The path to success in photography, formal education or not?

[Kirk Gittings]

As a photo teacher, I run into young photographers who really shouldn't pursue a formal education for various reasons. I'm open to all paths. I'm curious to know more detail about your path to being a successful photographer. How did you get into it and then make the leap to making a living at it?

We have a great faculty at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design with very diverse backgrounds: http://santafeuniversity.edu/academi...raphy/faculty/. This is actually my favorite group of colleagues that I have ever had the pleasure of teaching with (with the exception of the same group plus our former chair, Mary Anne Redding who left recently to pursue her real love-curating).

[Jac@stafford.net]

If a person is an autodidact, he had best have a very good and critical instructor.

[Kirk Gittings]

:).....agreed

[mdarnton]

I worked in a photo studio, starting very early, then went to college and got a degree not involving photography, then because a photographer. Subsequently and later, I skipped violin making school, got jobs in a series of shops, and now have my own. I have NEVER felt that the college was a waste of time, however. It always gave me an edge over the competition in so many ways not directly relating to having a resume'; it's about having a certain way of approaching things that's more effective for having the additional education. As one co-worker, long after I'd been to college, so accurately put it: "you college guys always get what you want". The class I'm happiest I had that would be the least obvious, given my path: statistics.

[Kirk Gittings]

For myself. My father was an avid amateur 35mm photographer and I grew up with a rough darkroom in our house. I started developing film and printing in the 6th grade. I never really though about making a living with it. In college I started out in economics and took a beginning photo class for fun in my sophomore year. I was hooked. Quite accidentally I had landed in the midst of a photographic whirlwind-the UNM photo program of the late 60's/early seventies with Coke, Newhall, Ray Metzger, Lazorik, Bety Hahn etc. In 78 I launched my architectural photography business (trying to figure out what else a VC was good for beyond making "art"). Through one of Lazorik's connections I ended up at the University of Calgary for my MFA with a free ride in 80. I went back to shooting architecture after that and teaching at UNM for 11 years-then got recruited by SAIC for the next 16 years and counting plus now SFUAD in SF. I continue to shoot architecture-its always been my main source of income and underwritten my b&w "art" photography when necessary. On a good year I can make some decent money selling my b&w prints, over 100 exhibits to date, but its never been a consistent $ source that I can rely on.

I did not need the MFA to shoot architecture but as that clientel is also formally educated they respect it. The MFA is most useful to be able to teach at a university level. I believe it also has some value in pursuing grants etc.

[Corran]

I learned almost everything I know about photography myself, through trial and error, and/or reading various articles/posts/opinions online, rather than a "formal" education in it. No one in my family had any knowledge or interest in photography, and I didn't even have any friends doing it, so I just dove in with a DSLR and worked it out myself. Taught myself how to process film and started working on darkroom printing before I ever talked to a real film photographer or even started posting here. My primary "teacher" was AA after reading The Camera/Negative/Print before ever buying a LF camera.

I think the primary reason for college degrees / experience in an art-related field is not so much the learning aspect (which is/can be important) but more-so the networking, facilities, and access to a knowledge base. I am lucky to be working AT a university, so I get a lot of those benefits, while not being a student. The students in the photography classes don't necessarily take advantage of these resources. It seems like some just think photography/art is easy. Those are the ones that of course fail (or barely pass, but don't actually do anything in art).

There are many paths but most importantly you have to have a drive to make photographs, or any art.

[jp]

I consider myself successful as a photographer but I don't make a living at it and don't even try. I've made photos for about 25 years for a variety of purposes ranging from sports to nature to weddings (did a few for $). I don't have issue with technical challenges of cameras/lenses/darkroom/computer and can often enough capture moods/feeling/compositions/light in photos the way I anticipate, so I consider myself successful in photography.

I don't want to sound like bragging, but just using some testimony to describe a different definition of success that a commercial photographer might not use.

I am a computer science dropout, but college required us to be well rounded, so I took a couple basic courses in art history and photo history. Some people avoid photo history fearing they will end up as copy cats, but I think it'll happen by chance just as easily and there is much to be inspired by studying the history of photography. Most of what I've learned is a mix of doing and reading about.

[Eric Biggerstaff]

If I am ever successful I will let you know! :D

However, I am a pretty darn good amateur I think and while I did take some college level photography courses, it was not my major (business and geology). A couple years after graduation I thought about going back to SMU to get a dual MFA and MBA that they offered at the time. But, I decided not to get that much into debt so I passed on it. My love of photography continued to grow and I ended up going to several workshops with people who I respected and then practiced, practiced and practiced. I continue to learn and I hope I never stop. My learning curve may have been longer as I was unable to devote 100% effort to the art, but the journey has been worth it and I have not lost the passion.

[Kirk Gittings]

For some reason the link I posted above for SFUAD faculty doesn't work and its too late to correct it so here it is again: http://santafeuniversity.edu/academics/photography/faculty/

[Michael E]

After high school in Germany, I spent a couple of years in Michigan, studying photography and earning an Associate Degree. Back in Germany, I was an intern at a commercial studio for a year (advertising/industrial). Then I studied photography at a renowned academy and got a degree there. Since 1999, I'm working as a freelance photographer (documentary/advertising/corporate), since 2010 I have in addition a part time job at my former academy (a technical job, not a teaching position). Am I successful? Not by any means or standard. Did my degrees help in any way? For my freelance work, nobody ever cared about my education. For my academic career, my degrees were never good enough, somebody always had a better cv. There is an inflation in education, where a simple degree is not worth anything if everybody has one... What I learned is useful mainly for my art. Unfortunately, I don't make any money with that.

[dodphotography]

I respect everyone here and their opinions but it would be interesting to hear some experiences of younger, emerging photographers. It's difficult to talk about what happened / worked in the 1970's and how it relates to today's market, vastly different and more competitive.

[Corran]

How young is "young?" I'm only 28 (well, 29 in about a week!).

[dodphotography]

How young is "young?" I'm only 28 (well, 29 in about a week!).
I'm 29, going on 30 in January.

We are ripe... Ideally we are the perfect age for an MFA. Not fresh out of school, making work for a few years on our own to learn, grow, commit and an MFA would be a cherry on top of my life. I'm poor... So it's NEVER happening considering an MFA in Photography is a full time gig. No night classes one at a time

[Corran]

That's a good point!
However I wouldn't necessarily say you'll "never" do something...

[Kirk Gittings]

I'm 29, going on 30 in January.

We are ripe... Ideally we are the perfect age for an MFA. Not fresh out of school, making work for a few years on our own to learn, grow, commit and an MFA would be a cherry on top of my life. I'm poor... So it's NEVER happening considering an MFA in Photography is a full time gig. No night classes one at a time

There are numerous limited residency MFA programs designed exactly for people working. Check out SCAD, SAIC, Hartford (IMO the most interesting-designed and run by a member here.). There are probably more-those are the ones I know of personally because friends/acquaintances are involved.

[dodphotography]

There are numerous limited residency MFA programs designed exactly for people working. Check out SCAD, SAIC, Hartford (IMO the most interesting-designed and run by a member here.). There are probably more-those are the ones I know of personally.

Are we going to hold all MFA programs to the same standard? Does reputation and quality of more traditional institutions matter?

[gregmo]

I went to school for zoology. Dropped out. Ive been self employed for most of my working life...Worked for 13 years as a personal trainer & 8 of those years also doing fitness & commercial modeling. I had no interest in photography until I moved to Washington DC for something to do.

With in 5.5 years, it grew from there.. Started doing freelance sports photography for a few publications & selling images to the athletes' families. Hated the volume of images I had to deal. I switched my focus to scenic Wash DC. Started shooting film 2.5 years ago; 2 years ago moved to LF- 4x5, then 5x7 & finally 8x10.

A year and a half ago I switch to photography. I've done a small amount of corporate events, but not interested in that type of work. Most income is from selling large prints to offices & residences. My licensing income has been increasing thru reproductions sold thru Walmart, Kmart, Amazon, ex. Most of my time is spent market & networking with interior designers. My plan/ goal is to grow to hire another person to assist with marketing & sales who actually specializes in that field.

I'm 36 now. I feel I have a long way to go to build the business to where I want it. The marketing is a long term approach to build awareness. I enjoy the business aspects as well as the creative outlet of making the "work/ product."

[Kirk Gittings]

Are we going to hold all MFA programs to the same standard? Does reputation and quality of more traditional institutions matter?

Weird question. I don't know are you? I have little ability or interest or time to develop a standard to compare them. I'm just telling you what I know. I know all of these programs have some merits. SAIC is one of the top art schools in the world (a former assistant of mine oversaw the development of the LRMFA program), but Hartford has garnered a ton of press because of the success of some of its students in the first few classes (I know the guy who designed it and greatly respect him). I hear good things about SCAD from another former assistant of mine who is a professor at SCAD. There are many more limited residency programs out there but I have no direct knowledge about them. These guys at these programs I know and respect. Beyond that I have little to add.

[mdarnton]

I respect everyone here and their opinions but it would be interesting to hear some experiences of younger, emerging photographers. It's difficult to talk about what happened / worked in the 1970's and how it relates to today's market, vastly different and more competitive.

I think about that sometimes. I'm pretty sure that if I were 45 years younger I would not be ending up as a photographer now. I'm not even sure what a photographer is anymore, nor am I all that certain I'd like whatever it is. There are a lot of advantages to not being a professional, though, that I suspect people often don't appreciate.

