From: Shannon Stoney (shannonstoney@earthlink.net)
Date: 08/20/02-02:24:14 PM Z
Diana,
It's hard to talk about these things without being in the presence of the
images under consideration themselves. I know what you mean by safe beach
sunsets, pictures of pets, et al. But people in my class had gone way
beyond that, yet they were still being castigated over and over again with
the "that's been done before" rap. I'll try to describe the kind of work
that was being done.
One person was trying very hard to deal photographically with issues having
to do with her sexuality and relationships with men, a difficult topic and
one not easy to photograph "about." She tried over and over again
photographing herself nude in different ways--color, b and w, sexy, not so
sexy, gagged with plastic bags even --each time to be told that "it had been
done before," or the other golden oldie, "what is your point here? well,
we're not getting that." By the end of the year her work had completely
degenerated, and she was no longer even making photographs, but simply
zeroxing and transferring to newsprint stuff out of sex manuals! (By the
way, this was very well received.) I think it's sad that she was discouraged
from continuing with her much more ambitious project.
Another young woman was attempting to translate her interest in landscape
photography away from pretty nature scenes, to the Houston urban landscape.
She would bring well-crafted pictures of freeway overpasses, etc, and be
told, of course, "that's been done before." She too got very discouraged at
getting shot down each time she tried ANYTHING, and in the end was making
very little work.
Another young woman was trying to portray her frustration about living at
home, being ready to graduate but not quite having flown the nest yet. She
photographed herself nude behind a wall of cellophane, attempting to cut the
cellophane with a knife. You could sort of see her body but not clearly.
Ok, maybe not the clearest metaphor in the world, but she was really trying.
And what was she told? "That's been done before." By whom? Where? Show me!
Of course that never happens. This woman had gotten off to a slow start and
had finally done something sort of ambitious. After this failure, she went
back into hiding again and didn't come out the rest of the semester.
Yet another woman was trying to deal with the issue of body image and makeup
and fixing yourself up to be attractive to men. She put some sort of latex
makeup on her face and then photographed herself in front of the mirror
peeling it off. Some of these images were quite grotesque and a little
shocking, enough to be "edgy." But, of course, it's been done before. We
should know that by now.
I could go on and on. By the end of the semester I was beginning to suspect
that since the teachers don't know what to say, they trot out two or three
stock criticisms. Speaking of taking the easy route: it saved THEM from
having to think. And, I can count on one hand the number of times they said
anything positive about somebody's work, or pointed out a strength that
somebody could build on.
Maybe these things HAD been done before. But if they had, whose fault was
it that these students didn't know about this work?
The photo history teacher, meanwhile, who doesn't come to our studio
critiques, was puzzled as to why the students seem so downcast and
demoralized, and why they didn't seem to have their heart in their studies.
In other words, the demoralization was obvious to people other than myself.
Perhaps dwelling on the failings of this particular department is irrelevant
to the larger discussion, but I have gotten the feeling from talking to
people at other schools that this sort of lazy critiquing goes on in a lot
of art departments. My partner says it's a form of hazing, like the
gruelling residency that doctors go through. But young doctors are made to
feel that eventually they will be good at what they are bad at now. That
doesn't happen in a lot of art schools.
--shannon
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