From: Jack Fulton (jefulton1@home.com)
Date: 10/19/01-07:41:06 AM Z
'there is something happening Mr. Jones . . and, you don't know what it is."
Bob Dylan
To add another vegetable to the stew pot . . or is this discussion on stone
soup?
I've taught since '69 here @ the Art Institute and in the grad program since
the early 70's.
THEN
The student was fairly new to the idea of obtaining an MFA in photography.
We were similar in age and I was the 'gang' leader. We all worked and
shared the produced images. Each of us were excited by the creativity
amongst ourselves and the potential for new directions.
Slowly, as I grew older, and the hippy thing and the Viet Nam war subsided
and Reagan/Bush plopped into power, the realization of teaching became more
critical and the average student to the MFA program knew less about being an
artist but knew more regarding photography.
We started seeing well made portfolios of almost non-content imagery. Though
I overblow my statement, much work was objective/possessive rather than
poetically portrayed.
Our probram expanded to include more art history and even the PM aspects of
theory. Some teachers came in and tore everyone and everything apart with
Post Modernism. Now that much of it is understood better and accepted (it
was very difficult churning the obtuse language to create a more vernacular
comprehension), we have what we consider to be a far more rigorous academic
course for the student to follow.
Also, in fairness to the institutions you may refer to and the
teachers....yes, some are turkeys and some places are dull, yet the
enlivenment of a program is, in my mind, due to the creative energies and
interests of the students.
NOW
Keep in mind that students are 'invited' to participate. For instance, we
may have over 90 portfolios to look through. Out of those, our faculty
(which is four: Linda Connor, myself, Reagan Louie and Henry Wessel) is
aided in our choices by: additional faculty who are adjunct or invited, the
complete graduate class who are given two votes. We may pick about 4 to 6
candidates (5%) but the program needs to take ten to maintain the size and
quality of the program. From past experience it is realized that twenty need
to be invited for an average of 50% attend. NONE of the original 5 chosen
may come and we could end up with the program holding 12 people we did not
relish to as great a degree as those we found held more votes.
Then, the task becomes more focused on teaching. More often than not those
invited rise to the occasion and do well. Another classic example of the
average student is the person who comes in with a portfolio and thereby sets
out to 'experiment' and create something completely different. It is the
rare person who is creatively capable of such an endeavor and they return
(in almost 75% or more of all cases) to their original work and expand it a
bit.
It is my feeling the student ought to come into a program with a strong body
of work and expand upon that. By doing so they will slowly put together a
body that holds variety such as that of a well led life. They will also
refine the raison d'etre for the work as a whole and be able more to define
what it is they are actually doing. Curators et al, in general, like to see
a "body' of work so they can mull it over and choose images THEY feel to be
important. I'd rather have the contemporary photographer do it. However,
there are such examples as Walker Evans not knowing diddly about his work in
"American Photographs' which is fully edited by Lincoln Kerstein.
I am sure some of what I have said may be taken cum grano salis but it is a
scenario not uncommon. The student entering a program, whether at our
institution of @ UNM, Chicago, Pratt, VSA, Seattle, Arizona, wherever should
be prepared to work their butt off making photographs, That is the key . .
to make the photographs and let them be.
Jack Fulton
> On Thu, 18 Oct 2001, shannon stoney wrote:
>> teach them. People in my classes still want to know things like how
>> to use the zone system, how to use a view camera, how to process 4x5
>> film. They have been asking about this stuff for a long time, and
>> since our teacher has been stalling on teaching that stuff, they ask
>> me to show them how to do these things.
>
> I loved grad school, but I used to say it was like a Victorian lecture on
> marriage, a lot of talk about the beauties of conjugal love, but if you
> asked about HOW IT WAS DONE (film, development, etc.) you were quickly
> shushed.
>
>> In one of the best drawing classes I ever took, the most helpful
>> things I learned were some "technique" things. The teacher could
>> teach these things because he was a working artist. He didn't go on
>> and on about theory; he taught us how he worked. That was very
>> helpful.
>
> Right -- no "theory of drawing."
>
>> Not to say that theory is never helpful; it just seems as if lately
>> it has become a substitute for anything else substantive, because in
>> a way it's easier to talk about books and words than it is to get
>> down to making something.
>
> Not to mention that theory remains state-of-the-art about as long as
> software.. If you go back & read "theory" of, for instance, the '70s,
> it's like another planet... which many tenured profs are from.
>
>> position on why you did something or why it's better to take pictures
>> of flowers or not take pictures of flowers for example. My problem
>> with the teachers at my school is that they don't support their
>> theories with any good reasons. They just beat people up with them.
>> They have been doing this, unchallenged, for so long that they have
>> forgotten, if they ever knew, why they believe the things they
>> believe. I think they accepted them as dogma at some point in their
>> careers and have never really examined the validity of these ideas,
>> or their practicality, or their effect on students, especially young,
>> hesitant students. I am an old, stubborn student, so I mostly blow
>> it off. But I end up defending younger, less confident people a lot.
>
> Very well said !... Of course one hopes to produce art that transcends
> theory... which, alas, may not be clear until we also are, so-to-speak,
> transcended.
>
> Judy
>
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