[Kodachrome25]

I knew I wanted to be a photographer by age 10. I had been taking photos since age 8 but when a guy loaded with a pair of Nikon F2's on motors walked into the Boys and Girls club and made me the front page of the paper, I was sold....what a great job.

Fast forward to age 16, I was working at a Fox one hour photo, one of three jobs. I check through a batch of prints, they are photos of a sailor's daily life on an aircraft carrier. I had no prospects for school, the other two jobs were washing dishes in a senior center and helping a guy install air conditioning. I started to day dream about shooting photos on the carrier, in cool port calls....yeah, what a dream, a photographer in the Navy...I'll take that and a scoop of ice cream thanks.

By the time I was about to turn 18, I had obtained my GED and was well on my way to photographing life aboard an aircraft carrier...I took the sure bet and enlisted as a jet engine mechanic. In three years I had amassed a bunch of great images and continued to shoot well into my reserve tours, winning awards, selling thousands of dollars in prints. I was also a damn good aircraft mechanic, did well. Then I heard of a rather famous aircraft shooter who was doing a book on military bases and their air-wings. I managed to meet up with him to offer to assist him on our base. I also showed him some of my images. He declined my offer of helping him schlep gear around because he wanted me to co-illustrate the book.

So from that day forward, I worked hard, shot newspaper and magazine editorial, commercial work and tolerated about a year of weddings. Many of the images I had made in the Navy sold as stock for nearly a decade, paid really well too.

In 1998 I ended up in a famous little ski town and took a job at the local paper for $10 an hour. I was offered nearly $12 but instead, negotiated that I be able to freelance and would walk with my images when I left. In 2004 I did that and and had made a really great name for my self because I knew the paper would be great paid self promotion. The images I walked with brought in quite a bit of income as stock until the economic crash in 2008, all along I had cultivated lots of good clients, two in particular who are to this day my main ones.

I get asked all the time by young people how to "break in". I tell them I have no idea, it's different now than it was then and to me it has never been a job but a life I had no choice but to live. I also tell them that it's not enough to be a good photographer, you have to be obsessed with having an entrepreneurial spirit, not loathe but love the marketing aspect.

The aircraft, the mountains, the food, the places & the objects I photographed did not buy my photographs, people did. No matter what you photograph, it is a people business.

[Kirk Gittings]

Thanks. I like that story. I always tell students that hard work trumps genius and you are a great example of that.

[Kodachrome25]

Thanks. I like that story. I always tell students that hard work trumps genius and you are a great example of that.

Thanks Kirk...now for chapter two, trying to make a living doing nothing but shooting big beautiful black and white film and making mesmerizing silver gel prints. I'll build it from the ground up just like the rest and if it does not work, it's no failure....but it's going to work...;-)

[koh303]

I have little ability or interest or time to develop a standard to compare them... yet,
SAIC is one of the top art schools in the world by who/what standard? is this an empirical measure?

Hartford has garnered a ton of press because of the success of some of its students in the first few classes (I know the guy who designed it and greatly respect him). So, is this now by your personal measure?

I hear good things about SCAD from another former assistant of mine who is a professor at SCAD. Most people have good things to say about their alma mater or place of work, especially if they have an active interested in said place's success because of some sense of loyalty or a financial interest, or any other reason, but in any case does not make then the best people to be judges or offer a balances point of view of things.


Beyond that I have little to add. Though there is a rating which you clearly follow:


A degree from a top 5 school like UNM would have been worth more...

I used to talk about those lists which have the top 5 photo schools in the world (all in the US, which is similar to the "world championship" of various US only sports leagues), but after attending and teaching at 3 of those often mentioned schools, i feel that the only basis for those listings is reputation, which is in actuality as far from the reality as can be. IE - the chair of the photo dept at RISD has her MA in computer science.

[koh303]

No matter what you photograph, it is a people business.

Is the measure of success in photography a monetary value? If so it is better to ask how many of the 80K + MFA graduates per year in the US are ever able to pay back their student loans, with or with out skills/connections earned during their "education", and out of those how many are photo MFA graduates.

[Kodachrome25]

Is the measure of success in photography a monetary value? If so it is better to ask how many of the 80K + MFA graduates per year in the US are ever able to pay back their student loans, with or with out skills/connections earned during their "education", and out of those how many are photo MFA graduates.

I can't speak to the scholastic and subsequent liability parts, only that success is different for everyone. I do know that I work about half the year for commercial clients by choice so I can have the freedom to explore this new venture the rest of the time. So in my estimation success is being able to buy back and not squander the most precious thing we have in our lives.....

Time.

[Will Frostmill]

The aircraft, the mountains, the food, the places & the objects I photographed did not buy my photographs, people did. No matter what you photograph, it is a people business.
Thanks for telling this story. This makes a lot of sense to me, and I learned some new things.
Will

[jp]

i feel that the only basis for those listings is reputation, which is in actuality as far from the reality as can be. IE - the chair of the photo dept at RISD has her MA in computer science.

That increases her reputation as far as I am concerned.

[Peter De Smidt]

Student debt worries me. There might still be some professions where students have a reasonable chance of being able to pay off their debt easily, but for many areas that's not the case. And if you don't know what you want to do, as many students don't, taking regular college classes is a very expensive way to go about it.

[Peter Lewin]

KOH: Rather than attack what others post, could you post your own opinions on the value of college art or photography degrees? While many of us on this forum are not professionals, many of us have children, and can either encourage or discourage some of their education and career choices. As a concrete example, the most common response to the similar topic in APUG was for potential professional photographers to get a degree in business, and then try to launch their photography careers, rather than to pursue a degree in art or photography directly. And that advice was pushed most strongly by several professionals, be they photographers or photo lab and services owners.

You raise a number of questions which are very timely, and relate to much broader subjects than photography education. The "ranking of schools" is quite a hot topic these days, and in this ranking process, there are questions about how much the ability of the schools to place their graduates in careers in their chosen fields should count. You are probably aware that the government is considering a website ranking system which would strongly count post-graduate income and the ability to pay off college debts in the ranking. A number of educators argue that earning a living should not be the goal of a college education, but that exposing the students to the wide world (i.e. not only computer programming but also art, literature, psychology, etc.) is more important. So rather than question how others approach these questions, please give us your own answers.

[Kirk Gittings]

As the proposed website stands (as I understand it from people I know in admin that are dealing with this), any schools that don't directly prepare you for a profession that you can find a job in, like liberal arts for example will not fare very well in the ranking system. Engineering, dentistry, physical therapy, teaching and such will fare well. To go to schools with a low ranking one will have a harder time getting government tuition support.

If this ranking bias is true I think it is unfortunate. They need to find some other means to rank schools. Many of the most creative and successful people I know, like my son, do something totally unrelated to what they got a degree in. Their university studies helped them learn how to learn, and methods of critical/analytical thinking that have served them well. My son has a degree in bio chemistry but now is managing partner of a multi-million dollar IT company that he started. Only a couple of his partners or employees have any kind of degrees related to computing or IT-most of them discovered IT after school, it became their passion and then their profession. The ranking system proposed would not take any of this into account.

[DrTang]

when people asked about the best way to learn photography - I used to say: buy a lot of polaroid film, look at a lot of photographs, go shoot with someone good


except for the polaroids (sadly)..it still kinda holds


to make a business out of it..I would add city college classes in business and english - and an internship with someone good


most college photography classes are pretty bunk, hell..even Brooks never impressed when I went to check out their 'seniors' shows... I suppose they did turn out competent serior portraits/weddings photographers on a technical level though

[jnantz]

hi kirk

i have both a mix of formal ( high school - college )
as well as informal ( assisting, having a mentor )
and self taught.

and all three of them i think are equally important.

[Corran]

most college photography classes are pretty bunk, hell..even Brooks never impressed when I went to check out their 'seniors' shows... I suppose they did turn out competent serior portraits/weddings photographers on a technical level though

Well the conversation here is two-fold - education/learning in order to "make art" or to "make money." I think the differences in opinion on this topic are because of this difference in viewpoint.

For some people, an education in all the technical aspects of photography, some basic compositional skills, the computer skills for editing/delivery/website/etc., and some business classes, would be what they would want out of it. Then they could go to work. They'd still have an uphill battle for the market though. I'm sure many would go to their "senior show" or whatever and say "oh these photos are really boring and have no artistic interest" blah blah blah, but, so what?

On the flip side of that, the school I work/teach at is 100% art focused. No business classes or anything like that, and teaching is geared towards creativity. Which is okay, but for the most part, the students graduate and then they go find somewhere to work that generally has nothing to do with art. One friend of mine who was big into photography now works at an optometrist. Of all the graduates I can think of in the last half-dozen years, only two of them are serious up-and-coming artists (neither are photographers). Only one photographer I can remember is working at a family portrait studio that is about two steps up from JCPenny. One is working on an MFA. The rest are just doing whatever.

Which is better for the student? Well, it depends on what they want to do. For a lot of the photography students, I think #1 would have been better for them.

[gregmo]

Generally speaking, formal education is a business..art galleries are a business. Yet, artists are told to create & not think about the money aspect. Seems a bit contradictory.

[analoguey]

Koh,

Thats a long and interesting answer, thank you for posting that (thanks to Peter for the question as well)

I have been following this and the other topic that possibly spawned it (without participating in either), makes for interesting, useful reading.

