It's that time of year again when students are applying to graduate school. For those considering a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in photography, there are a lot of programs, but so many more perspective students. The figures are staggering. At Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where I teach, we have almost 200 applicants for 7-8 spots this year. Professor Gary Minnix at University of Illinois/Chicago reports also around 200 applicants for 15 spots in their interdisciplinary graduate program—with about 3-4 photography concentrators. Read more »
Teachingphoto.com is about teaching photography, but not all teaching occurs in schools. Some photographers learn "on the job" by interning or assisting a working photographer. Others learn on their own by reading and working hard at what they do and love. But for most, finding a community and connecting with others who share a similar passion is important. That's where non-profit spaces, camera clubs, and other such organizations come in. Read more »
Online Photo Network and Competition
myartspace, the premier online social network for the art world, and HotShoe International, Europe's leading contemporary photographic magazine, have collaborated to sponsor "Next Perspective," a juried photography contest.
The first place winner will receive $2,000 in cash and a portfolio feature in an upcoming issue of HotShoe International; the second place winner will receive a digital camera; and the third place winner will receive a $500 gift certificate to B&H Photo in New York City.
The jurors for "Next Perspective" include Dr. Juliet Hacking, Programme Director of the MA program in Photography (contemporary and historical) at Sotheby's Institute of Art in London, and Clare Freestone, Assistant Curator of Photography at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
myartspace is the premier online social network for the art world. Membership is free and allows you to upload an unlimited amount of photographs, music and video, and combine different media to create dazzling online galleries. myartspace is one of the fastest growing sites for the art world, with over 30,000 members representing over 20,000 online galleries of work. The online community is supported by both proprietary and user-generated content, including blogs, reviews and critiques, forums, happenings/events and eLearning materials. For more information, visit http://www.myartspace.com/
Lucky is what you might call it. Lucky for me, lucky for Carlos and Neus, lucky for Ramon Rius. Lucky for us all. Luck has long been defined as one thing that photographers cannot do without; we pack it in the camera bag. Read more »
For twenty years, I have made a career out of commenting on American culture through observation of television content. The multimedia body of work that has emerged, 500 Channels, can best be defined as cultural or political satire. The name refers to the fact that just 20 years ago, the idea that we might one day have more than 500 television channels was nothing more than a dream. Read more »
Collecting photography books is an obsession for many photographers. A lot of us do it. But photographer and Boston College faculty Karl Baden has given his obsession a special spin. You can see it at: www.coveringphotography.com and read about it here.
For this new column I decided to write about critical issues in the world of teaching digital photography. There are many, of course, so I started asking my students at Northeastern University in Boston what was on their minds. I also talked with my colleagues and to Bruce Hamilton, who's in charge of our technical facilities, about what our program’s needs are now, and what they will be in the near future. Read more »
Michelle Sheppard is the Photography teacher at Algonquin Regional High School in Northborough, Massachusetts. She has supplied us this issue with an amazingly engaging lesson plan for intro to Photo students in the upper high school grades. Her lesson, which she calls the “Photo Olympics,” incorporates ideas on composition, critique, shooting strategy, new angles from which to view the world, and how to photograph a rubber lobster. Read more »
Every so often, I’ll run into a former student and he or she will recall something that happened in my class that influenced them years later. I’m always a little surprised at that memory, but then haven’t we all had teachers who reached us in some manner along the way—good or sometimes even bad? Read more »
The Photobooth is a cultural icon, having survived as a functional part of the American landscape for over 80 years. Quite amazing when you think about it. What other technology has remained unchanged, yet still vibrant, for such a long time? A quick ebay search reveals photobooth photos taken throughout the past eight decades, and they still look great. The photobooth has been the place anyone, despite their economic status, could afford to take high quality photos. It has recorded chance meetings, spontaneous moments, and new love for generations. The booth has also been a fixture in more utilitarian pursuits: the procurement of countless ID and passport photos. As a recent testimony to the significance of its cultural cachet, Apple Computer (perhaps the epitome of corporate cool) designed an interactive photography software application that ships with every new Mac. They call it Photo Booth. Read more »
When I began teaching photography five years ago I was utterly unprepared for how much I would learn every day on the job. Inspiring and instructing students day in and day out has been among the most gratifying and challenging experiences of my life. In a world where imagery is plentiful and can seem cheap, I am continually searching for new ways to keep busy, harried college students impassioned with seeing, experiencing, and creating through their own eyes rather than just consuming the images (and underlying messages) that surround them on all sides. Read more »
