I Know What I did this Summer
Carousel, Glen Echo, Md.
Contemporary ideas in Photography: Theory and Practice
Recently at Photoworks in Glen Echo, Maryland I have been teaching a class called “Contemporary ideas in photography: theory and practice”, a somewhat ponderous, if not portentous, name for a class that examines the kind of fine-art contemporary photography one is likely to encounter these days in art fairs, museums, galleries and the auction houses: in other words, conceptually-driven large-scale, glossy, front-mounted photographic art objects.
Andreas Gursky’s art objects
To keep things interesting, I also ask the photographers in the class to try some of the ideas encountered in the presentations with their own work, the idea being if they walked in someone else’s shoes they might gain a more visceral appreciation of the concepts discussed. So every other week ( in an 8 week class) I alternate PowerPoint presentations and discussions with critiques of assignments.
I’ve done the class three times now, counting the online version described further along and my expectations were that the photography coming out of the class would mostly be ‘fun’, especially since the participants only had a week come up with new work. Well, the work submitted was fun, but a pleasant surprise is how much potentially serious work came out these assignments as well. In recognition of that we have instituted several follow-up classes, one being a printing on demand book course, designed to allow the photographers an opportunity to expand the work done in the CIP class.
James Steele
A number of the students are talented hard working professionals who have successfully toiled in the fields of editorial, wedding and portrait photography without having the time to investigate what’s happening on the other side of the fence, as it were and their knowledge, curiosity and eagerness make them a pleasure to work with.
CIP class, Photoworks, Spring 2009
Beyond the Image
When I lived in England, one hundred miles east of London in the Norfolk broads, , the marshy area riddled with canals that Henry Peach Robinson placed in the history of photography a century and a half earlier, I also taught a number of project-oriented classes under the title “Beyond the Image” and discovered a similar group of hard-working amateur and professional photographers who had been toiling in isolation, guided only by the occasional workshop and work encountered in books and magazines.
In the village of Pulham Market, Suffok, UK
After five years of conducting “Beyond the Image” classes and arranging numerous student exhibitions in various venues ranging from an abandoned shoe factory in Norwich to a mayor’s office in a small village, to various village art galleries, I returned to the USA in 2004.
BTI installation, Pulham Market, UK, 2003
After I left England , a number of my former students decided to continue their work by starting a cooperative gallery in Thornham Magna, a village in Suffolk, and I was very flattered when they named the gallery after the class. The Beyond the Image Gallery has now survived for five years now, a very commendable record when you consider that many galleries like restaurants and fireflies, have a tendency to shine briefly, then expire.
Beyond The Image Gallery, Thornham Magna, UK
Beyond the Pond
Recently the Beyond the Image gallery decided to host a show of their counterparts in the American chapter of “Beyond the Image” and I was happy to be one of the participants myself in the show, ‘Beyond the Pond”.
starting with top left: Mimi Levine; John Borstel; Laurie Sand
Davis Balderston; Grace Taylor; Mark Power
The Video Conference
In conjunction with the exhibit, “Beyond the Pond” I was scheduled to visit the gallery and conduct a workshop but then the collapsing economy intervened so I wasn’t able to make the trip. But in lieu of a personal visit we decided to give the newfangled technology of video conferencing a try and with the help of an IT guru on their side and Apple’s iChat we launched the online version of “Contemporary Ideas in Photography” which went on for three hours a week through some of May and all of June.
the CIP videoconference ( UK side)Laurence Claxton photo
I think the participants in the online class seemed pleased enough with the results but once the novelty wore away I didn’t find it a very comfortable way to conduct a class. First, it was frustrating seeing old friends as electronic apparitions. As if I had suddenly been cast in a Cronenberg film, I had fantasies of stepping into the computer screen and there they’d be, a number of surprised flesh-and-blood humans on the other side. Another off-putting factor was that give and take in conversation was virtually impossible due to limitations in online audio; it was more like talking on a CB radio. At any moment you expected to hear Burt Reynolds bark 10-4 , good buddy! while popping his gum. Critiques were difficult too because the resolution was too low to really see the images so we had to resort to e-mail critiques, a procedure almost as limiting as using a CB radio. Admittedly, we were at the low end of the technology ( read: free); I imagine employing professional video equipment would have made the results closer to the experience of holding a live class. Nevertheless for now anyway, I think I’ll leave videoconferencing to the talking heads on TV.
Martin Parr
Martin Parr talking about Martin Parr
So it’s been a Summer of interesting contact with professionals of all kinds including a lecture by Martin Parr in Charlottesville, Virginia in which I discovered the man is an avowed contrarian: he consciously seeks out subjects that other photographers deliberately overlook. For example, “I thought it might be interesting to photograph the worst English cuisine rather than the best.” The result were images which simultaneously repulsed and attracted, including a record of the inexplicable English fondness for tasteless white bread. Many English delicacies, like spotted dick and beans on toast, are foods you have to encounter early in childhood to have any reaction other than puzzlement and nausea.
Martin Parr
Of course, cultural satire rendered in bright, garish, postcard color is Parr’s specialty and the lecture and an onstage conversation with photographer John Gossage gave much insight into how he arrived at that signature way of expressing himself.
Martin Parr
So that’s the Summer so far; who knows what the dog days will bring?