One of the better things about the internet is the easier access to the minority opinion. We decide on our own, of course, but hearing opposing opinions adds more weight to the decision. :-)

[rdenney]

There was some in Koh's answer that was indeed interesting. But we have to remember that we don't allow discussions of politics and religion on this forum. It's quite possible to discuss the efficacy of college degrees in photography without discussing all the various political points of view of those posting.

Rick "who would prefer not to close this thread" Denney

[koh303]

too bad. im not retyping that.

[analoguey]

Can the mods just snip out a section of the post instead of the whole post?
(I know, it's hard enough job being a mod, but this is a pretty useful thread)
The political bit was probably 10-15% compared to the on-topic bit - which was the more interesting bit. Yes, the political bit was, too, for those interested in it.
/Suggestion

[Jmarmck]

Hmmm, in response to what Koh303, sorry I have not wadded through the others yet. I have a couple degrees one is a BA the other a MS. Divergent in respects of direction. But that said, if I had to choose between a student with a purely monogamist curriculum and one with a varied curriculum that has forced the student to listen to some really "out there" professors, I would choose the BA every time. Despite what I thought while I was taking all those fine arts classes, I am glad I did sit through those excruciating lectures. This is why I have my opinions about online classes/curricula/degrees. They do not broaden the students mind beyond the subject matter. One of my better gifts is the ability to think laterally, to apply a solution from another subject matter to answer a question. To do this one has to be exposed to those things outside the realm of a tightly controlled curriculum.

This is what college is all about. It is an exposure to the world beyond ones back yard. Actually attending a campus is also part of the experience; to witness the life within an educational institution. It is a different world, one where the mind is expand by both learning and experience. I have known many people who do not agree. They feel it is a waste of time. I find their arguments hard to justify. I work for a historical black college. I live in a community where white is the minority. But none of that matters. What matters is that these people are given the opportunity to learn something beyond the bounds of their own mind. I am glad to expose them to what I can teach. I recently had one of my works get a job with a major corporation's headquarters in my hometown. No it is not photography, it is probably not in his major either. But I would like to think he got hired because of what he learned, not the color of his skin.

That said, there are three directions students can go. The first is to fail and to return home and make their way without a higher education. The second is to get that degree and move on to a job, good or bad. The third is to stay in the academic community to teach, do research, or both. Those that take the third path are normally the brightest with a desire to learn more. These are the future of our expanding knowledge be it scientific or in the humanities. We need these people otherwise we loose all we have learned.

I have never taken a photography class. I wish I had but the opportunity never came up in college. Instead, I had fine art courses (lectures) and socio-psycho lectures. Of course several classes in the humanities/history. But, never photography. I am self taught, with the aid of friends, but I have much more to learn.

[rdenney]

There's a lot going on in colleges these days. Prices are rising enormously. This is partly because of public funding, and partly because of increased costs--costs that are increasing faster than in other industries. Students do not demand lower prices because the ready access to student-loan credit means they don't have to.

But it stands to reason that prices (for premiere institutions) are going up. Demand is going up, but supply is not. When I attended my college--a leading and arguably even world-class university in my field when I was there a very long time ago--the attendance was 25,000 and growing fast. Now, it is capped at 50,000. Demand is rising, but the cap is fixed. When demand exceeds capacity, prices rise and the queue builds. So, those of limited means but who had worked hard in high school can no longer get into the college where I matriculated. Working hard isn't enough--they have to be geniuses on top of working hard. And they have to write essays and demonstrate not that they are likely to be successful students, but that they are likely to fit the mold of "good people" as defined by those doing the admissions at those universities. Doing the things one must do to be able to write those essays comes more easily to families of means, and that's how the willingness to pay more has crept into good state universities that used to be inexpensive. It has taken a long time for this trend to develop.

Never has "success" been more linked to financial prosperity as today. People in the 10th grade think they are making life decisions when they do or don't decide to take a job bagging groceries at the local store. Their parents are spending their time memorizing the U.S. News and World Report rankings. Kids around here think they are losers if they can't get into Harvard. But this is the natural outgrowth of the expectation that all kids will go to college--that was a good comment made in a post I had to delete. When college degrees are ubiquitous, then the place where those degrees were earned becomes the distinguishing attribute.

I believe that a college degree in any field can enable a person to be productive and happy, even if not in the field of study, if they desire to be productive and happy. And I know very few people with college degrees who are unable to find some way to get through life, somehow, on their own terms, if they want to. Thus, I do not equate an undergraduate college education with job training. Being an educated person requires study--study of the whole context of life. Being good at one's job requires training--practice doing those things. Even in my technical field of engineering, my undergraduate studies include a range of math, science, physics, business, language, history, philosophy, and engineering practices covering a range of specializations quite distant from what I do professionally. I had two classes in my specific subject, and only a portion of them covered my principle area of expertise. I focused more in graduate school, but by then I knew what I wanted to study. Professionally, maybe 2% of what I learned in undergraduate school is relevant. Grad school may account for 15%--and that's where I learned the math that I actually use routinely (that was beyond what I had already learned in high school). I would say that, in technical terms, the most recent ten years of my career has taught me more than the first ten, but the first ten provided the context that gave the most recent decade of learning meaning and value. Summary: In college we learn, and that is training for professional pursuits that are sustained by continual learning.

Photography (as well as other fine arts) seems to require both practical skills and some form of contextual vision. I was able to learn all the practical skills on my own, and I suspect anybody could do likewise if they are motivated enough. Or, they could learn it more quickly than I did through an apprenticeship or other mentor-driven process.

But I have never really learned that vision. What little artistic vision I possess was just there. I could be a competent professional photographer 30 years ago when the profession needed people of great skill but workaday vision. Now, that sort of skill can be written in a camera's software, or in a magazine article, and learned by Uncle Harry just as easily. So, the thing that distinguishes successful photographers from people like me is their ability to transcend skill and say something worthwhile with their art. I see work that makes my heart beat faster, but I still struggle to know why, or why my own work so rarely achieves that.

That applies equally to musicians, by the way. There's truth in the old joke that the abbreviation for Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) really stands for "Didn't Make the Audition."

And if it applies to musicians and photographers, it probably applies to all the arts. I've worked as a professional photographer, musician, and writer at various times. I studied architecture for several years before switching to engineering. In all of these, I was competent but never really an artist. I've almost never been transported by my own work.

So, if a school, by whatever means, can teach that vision to students, then it cannot help but have value. But I rather think that there are those who either 1.) have that vision so strongly that school would just get in their way (or, at best, teach them some skills), 2.) have a nascent vision that could be enlarged and clarified by testing it in the context of a good school studio (either by guidance from teachers or competition from classmates), or 3.) have no vision at all but an aptitude for competency skills, in which case they are probably just as well off teaching themselves and keeping it as a hobby.

But it is also true that my study of architecture, photography, music, and writing absolutely makes me a better engineer, and a better person. This, I think, is what society has forgotten in its desire to make college into job training.

Rick "sorry for the ramble" Denney

[analoguey]

That said, there are three directions students can go. The first is to fail and to return home and make their way without a higher education. The second is to get that degree and move on to a job, good or bad. The third is to stay in the academic community to teach, do research, or both. Those that take the third path are normally the brightest with a desire to learn more. These are the future of our expanding knowledge be it scientific or in the humanities. We need these people otherwise we loose all we have learned.


Brightest is a needless generalization - which is equally countered by that saying(?) of 'those who cant do, teach'

Either is an overreach, and extreme, I disagree mostly with both. (useful as an argumentative put-down, at best)

[rdenney]

Can the mods just snip out a section of the post instead of the whole post?
(I know, it's hard enough job being a mod, but this is a pretty useful thread)
The political bit was probably 10-15% compared to the on-topic bit - which was the more interesting bit. Yes, the political bit was, too, for those interested in it.
/Suggestion

Sorry, but no. We have a policy against editing posts, even in cases like this where it would make sense.

But people can choose to express that 85% that was the most interesting part without the part that we would have to edit.

Rick "a moderator, not an editor" Denney

[analoguey]

Ah, okay.
Thats interesting! Is there a thread or discussion somewhere on that?
(I have been a mod on other forums where we decided to let posts pass with editing, so curious on this)

[koh303]

What matters is that these people are given the opportunity to learn something beyond the bounds of their own mind.
I am sure you mean well, but i am not sure what you mean here.


I am glad to expose them to what I can teach. I recently had one of my works get a job with a major corporation's headquarters in my hometown. No it is not photography, it is probably not in his major either. But I would like to think he got hired because of what he learned, not the color of his skin. We would all like to think that, but how can we tell when we live in the US?

[koh303]

So, if a school, by whatever means, can teach that vision to students, then it cannot help but have value. But I rather think that there are those who either 1.) have that vision so strongly that school would just get in their way (or, at best, teach them some skills), 2.) have a nascent vision that could be enlarged and clarified by testing it in the context of a good school studio (either by guidance from teachers or competition from classmates), or 3.) have no vision at all but an aptitude for competency skills, in which case they are probably just as well off teaching themselves and keeping it as a hobby.

But it is also true that my study of architecture, photography, music, and writing absolutely makes me a better engineer, and a better person. This, I think, is what society has forgotten in its desire to make college into job training.

Rick "sorry for the ramble" Denney

You are almost hitting it - but people either have talent or they dont. That is not something that can be taught. Skill, Applied art/craft sure is. Fine art - you either have it or not. Schools might help shape a vision already there, but cannot create one where non exists. In either case the school is redundant, as if there is no vision there is no need for it, if there is a vision, there is no need for it.