Imagine that you are the head of an institution dedicated to “contemporary photography,” responsible for making sense of all of the trends and movements currently clamoring for a place under that umbrella. Pretend also that you must make a place for the work of artists in your region while avoiding easy dismissal as just another regional museum. On top of that, imagine that you are also charged with serving students and faculty for one of the largest photography departments around, just down the street from one of the most highly regarded large museums in America. Read more »
There is so much going on in the world of digital capture it’s a little hard to know where to begin. I’m just starting at the tip of the iceberg here but the two most important topics are probably Adobe DNG and Apple’s Aperture. Read more »
About once a semester I host an evening called Slide Slam at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In a fast-paced format, six emerging photographers project a selection of their work and take questions from the audience afterwards. Audiences have been packing the two hundred-seat amphitheater for this event because people are eager to get a look at fresh work and the photographers who are creating it. I started this alternat ive venue to give some exposure to a large number of photographers who are unknown or under-recognized. Often I’m more struck by their work than by what I see every month in galleries. Read more »
In 2003, John Movius was the recipient of the New York University/Tisch School of the Arts, Daniel Rosenburg Travel Fellowship. The Tisch School of the Arts’ Department of Photography and Imaging awards the grant annually to one graduating senior to complete and exhibit a project involving travel. Movius used the grant to complete a project called Sight Range: Photographs and Stories by Soldiers of Desert Storm. This collaborative piece explores the way soldiers involved in Desert Storm have used photography as a method of personal documentary. Sight Range provides a venue for these soldiers to tell their stories and exhibit documents of war of a different nature from those seen in the newspaper or on the TV news. The project was first exhibited at Tisch’s Gulf and Western Gallery, and can also be seen on the web at www.regardingwar.org. In the following interview, Movius discusses the inspirations for the project, the way he put it together and his ideas for future work. Read more »
Published almost 15 years ago, Larry Sultan’s groundbreaking project about his parents—“Pictures From Home,” included striking yet intimate portraits of his parents at their suburban home in California, sequenced loosely with snapshots from family albums, color saturated and grainy stills from home movies, and even images from a corporate brochure where his father worked. Into this visual stew he included forthright and riveting commentary from his father and mother, and disarmingly his own reservations about photographing his parents: “What drives me to continue this work is difficult to name. It has more to do with love than sociology, with being a subject in the drama rather than a witness. And in the odd and jumbled process of working everything shifts; the boundaries blur, my distance slips, the arrogance and illusion of immunity falters. I wake up in the middle of the night, stunned and anguished. These are my parents. From that simple fact, everything follows.” Read more »
Philip Perkis, born in Boston, MA in 1935, a photographer since 1957, has an accomplished career as an educator, photographer and seemingly endless source of inspiration. This feature is an excerpt from “Teaching Photography: Notes Assembled,” a collection of forty years’ worth of observations and exercises (OB Press, Rochester, 2001). Perkis’s “notes” explore photography and teaching it as relevant, mysterious and altogether fascinating. Written in hopes of encouraging “younger photographers and teachers to take some chances,” TeachingPhoto is happy to introduce this collection to some of you, and re-introduce it to others. At the bottom of this excerpt is a small portfolio of Philip's images.
In his essay The Human Universe, Charles Olsen postulates that since the Greeks, our system of language has become more and more about description and concept of intellect and has lost its ability to express experience directly. Read more »
BY SHANNON PERICH, ASSOCIATE CURATOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY | JULY 5, 2005
The Photographic History Collection (PHC) at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History (NMAH) is the first collection of photography at any museum. There are about 200,000 images representing the work of over 4,000 photographers and 12,000 pieces of equipment and photographic apparatus. The PHC collects images and objects representing the art, science, and technology of photography. As such, the collection is very broad. Read more »
Most of you probably are teaching some computer-based still imaging, either in your own lab or one you share with another discipline in your department. If you did what we at Northeastern University did, you added digital courses alongside the conventional courses you already teach. Shared labs worked for a while, but in our case teaching our courses using computers that are set up for graphic designers and animators was less than ideal. We were always reconfiguring them for use with Photoshop, and outputting was a nightmare. Read more »
For nearly 20 years, David Prifti has been using photography to teach teenagers about creativity, self-expression, and critical thinking at Concord-Carlisle High School in Concord, Massachusetts. Along the way, he's built a progression of course offerings that would be the envy of some college art departments. Read more »
Three toning assignments from photographer and teacher Tom Gearty discuss basic methods of using Kodak Selenium Toner, sepia toner, and Kodak Polytoner. They explain how the toners work and how they should be used. Read more »
Internationally-exhibited photographer Keith Carter is the first subject in a new DVD documentary series that presents a fully comprehensive study of the today's most influential photographers. Produced by Anthropy Arts, The Photographers Series: Keith Carter starts with an intimate hour long documentary that takes the viewer through Carter’s career, giving an in-depth look at his techniques and philosophy, and features special guest interviews, including curator Anne Wilkes Tucker and Academy Award winning writer, Horton Foote...More »
