glehany@mac.com
Date: 08/20/02-02:54:01 PM Z
Whatever happened to student rebelliousness? Perhaps the tutors are
saying these things in an attempt to push students into fighting for
their work? (Couldn't you argue your passe sunsets are ironic, or is
irony passe too.)
I'm perhaps being a little flippant, but the point I'm trying to make is
that whilst taking notice of considered criticism or our work, there
comes a point when we have to believe in ourselves enough to say "no!
this is what I want to say". Being a student isn't about someone saying
"this is how to do it" it should be about giving people the environment
in which they can find their own voice.
Gordon Lehany
On Tuesday, August 20, 2002, at 09:24 , Shannon Stoney wrote:
> 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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