My state university students used to accost me with questions about grades. I had several classes in which i tried to explain how it is useless to grade artistic endeavor, and that tests, exams and grades are useless for the most for part, as far as learning is concerned, but even if they are not harmful, they are just not compatible with all students in a given class, thus making grades meaningless.


Art schools serve an entirely different function - they provide, in theory, an environment where one can work and be creatively productive with out the consequence of real world idleness. In reality, they take your money and tell you everything you do is great, after all, who would pay $100K to hear bad things about themselves (except for me)? As John Maeda once said - The students are customers. High paying ones at that, and we have to provide them with the best customer service. A crying student that runs out of the crit because it was too hard to hear the comments is bad PR, and thus - it never really happens, with grad students, even less.

I recall this one person who would not accept any criticism of the work in any form or fashion, pre wrote and handed out the questions that were allowed to be presented during the crit, and allowed topics for discussion, and later simply had some and eventually all students removed from the crit all together. Why was this even acceptable, to allow one student a different set of standards by which the work is measured then others? There 100 thousand reasons why.

Joe "participating in the thread despite obvious resentment over lost keystores" Johnson

[paulr]

Being good at good at photography is a different kind of success professional success. I suspect that for most smart people, anything can be a learning opportunity. Formal education represents an unparalleled wealth of of learning opportunities, even if it's not absolutely necessary. The only drawback I can see is if the program is such a bad match that it crushes the creative life out of you. I know a few cases of this happening ... some at Yale in the 1980s.

For professional success, formal education offers a big advantage. If you go to one of the better programs, you'll walk out with connections. By themselves, these can't make you successful, but the lack of them presents real obstacles. You could probably make this generalization about any profession.

I think the bigger question for most of us is if formal education is a good value. That's a much tougher sell. There's very little aid available most programs, and job prospects are scarce. This seems to be the case whether you're looking at an MFA or a trade degree. You'll face a lot of debt. It's one of the reasons I personally opted out of formal education (not counting the photo and photo history class I took as an undergrad). It's impossible to say if I made the right decision, because my crystal ball isn't good enough to show my post-MFA life.

[Jmarmck]

koh, it has no derogatory meaning what so ever. "These people" refer to the students on campus. I am convinced that many of the students here would not make the cut into many of the major universities. I probably would not either now days. While a research assistant in a soil physics lab I saw many people come and go. Hourly workers were usually undergrad students trying to work their way through college. Many of the higher degree students were people of privilege, yes I detest that term but it applies. Many of these people were from foreign countries coming to the US to further their education. Many if not all were the sons and daughters of what can only be referred to as the "ruling class". Their attitudes were what you would expect for someone who is living their dream. But many of these people looked down on those less privileged and truly believed that many in the university did not have a right to be there. It really struck me as to how open our education system really is/was. But that has all changed in the years since. I am not so sure it is so open way anymore. As some have noted here it is now all about the money. In my humble opinion, I believe this to be a tragedy.

This is what I like about my work. Everyone has a chance. Admission standards are more lax giving opportunity where none would otherwise exist. Though even here it still is about the money.

BTW analogue,"brightest" is a generalization but I am not about to apologize for it as there is truth in it without malice to any. However, I do not believe in your counter point. To believe in both is contradictory.

[rdenney]

Ah, okay.
Thats interesting! Is there a thread or discussion somewhere on that?
(I have been a mod on other forums where we decided to let posts pass with editing, so curious on this)

No, just a (very) long-standing policy. Editing someone's post is actually, to our thinking, more harmful and censorious than just removing it, despite that it means a lot of lost keystrokes for Joe. Plus, it takes a lot longer and is more likely to require extensive explanation.

But I will offer to Joe to send his keystrokes to him, if he wants to edit and repost.

Rick "thinking that in this case the political aspect is a distraction from the real issues in any case" Denney

[rdenney]

Joe "participating in the thread despite obvious resentment over lost keystores" Johnson

I'll PM them to you, and you can edit and repost if you want.

Rick "resentment is deadly" Denney

[Darin Boville]

An observation I made way back when I was young enough to consider a formal art degree was that the overwhelming majority of art students were in love with the idea of being an artist. They loved the lifestyle, they loved the self-image, they loved the feeling of cultural superiority.

And it was an easy degree compared to almost anything else. That's very attractive to many 18-year-olds.

--Darin

[Ari]

Hey, this thread derailed rather quickly; I see we're still kicking at this MFA thing as well.

I was a pro photographer for almost 20 years, now taking a couple of years off to pursue other projects.
I went to university, though my degrees are completely unrelated to photography and/or the arts.
Of all the successful photographers (I don't count myself as successful) I've met/worked for in the last 20 years, not one went to school for photography, be it community college diploma or grad school degree.
That may speak to a different time, not that long ago either, but 25 years ago, the smart cookies (i.e. those who were hungry to be photographers) knew that if you wanted to learn photography for real, assisting was the way to go, not school.

And who cared what you did before, or if you had good marks in school?
You had to learn to deliver consistently excellent results, creatively and technically, on time, on budget and make it look easy, if possible.
And you had to have a good head for business as well as an outgoing personality.
School might teach you 25% of that stuff.

Just my personal experience.

[djdister]

As a photo teacher, I run into young photographers who really shouldn't pursue a formal education for various reasons. I'm open to all paths. I'm curious to know more detail about your path to being a successful photographer. How did you get into it and then make the leap to making a living at it?

We have a great faculty at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design with very diverse backgrounds: http://santafeuniversity.edu/academi...raphy/faculty/. This is actually my favorite group of colleagues that I have ever had the pleasure of teaching with (with the exception of the same group plus our former chair, Mary Anne Redding who left recently to pursue her real love-curating).

Getting back to Kirk's original question, the answer is obviously "No." We have seen countless people succeed in Photography and other art fields, while those who doggedly pursued those same degrees never made a success of it in that field. Success in the arts is a hit or miss affair, with "miss" being about 80% of it, from my reckoning. A formal education - in any field - is a great start, but still no guarantee of success in that same field. Although some folks say that a sound liberal arts degree prepares you to do anything, I have certainly seen people with degrees in engineering become successful in a wide variety of fields.

I think one thing that is missing in photography (or any art field) college program, is to ask the student what they expect to do with a degree in that field. And then said student should receive a very straightforward presentation on job prospects and earnings potential for their chosen field. This should happen in year 1, not year 4 of the program.

As I am not a successful photographer, but rather a photographer for myself, my path took some zigs and zags along the way. I majored in Professional Photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology. I started out as a Photo Illustration major, but when I saw how little technical rigor the students were receiving, I switched to Pro Photo. I figured that one should understand the technical aspects of the craft before setting out to break the rules or make new ones. One of the things I discovered quickly after graduation was that working as any kind of freelance was not for me. I did not like the constant need to chase after jobs and market myself all the time. And aside from working at Kodak, full-time photo jobs were a bit on the scarce side at the time.

Since graduation, I have worked directly in the photography field twice, for about 6 years total, each time leaving it for a more lucrative job financially. Since everything was going digital, I studied information systems and earned a Master's degree in Information Management. Although there have been some fallow periods for personal photography, I have not stopped making photographs for my own enjoyment. I don't worry about selling my work, or getting enough jobs each month to pay expenses, or catering to whatever crazy trend is going around. My job in IT Security pays pretty well and is one of the more secure job fields you could find. I don't care that I did not make a living from photography, and I still appreciate the education that I received at RIT. The Pro Photo program included the scientific and technical aspects of photography, plus there were business and general studies courses.

So I guess I haven't really answered Kirk's question in the end because I did not make a living of out of photography. But I've done pretty well anyway, and have not felt pressure to produce or sell any particular type of photography. Photography is not a "job" for me, and I'm okay with that...

[koh303]

Thanks to Rick - here is a redacted version (which i hope keeps the relevant points):

1. Student debt in the US is larger then all Credit card debt in the US. It is a uniquely US thing, just like ****************. While this might be close to ********, there is no way to discuss the question of the value of higher education without going into to that discussion as well. For a short white i taught at the "most affordable" state university in MA, which was about 10 cheaper per semester then any other university in the state. It was still more then 10K per year, for tuition alone, not counting food, commute, living cost of going to school etc,. The school offers what is most likely some of the worst education a university can, but not much difference then most community colleges and state universities. None of the students i saw, most of whom come from a low socio economic class will ever be able to pay back their loans, own a home, or help pay their children's education.
In some countries, higher education is free, and offers some of the highest level of education possible, with the best professors and facilities money can buy, simply because money is not an issue.
******************paragraph*****************
As this is a largely unregulated economy, **************************** the US society has become such that a college education is a requirement for pretty much any position in this world, perhaps driven by the hope for the ever elusive (and completely non existent) chance at upwards mobility. This in turn makes education a very profitable business. Noam Chomsky often refers to Harvard university as a bank which happens to own a school. This is true about RISD, and MANY other "high ranking" school in the US. The big post Madoff scare was mostly related to the value of assets held by those universities, their portfolios, and other non pedagogical issues, which have nothing to do with actual running of a university, and, lo and behold, all schools miraculously recovered, **************, and are richer then ever.

