a point. Else...it may be used as some sort of contemporary art branch...but we know what stupidities have already been pushed under the mantle of contemporary art. |
Whetty
said:
| Your original post aint quite the 10,000 words you berate younger students for writing, but the you are guilty of what you accuse young art students of doing: justifying your ideas with long winded drivel. Justify your arguments instead with pictures, and you may not come off as such a hypocrite. |
Whetty
said:
| Your original post may not be 10,000 words but you are guilty of what you accuse young art students of doing: justifying their photography by writing pointless drivel about it. Try instead to make your point through taking pictures and you might not come off as such a hypocrite. |
Mike Sheil
said:
| The sad thing about blogs is that people become abusive towards people they have never met. Thus for a writer to call me a "hypocrite" when he has never met me is really rather a rude and if I might suggest pointless comment that does little to advance a creative debate. Prove my point through taking photographs - easy. I have been shooting solidly for the past six weeks illustrating a book on the aftermath of war so I think that I can claim that whilst I may, according to some be a dinosaur roaring in the swamp, I am at least still walking the talk. And may you all find people who as as informed and helpful towards you were those I encountered in my early days. Enjoy the light! Mike heil |
alex Shaw
said:
| People follow trends and trends are taught at art colleges along with techniques, professional practice etc. What is missing is meaning.Its okay to follow new German photography or an era but in the end you have to own what you do and this takes work, and cannot be taught. As for dropouts what is the point in complaining , just move on. |
External Links
| Black Star Website |
| AssignmentPhoto.com |
| StockPhoto.com |
Subscribe by RSS
 Black Star Rising |
| Black Star Photoblog |
We have 1 guest online