2. In one sentence you are confusing the words "career" and "degree", when in fact for the most part that have nothing to do with each other, and rarely if ever coincide to be in the same field, unless you are referring to a career in tire treading, followed by a career in a tire shop. (a trade, craft or applied art, is not something you need to go to university for, as HR Giger might tell you).
In countries where basic human rights are protected by the government, such as free access health care, and free higher education, people are truly free to pursue such "uneconomically viable" field of education, such as the arts or philosophy. The proposed rating system, just a Kirk above noted, will very fast deduce what ******* and other "they need to pull them selves by their own hair out of poverty" folks say - there is no need for ANY kind of art, art education, literature, poetry, design or philosophy, unless they are strictly profitable. That leaves us with country and hip hop for music, and the "why the heck is the girl in this photo naked" thrad of LFPF for art. That is largely where we already are - just call any of those top 5 schools in MFA photo and ask what types of scholarships if any are available. Other then UNM which is the only exception, none of them really do.

3. Diversity - in all my years in art school, i have rarely ever met any non white students. I was not born in the US, and every time i see a questionnaire which asks me to define my race, i am shocked, appalled and quickly reminded that even though ******** *********************************, this is a very racially segregated country. Now, as many "minorities" in the US **************************************, and often are in socio economic situation which precludes them from any type of education, not to mention higher education in the US, they themselves are forced to follow the idiom of that rating system (mentioned above) based on monetary viability of their choices (making art a poor choice), thus increasing the lack of diversity in art schools.

*************Paragraph***********

4. A good friend's daughter is taking some prep school in order to try and get into one two public schools in the area which actually offer an education, free of drugs, violence, and a chance at a college degree. I asked - what happens to anyone who does not have the money to pay for this prep school, or is just 0.5% under the cut off line? The answer was - they are screwed. What does this mean, i was not sure how to respond - but i was sure of one thing - given $100K in cash 15 years ago, i would have been so far ahead from where i am now, even thought i might have not known about such obscurities (pun intented) as abe morells camera obscura work, or other niceties such as learning how to do useless academic research, rehearse to remember meaningless historical facts so that i could do well in tests that only test my memory capacity, or regurgitate nonsensical artspeak. That money could have gone to start a business, buy a home, invest in stock, all of which would have enabled me to pay for, in cash, for any type of education i wanted when i was older and more decided about what i wanted to do in life. I told the kid - don't worry about weather or not you get into that fancy school - take the (college) money and run. Don't waste your time.

5. I have said this on the other thread - there are 80K + MFA grads every year in the US. They all dream of working in teaching jobs or becoming gallery artists or writers. But, alas, there is not enough room for them, especially since people like Kirk Gittings, Nick Nixon, Jim Dow, Abe morrell and many others have been holding their positions for eons on end. So while some of these oldies are aging, the turn around is not very fast, and no one wants to leave a 6 figure position with tenure for any real reason (Perhaps there is faster turn around in galleries, but as only 15% of my graduating class still makes photos, that is not really an issue). Not to mention that should they ever leave, those jobs will ever become available again with the same benefits...
That leaves 99.9% of those grads with pipe dreams, which for the most part means they will never find a directly related career in their field of study.

6. Do you really need to go to school for 4 years to learn how to operate a camera? Even the top schools think not, as they offer so very few photo classes in their photo departments, that one could not even fill 2 full semesters with photo only classes in the US. There is nothing michael langford/henry horenstien cannot teach you that a school could as far as how to make photos or use a camera.

Joe "who thanks Rick for returning the lost keystrokes and a chance to correct some spelling" Johnson

[analoguey]

No, just a (very) long-standing policy. Editing someone's post is actually, to our thinking, more harmful and censorious than just removing it, despite that it means a lot of lost keystrokes for Joe. Plus, it takes a lot longer and is more likely to require extensive explanation.

Hmm, right. That's probably another way of looking it - I meant editing referring to redacting, of course, but I understand.
Thanks for the explanation!




But I will offer to Joe to send his keystrokes to him, if he wants to edit and repost.

Rick "thinking that in this case the political aspect is a distraction from the real issues in any case" Denney

Awesome! While, I had read it, I think, for anyone accessing this thread in the future, it will be quite useful opinion.

/Now back to watching and less commenting.

[Peter Lewin]

First, thanks to Rick for finding a workable solution to getting Joe's/KOH's response to my question back into the thread. (As an ex-bike-racer, me, to an ex-bike-racing-official, you, I had no doubts that you would resolve this to everyone's satisfaction!)

And Joe, thanks for your full response. It's good to know that you are not just someone saying "no" to others (esp. Kirk's) posts, but someone with experience in the field and a valuable POV.

I was interested in the thread not only out of "idle curiosity" as an amateur photographer, but also as the father of a daughter who began her college education as a Fine Arts (actually "Studio Arts") major. In her case, by her senior year she became unhappy with the direction her studies were taking her, and ultimately ended up with a BA in psychology and a minor in art. Being a pragmatist at heart, I didn't see how a BA in Art was going to help her earn a living, but I "tolerated it" because her course requirements in other fields made the university experience valuable. I think that had she been pursuing an MFA in graduate school, I would have been more worried by the imbalance between tuition costs and career options. Interestingly, after working for a few years first as a paralegal, and then with a non-profit working to keep young adults in school, she is now enrolled in a Masters in Art Ed program, which will include teaching certification. She kept her interest in art going during the interim years by volunteering at a program making art with under-priveledged young adults, so there is continuity to her path.

I do, however, agree with Joe and several others who question the value of a degree entirely in art or photography, and especially a graduate degree. While never intending to be a professional photographer (Rick will appreciate that my first dream was to be a professional cyclist, something for which in hindsight I have even less aptitude for than photography) I think I have learned to be a competent craftsman on my own. I have amassed quite a library of photography books, mostly monographs and a few on technique, so I can hold my own in any discussion of photo history. Thanks to workshops with Fred Picker, Sally Mann, and Bill Abranowicz, plus a lot of years with my own darkroom, I can handle the practical aspects of craft. I will never think of myself as an artist, because that requires a level of passion which I simply don't have. I think of photography is a field where the best career path is being an assistant, learning on-the-job from someone who has succeeded at it.

[koh303]

I think one thing that is missing in photography (or any art field) college program, is to ask the student what they expect to do with a degree in that field. And then said student should receive a very straightforward presentation on job prospects and earnings potential for their chosen field. This should happen in year 1, not year 4 of the program.
Why? How does that encourage anyone not to pursue a career in IT...?

(BTW - Even in the 4th year nothing like that happens in art school.)

[djdister]

(BTW - Even in the 4th year nothing like that happens in art school.)

You're right, that discussion never happened at all in school, but it should.

[koh303]

yes, but why?

[Jmarmck]

To an 18 year old, I think the point would be mute.

[mdarnton]

I think one thing that is missing in photography (or any art field) college program, is to ask the student what they expect to do with a degree in that field. And then said student should receive a very straightforward presentation on job prospects and earnings potential for their chosen field. This should happen in year 1, not year 4 of the program.
I hear that complaint constantly about the field I'm currently in. How many of the hundreds or thousands of graduating violin players will be able to get a job playing violin? Just about none. How many were told that, going in? Just about none. Why is that? Because the system exists to employ professors, not educate students, according to many of my violin professor friends, who also offer that many students are accepted who are obviously hopeless, but studio spaces need to be filled, so schools take them.

[Corran]

I hear that complaint constantly about the field I'm currently in. How many of the hundreds or thousands of graduating violin players will be able to get a job playing violin? Just about none. How many were told that, going in? Just about none. Why is that? Because the system exists to employ professors, not educate students, according to many of my violin professor friends, who also offer that many students are accepted who are obviously hopeless, but studio spaces need to be filled, so schools take them.

What's the alternative? Fire 98% of music (performance) faculty and get rid of all but 2-3 music programs across the nation, employing/educated only the cream of the cream of the crop, who go on to be pro orchestral musicians?
That's just as untenable, unfortunately. But I understand the situation. I am one of those music degree holders who ended up not being a full-time top-flight orchestral player. I'm not good enough, but I knew that going in. There are many, many other venues for me though, which is why I'm working in audio tech now, not performance, after diverting from an education career (band director).

[mdarnton]

One alternative would be honest counseling, for a start, so that people who were racking up $100,000 in student loans would be aware that they were doing it for their own entertainment, not for employability.

[jcoldslabs]

You [have] to have a good head for business as well as an outgoing personality.

I agree, but I've got neither. What I do have is a BA from a large, well regarded public university and an MFA from a smaller, lesser known institution. Fast forward to my mid-40s and the last two jobs I've had were menial, minimum wage jobs and I'm currently facing a return to the low-wage sector.

I point this out simply to illustrate that it is the person, not the education, that is the most important factor in determining future success. I've probably let more opportunities pass me by than many people get in a lifetime, but I was unable to see them as opportunities at the time. Is my schooling to blame for this? Nope. I am.

Jonathan

[Corran]

One alternative would be honest counseling, for a start, so that people who were racking up $100,000 in student loans would be aware that they were doing it for their own entertainment, not for employability.

They can start by teaching young kids not to take loans for ANY degree willy-nilly.

At 18 I knew what loans were and some fiscal responsibility...I see just as many music and art majors as IT/CS majors throwing away thousands of dollars a month on frivolity because it's "free money." Instead of taking loans I played it smart and saved/worked/etc. to pay for school (not to mention scholarships).

I think the loans are a red herring, with the real problem being fiscal knowledge / responsibility being key. No one is forced to take a college loan.

[cyrus]

I wouldn't presume to call myself a successful photographer because I'm a hobbyist but I deal with successful photographers a lot and it seems to me that the best formal education that a successful photographer should have is in basic business management - marketing, bookkeeping, etc. -- because ultimately trying to make a living as a photographer is really about running a business. The technical aspects don't require formal degrees and can be best learned by doing, and the art part can't be taught (and since art is so subjective, who can say what's art or not?) I have a friend who is sending his daughter to photography school, and looking at a min of 50K/year in college tuition bills. His daughter is 17 and has a fantasy about being a fashion photographer. I don't think the 35-year old her would be happy with the decisions the 17 year old her makes

[cowanw]

Or, how many "successful" photographers can we name that have degrees on Fine Art? Working on the presumption that money is the definition of success that Kirk is enquiring about. I.E. Making a living at it. here is the top 19.
Andreas Gursky does
Jeff Wall maybe, not sure
Peter Lik, No
Cindy Sherman, No, I think
Dmitry Medvedev, no
Richard Prince, no
Robert Mapplethorpe, yes
Ansel Adams, no
Eugène Atget, no
Weston, no
Steiglitz, no
So the answer is a definite maybe.

Or is the definition of success (earning a living) defined in a more personal manner?
A close to home example; Owning and running a Camera store for thirty years after a photography degree at Sheridan College (in Southern Ontario) is a success.
Even closer to home, my degrees are in Science and Medicine. Haven't made a penny at Photography, enjoy it immensely and consider my photographic career a great success.

[mdarnton]

I think the loans are a red herring, with the real problem being fiscal knowledge / responsibility being key. No one is forced to take a college loan.
I think your mention of loans is a red herring, given that my comment was about counseling, not loans. :-)

[rdenney]

I know a lot of people who studied music in college and do it as a hobby now. Every one of them knew the (miserable) odds of getting a performance gig going in. Buts it's what drove them, and for some it's still what drives them.

All of them manage to find their way through life, and generally more on their own terms than those who studied engineering or IT because of its job prospects but have no aptitude for it. In fact, lots of those musicians are programmers now.

Following a dream requires going all in. If it doesn't work, go all in doing something else. I had dreamed of being an architect my whole life, until I found out what being an architect was really like. I was the one who asked for drafting tools for Christmas at age 11 or so. Halfway through college, I discovered that engineers could be more like my idea of architects than were architects. So I picked up my chips and moved to a different table. I was lucky.

Nobody is unhappier, though, than a trained engineer with no aptitude for doing it well. It's is awfully hard to throw away a challenging hyper-technical degree in a well-paid profession and do something else. Most muddle along in mediocrity and spend time watching the clock.

College is a time for discovery. It's hard to do that if one goes in having been given all the answers by parents and counselors who think college should be job training.

We used to have job training and apprentice processes for those who just didn't want to do college. But the ubiquity of needing a degree has pushed those programs into community colleges that give out degrees, often with too academic an approach, for what we used to call trades. How much academic study does a commercial photographer or artist (or musician) need?

Rick "still rambling" Denney

[Tin Can]

Keep rambling Rick, you are making more sense than most!

:)

[koh303]

Instead of taking loans I played it smart and saved/worked/etc. to pay for school (not to mention scholarships).

That would have been impossible in most cases today.

[Corran]

That would have been impossible in most cases today.

Huh? I went through undergrad '04-'09 and graduate '09-'11, so yes it's possible "today" (as in, recently). I know several students in school here doing the same, or close to it.

Give me one reason it's "impossible." Heck, my student assistants now get over $7 an hour minimum - back when I was working it was still $5.15!

[Greg Miller]

You raise a number of questions which are very timely, and relate to much broader subjects than photography education. The "ranking of schools" is quite a hot topic these days, and in this ranking process, there are questions about how much the ability of the schools to place their graduates in careers in their chosen fields should count. You are probably aware that the government is considering a website ranking system which would strongly count post-graduate income and the ability to pay off college debts in the ranking. A number of educators argue that earning a living should not be the goal of a college education, but that exposing the students to the wide world (i.e. not only computer programming but also art, literature, psychology, etc.) is more important. So rather than question how others approach these questions, please give us your own answers.

Some degrees, say a law degree or an MBA, from a highly regarded school can get the student a high paying job at a prestigious company. Others, and I will suggest MFA here, maybe not so much. I think with artists, an artist's portfolio is out there for the hiring manager or client to see. It is a real-world result of what the artist is able to actually deliver. They can easily evaluate whether the art has the style that they desire, and if the artist has proven an ability to deliver. That will over-ride the value of a degree from a highly rated program. Someone coming out of law or business school many times has no real world experience and therefore has no portfolio to demonstrate their skill - so the degree takes on more importance (which I think largely comes down to the student being able to thrive in a highly competitive environment).

So ranking schools may be valuable for some degrees, but I doubt it would add much value for art degrees.

[dodphotography]

I definitely think this depends on the individual because what we deem as successful depends on each individual as well. I know of at least 5 "successful" photographers in my area who make a living selling 50 dollar prints and making calendars. That's cool... For them, but to me I'd rather gauge my eyes out then try and peddle stuff like that. School is expensive , no doubt about that... But perhaps the experience is about growing your work and evolving as an artist. Art and making money are two different games for two different types of people.

[Greg Miller]

I also think that students have to take ownership of how much money a degree will cost, and what the degree means in terms of landing a job and paying the school costs. It's just like anything else in life. Either take responsibility for your decisions, or expect the nanny state to make decisions for you. One reason a student might want a formal art program to become a better artist. Where is the student in their art maturation process and where are they trying to get? Student A might get better skills from the program; student B might not. Another student might want to get a better idea of the business side of being an artist. Student A might get that from a school program; Student B might be better off serving as an assistant to a successful artist.

[koh303]

Huh? I went through undergrad '04-'09 and graduate '09-'11, so yes it's possible "today" (as in, recently). I know several students in school here doing the same, or close to it.

Give me one reason it's "impossible." Heck, my student assistants now get over $7 an hour minimum - back when I was working it was still $5.15!

One reason is that minimum wages, even in MA, mean that a full time job does not put you over the poverty line. See Mcdonalds scheme on how to live on a full time minimum wage job and be able to pay for your bare necessities. (hint - according to them, you must have a second full time job).

One year at SMFA, SAIC, SAIF, RIT Brandies, etc. in tuition alone is $25K or more. In some cases closer to $30K. The Minimum wage in MA is $8 an hour. As i posed above at the cheapestp university in MA, the tuition is just over $10K per year. If you can work full time, study full time, and earn 30% more then minimum wages, and live and eat with your parents - maybe you could. But when will you have time to make work for class?

[Corran]

Greg has a good point. The majority of photographers running their own photographic business or trying to get hired at one of the rare staff photographer jobs, etc., are probably evaluated first and foremost by their output. Their pedigree, less so.

Let me give an anecdotal story. Two years ago I interviewed for a staff photographer position. I was offered the job but did not take it. As I found out later, I beat out the other candidates (there were 3 interviewees from the pool of applicants) solely on the merit of my portfolio of portraiture, sports, wedding, and event photography. The other applicants both had degrees in related fields (art, photojournalism) and one had 25 years of experience as a photojournalist. So not only can you have a degree and beaucoup "experience," that doesn't even guarantee anything in the photographic world.

[koh303]

I also think that students have to take ownership of how much money a degree will cost, and what the degree means in terms of landing a job and paying the school costs. It's just like anything else in life. Either take responsibility for your decisions, or expect the nanny state to make decisions for you. One reason a student might want a formal art program to become a better artist. Where is the student in their art maturation process and where are they trying to get? Student A might get better skills from the program; student B might not. Another student might want to get a better idea of the business side of being an artist. Student A might get that from a school program; Student B might be better off serving as an assistant to a successful artist.

If everyone followed this advice, there would be no students in any art school, philosophy, literature or history. And besides, who should get to decide which person should be "allowed" to study art, because he has a better prospect of making money from that degree?

[Corran]

One reason is that minimum wages, even in MA, mean that a full time job does not put you over the poverty line. See Mcdonalds scheme on how to live on a full time minimum wage job and be able to pay for your bare necessities. (hint - according to them, you must have a second full time job).

One year at SMFA, SAIC, SAIF, RIT Brandies, etc. in tuition alone is $25K or more. In some cases closer to $30K. The Minimum wage in MA is $8 an hour. As i posed above at the cheapestp university in MA, the tuition is just over $10K per year. If you can work full time, study full time, and earn 30% more then minimum wages, and live and eat with your parents - maybe you could. But when will you have time to make work for class?

You're completely ignoring scholarships, assistanceships, etc. first of all. Also, there are other grants and such that are not loans - for example, the Pell grant (I never got that though).
I personally would work 50+ hours in the summer at a decent job to amass enough money to pay for most of tuition. Cost of living I made through jobs during the school year (no, I didn't live with my parents - they were 4 hours away). I had several large scholarships as well.

The simple fact is that it CAN be done. I'm proof positive of that. Maybe it's hard. Maybe it's even unreasonable. However, it IS POSSIBLE. Furthermore, a student might work hard to pay for some/most of college, and just get a small amount of loans to cover the extra. The point is this - amassing $100,000 in student loans for a Bachelor's degree in Art is a choice, not a necessity.

[Darin Boville]

Just a correction:

Andreas Gursky does---big time--tight connection to the art school in Dusseldorf and to Hilla and Bernd Becher
Jeff Wall maybe, not sure----be sure...he is a *professor* of art. Academics love his stuff.
Peter Lik, No---what is he doing on this list????
Cindy Sherman, No, I think ---- yes, undergraduate from Buffalo. Made tight connections to New York's art scene before she became famous.
Dmitry Medvedev, no----no degree but my personal photographic hero. All of my work is inspired by his.
Richard Prince, no----don't really know how he first got recognized but I remember it happening.
Robert Mapplethorpe, yes ---- no but went to Pratt. Focused heavily on breaking into the NYC art social circle.

----Who are these guys?-----
Ansel Adams, no
Eugène Atget, no
Weston, no
Steiglitz, no


My take-a--way here is that the key isn't "education" per se but instead breaking to into the right, tiny social group. Then all boats rise together. Same with the Abstract Expressionist thing--they all seemed to know each other and all got famous together (well, sorry Barnett).

--Darin

[koh303]

You're completely ignoring scholarships, assistanceships, etc. first of all. Also, there are other grants and such that are not loans - for example, the Pell grant (I never got that though).
I personally would work 50+ hours in the summer at a decent job to amass enough money to pay for most of tuition. Cost of living I made through jobs during the school year (no, I didn't live with my parents - they were 4 hours away). I had several large scholarships as well.

The simple fact is that it CAN be done. I'm proof positive of that. Maybe it's hard. Maybe it's even unreasonable. However, it IS POSSIBLE. Furthermore, a student might work hard to pay for some/most of college, and just get a small amount of loans to cover the extra. The point is this - amassing $100,000 in student loans for a Bachelor's degree in Art is a choice, not a necessity.

If your tuition was at the 25K mark, then i salute you. If you read my overly long post above, you will read that most art schools, especially the "top rated" ones, offer none to be had, and when they do they NEVER cover tuition except in very rare cases.

[dodphotography]

MASSArt is pretty cheap though for undergrad

[koh303]

Just a correction:

Andreas Gursky does---big time--tight connection to the art school in Dusseldorf and to Hilla and Bernd Becher
Jeff Wall maybe, not sure----be sure...he is a *professor* of art. Academics love his stuff.
Peter Lik, No---what is he doing on this list????
Cindy Sherman, No, I think ---- yes, undergraduate from Buffalo. Made tight connections to New York's art scene before she became famous.
Dmitry Medvedev, no----no degree but my personal photographic hero. All of my work is inspired by his.
Richard Prince, no----don't really know how he first got recognized but I remember it happening.
Robert Mapplethorpe, yes ---- no but went to Pratt. Focused heavily on breaking into the NYC art social circle.

----Who are these guys?-----
Ansel Adams, no
Eugène Atget, no
Weston, no
Steiglitz, no


My take-a--way here is that the key isn't "education" per se but instead breaking to into the right, tiny social group. Then all boats rise together. Same with the Abstract Expressionist thing--they all seemed to know each other and all got famous together (well, sorry Barnett).

--Darin

you forgot:
bill burke, emmet gowin, henry horenstien, and all other first second and thurd RISD MFA grads, all new topographics photographers, as well as most other currently showing and selling artists.

[Corran]

If your tuition was at the 25K mark, then i salute you. If you read my overly long post above, you will read that most art schools, especially the "top rated" ones, offer none to be had, and when they do they NEVER cover tuition except in very rare cases.

"Tuition" is a nebulous thing. In-state? Out-of-state? No, my tuition was not 25k a year, but so what? Going to an overly expensive school is also a choice...in fact, I don't think ANY public school in GA is that high. I also received a complete tuition waiver in graduate school, along with a very good stipend - are you saying they don't have that in MA? Because I don't believe that. There are surely Graduate Assistants at these schools. That's the standard minimum Grad. Assistanceship.

And if I wasn't clear before, I was NOT an art student, but a music education / performance student (one BM each, and an MMP in performance). Here in GA the better music schools fight over the best and brightest coming out of the high schools, and of course part of that is scholarships and such. I can not speak to the schools in MA, of course, I can only talk about MY experience and knowledge in my area of the country. Don't forget students can go out-of-state. There are also many reciprocity agreements now across state lines for schools near the borders to attract students from just outside of the state to come to that school with cheaper "in-state" tuition rates (we here just started a program for north FL students in the Tallahassee area and such).

[Greg Miller]

If everyone followed this advice, there would be no students in any art school, philosophy, literature or history.

So what? Isn't that what you want? Matching the availability of a program to the probability of getting a job that can pay for the degree? The reality is it doesn't matter. Most people are not working in the field of their study. From an employer's standpoint, and for most jobs, the degree says one thing - the student had the perseverance to see something of reasonable difficulty through to the end.

It's still the responsibility of the student to decide how much money to invest in a degree. Nobody else. It's a great learning moment in the process of becoming a self-sufficient, high functioning adult.


And besides, who should get to decide which person should be "allowed" to study art, because he has a better prospect of making money from that degree?

I have no idea how my comments caused you to pose that question. I only discussed the decision making process of the prospective student. Nothing about the school's decision making process. Last time I checked schools accepted student base don merit (I'm ignoring some schools' decision to also make decisions on being connected to the right people, and schools accepting students to meet some diversity requirement).

[onnect17]

...
people either have talent or they dont. That is not something that can be taught. Skill, Applied art/craft sure is. Fine art - you either have it or not. Schools might help shape a vision already there, but cannot create one where non exists. In either case the school is redundant, as if there is no vision there is no need for it, if there is a vision, there is no need for it.
...


It can not be said in better words.

The sad part is that the schools could easily screen the talent but as any other business bringing the almighty dollar is above any principle.

On the other side, you can find "professors" in Harvard being paid half a million a year teaching about "the impact of rap music". I am sure many here would be shocked to know how the rest of the 40 billions endowment is being spent.

Not long ago I watched an episode of a program in CNBC were this girl was living in a trailer in the northwest purchased by the parents because she was having hard time finding a job and still she owes 100k for her MFA. Also know a relative living in NY who's background is classic guitar at college level and makes his living earning $100/hour "PhotoShop-ing" models shots.

It's part of the folklore were I was born, the advice of the parents to the teenager daughter eager to introduce the new boyfriend to the family: "as long as he's not an artist or sportsman"...

Still applies anywhere. There are more talented artists out there struggling to earn a living than mediocre engineers, architects, physicians, etc. Parents be aware.

[koh303]

So what? Isn't that what you want?

So what? i do not want to live in a world with no artists or creative people who do things for sake of bettering society.


That might be what you want. I want higher education to be free.

[Corran]

I want higher education to be free.

Would you like a unicorn with that?

[koh303]

So what? Isn't that what you want? Matching the availability of a program to the probability of getting a job that can pay for the degree? The reality is it doesn't matter. Most people are not working in the field of their study. From an employer's standpoint, and for most jobs, the degree says one thing - the student had the perseverance to see something of reasonable difficulty through to the end.

It's still the responsibility of the student to decide how much money to invest in a degree. Nobody else. It's a great learning moment in the process of becoming a self-sufficient, high functioning adult.



I have no idea how my comments caused you to pose that question. I only discussed the decision making process of the prospective student. Nothing about the school's decision making process. Last time I checked schools accepted student base don merit (I'm ignoring some schools' decision to also make decisions on being connected to the right people, and schools accepting students to meet some diversity requirement).

In the whole US - there is all but one state art school, which happens to be in MA - MassArt. And the tuition there for undergrad is fairly low. The grad program is close to 25-26K. For the most part, there are no art schools with lower tuition, and to top it off they rarely if ever offer any type of stypends and scholarships.

I can only imagine music schools are part of show biz antics, which is why the offer such terms for students. Try to do an MFA with the same practice you used, and you will soon find it is next to impossible for most.

[Corran]

I can only imagine music schools are part of show biz antics, which is why the offer such terms for students. Try to do an MFA with the same practice you used, and you will soon find it is next to impossible for most.

Try typing in proper English and I might have some clue about what you are trying to say.

[koh303]

Try typing in proper English and I might have some clue about what you are trying to say.

I am sorry if my non native english is not up to your standards.

I can only find one typo in the above post.

[Greg Miller]

In the whole US - there is all but one state art school, which happens to be in MA - MassArt. And the tuition there for undergrad is fairly low. The grad program is close to 25-26K. For the most part, there are no art schools with lower tuition, and to top it off they rarely if ever offer any type of stypends and scholarships.

I can only imagine music schools are part of show biz antics, which is why the offer such terms for students. Try to do an MFA with the same practice you used, and you will soon find it is next to impossible for most.

And yet our country is brimming with world class artists and musicians despite all that. Yes, the system must be broken.

This argument that students are unwittingly being duped into paying high fees for a degree which they will never be able to pay off is specioous at best. Where are all these people who are graduating and suddenly declaring they had no clue what their job prospects would be? Where are these people stupid enough to sign up for a high priced degree program, yet who have the uncanny ability to fake their way through the expenses for four years? Certainly no bank would be stupid enough to make loans to someone that would not have to ability to pay the loan back. If there is a problem int he system, it would be government programs that facilitate loans to students who won't be able to pay the loan off.

[Greg Miller]

That might be what you want. I want higher education to be free.

Nothing is free. To anyone who says something should be free, I promptly ask how much extra tax dollars are you personally willing to pay so someone else can get a degree. If you really feel strongly about free college level education, then you should immediately write a check, and send it to your Congressman or Senator or school of your choice, and tell them to help someone go to college with that check and the future checks you are willing to send.

[jp]

You are almost hitting it - but people either have talent or they dont.

It's certainly a controversial statement, but I agree with it and it's quite truthful, best I can tell. There are people who like to be inspirational or Malcom-Gladwell-like and say if you put enough thousands of hours into something you'll be awesome regardless of talent.

No. Some people need effort to develop their talent, but if there is no talent, it's my opinion you're headed down the wrong path.

I took piano lessons for years and could be still be humiliated by a talented six year old. I certainly appreciate music listening more as a result, but I can conclude I don't have talent in the realm of playing the piano despite my efforts. Photography on the other hand is easy and I feel it's a talent (or gift if you want to call it).

[Peter De Smidt]

... Certainly no bank would be stupid enough to make loans to someone that would not have to ability to pay the loan back...

How about the 2008 financial debacle?

[Greg Miller]

How about the 2008 financial debacle?

A great example of government programs causing businesses to do something they wouldn't normally do. It's known as the law of unexpected consequences.

[johnmsanderson]

No formal education here. Just have a serious problem where I think about photography 24/7. That said, my older sister is a huge influence on me as an artist.

[koh303]

How about the 2008 financial debacle?
Took the words right out of my mouth.


A great example of government programs causing businesses to do something they wouldn't normally do. It's known as the law of unexpected consequences.

No, its called insurance companies, credit rating companies and banks taking advantage of the system, where the person in the bottom gets hit with the bill. Government has nothing to do with this one. If anything - the revolving 10 year credit collapse bubble cycle in the US should make that clear.

[koh303]

If there is a problem int he system, it would be government programs that facilitate loans to students who won't be able to pay the loan off.
Those programmes were originally designed to enable the less fortunate (that is, people with less fortune) to be able to go to college, by any means possible.
Eventually, due to unregulated market economics, the schools profited, tuition rose to unrealistic levels, but the expectations remained the same.

In 2011 Michael moore lectured at Left forum in NYC and said that when he went to CUNY, he paid 1000$ per year, full tuition. Today its close to 16K$ (and they have a real nice photo dept BTW). But not matter how you turn it around, wages did not rise that much in that time span.

Maybe you shod watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8pjd1QEA0c

[koh303]

A great example of government programs causing businesses to do something they wouldn't normally do. It's known as the law of unexpected consequences.

What is that exactly - be greedy? I am not sure they need any government program for that.

[Greg Miller]

Took the words right out of my mouth.



No, its called insurance companies, credit rating companies and banks taking advantage of the system, where the person in the bottom gets hit with the bill. Government has nothing to do with this one. If anything - the revolving 10 year credit collapse bubble cycle in the US should make that clear.

No, its called the federal government causing banks to offer home loans to people who were not qualified. The government took the default risk away form the banks.

[koh303]

No, its called the federal government causing banks to offer home loans to people who were not qualified. The government took the default risk away form the banks.

Those banks sure had it tough and could not see it coming through the billions they made from people loosing their homes.

[Peter Lewin]

Banks are largely insulated from their loans, since rather than carry them on their books, they bundle the loans and sell them on the market. The issue is further complicated by government backing for many loans, and some question as to whether ratings agencies rate these financial instruments appropriately.

But the question KOH's desire for free higher education raises for me is whether this free education should apply equally for all degrees. I certainly want to live in a world with artists, writers, musicians, and so on, but I'm not convinced that a college degree serves a purpose in these fields, and therefore whether I as a tax payer wish to pay for them. I recognize that this approach would result that only the wealthy could afford arts degrees, but as I said, I'm not sure that society must pay for degrees in fields where an apprenticeship is probably the more appropriate training path.

[Greg Miller]

Those programmes were originally designed to enable the less fortunate (that is, people with less fortune) to be able to go to college, by any means possible.
Eventually, due to unregulated market economics, the schools profited, tuition rose to unrealistic levels, but the expectations remained the same.

In 2011 Michael moore lectured at Left forum in NYC and said that when he went to CUNY, he paid 1000$ per year, full tuition. Today its close to 16K$ (and they have a real nice photo dept BTW). But not matter how you turn it around, wages did not rise that much in that time span.

Maybe you shod watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8pjd1QEA0c

Yes, of course. Michael Moore. Any argument that relies on information from Michael Moore is a non-starter.

The bottom line is you don't want people to have to pay for education, but you are OK if other people have to pay for it for them.

But I ask again. How much extra tax dollars are you personally willing to pay to make that happen?

[Greg Miller]

Banks are largely insulated from their loans, since rather than carry them on their books, they bundle the loans and sell them on the market. The issue is further complicated by government backing for many loans, and some question as to whether ratings agencies rate these financial instruments appropriately.

But the question KOH's desire for free higher education raises for me is whether this free education should apply equally for all degrees. I certainly want to live in a world with artists, writers, musicians, and so on, but I'm not convinced that a college degree serves a purpose in these fields, and therefore whether I as a tax payer wish to pay for them. I recognize that this approach would result that only the wealthy could afford arts degrees, but as I said, I'm not sure that society must pay for degrees in fields where an apprenticeship is probably the more appropriate training path.

And there is the other issue that people don't value things for free as much as they do if they have to work hard to get them. One of my best friends received a full ride scholarship and dropped out after one semester. Really smart guy but he didn't value something he received for free. DO we really want to give away for free what people would not otherwise be willing to pay for?

[rdenney]

This thread is not about free higher education. Let's stop that right now, and step back from the brink.

Rick "who has strong opinions on the topic, but not here" Denney

[Christopher Barrett]

Personally, I've had a rather discordant path to my career. I've been a professional photographer for 20 years. I'm booking about 75 days of shooting a year and billing $3k a day. So, successful? Yeah, I reckon. And... no, I don't have a BFA in Photography. Is one necessary to make a living at this? Obviously not. Do I value education? God, yes!

Here's a summation of my winding path.

2 years liberal arts education (thought I was gonna be an English major)
2 years bartending
3 years assisting
Back to school and 2 years at SAIC
12 years shooting for a major Arch Photo Studio
6 years shooting for myself
and now... at 45, I'm back in school. I needed a handful of classes to complete my BFA and I plan to move on to my MFA at SAIC, who now offer a low-residency program. Why? Because I realized from my first stint in art school that it messed my head up just enough to really improve my work. This time around has really opened my eyes to what other artists are doing, where the medium is at and allowed me to question where my own work sits in the greater paradigm. Also, I want my work to be taken seriously by galleries and to begin teaching part-time. An MFA is the entry to all of this.

What do I take away from my experience and what would I advise others? It's all very personal. Each individual needs to figure out what they really, honestly want and expect to be able to do with their lives. You don't have to go to college to make mediocre photographs and mediocrity (with its ensuing price-point) is a pretty good market if you want to get by. If you really want to do superlative work though, work that is actually relevant to the world at hand, then I believe that an education in art history, a development of critical thinking and an ability to speak (and write) intelligently about your work (all things that are the focus of a strong fine art program) will go a long way in helping you towards your goals.

-Chris "the Pro who is rethinking and questioning EVERYTHING" Barrett

[gregmo]

Certainly no bank would be stupid enough to make loans to someone that would not have to ability to pay the loan back.

Yes, normally credit worthiness is needed to secure a loan. In the case with student loans they can't be eliminated thru bankruptcy. So banks can continue to offer a seemingly "blank check" to pay tuition. Schools can continue to increase tuition costs much higher then the rate of inflation & thus the merry-go-round goes on & on.

[cowanw]

Just a correction:

Andreas Gursky does---big time--tight connection to the art school in Dusseldorf and to Hilla and Bernd Becher
Jeff Wall maybe, not sure----be sure...he is a *professor* of art. Academics love his stuff.
Peter Lik, No---what is he doing on this list????
Cindy Sherman, No, I think ---- yes, undergraduate from Buffalo. Made tight connections to New York's art scene before she became famous.
Dmitry Medvedev, no----no degree but my personal photographic hero. All of my work is inspired by his.
Richard Prince, no----don't really know how he first got recognized but I remember it happening.
Robert Mapplethorpe, yes ---- no but went to Pratt. Focused heavily on breaking into the NYC art social circle.

----Who are these guys?-----
Ansel Adams, no
Eugène Atget, no
Weston, no
Steiglitz, no



My take-a--way here is that the key isn't "education" per se but instead breaking to into the right, tiny social group. Then all boats rise together. Same with the Abstract Expressionist thing--they all seemed to know each other and all got famous together (well, sorry Barnett).

--Darin
I took the top 19 most expensive photographs
Peter Lik is number 15
I am glad you asked why he was on the list. the meaning of success may not be money after all.
As to
----Who are these guys?-----
Ansel Adams, no
Eugène Atget, no
Weston, no
Steiglitz, no
I am not sure what to say except if you are serious google is your friend

[rdenney]

Okay, the hammer has dropped. Back to the value of arts education, not who pays for it.

Rick "please...thank you" Denney

[Jac@stafford.net]

Nothing is free. To anyone who says something should be free, I promptly ask how much extra tax dollars are you personally willing to pay so someone else can get a degree. If you really feel strongly about free college level education, then you should immediately write a check, and send it to your Congressman or Senator or school of your choice, and tell them to help someone go to college with that check and the future checks you are willing to send.

You might enjoy studying how Germany has no tuition or fees for higher education, and Germany is economically healthy. In 2006, Germany made it legal for higher ed to charge, but this year the last of the holdouts caved and the free education 'right' is back in place.

Begin here: http://thinkprogress.org/education/2014/10/01/3574551/germany-free-college-tuition/

[invisibleflash]

Personally, I've had a rather discordant path to my career. I've been a professional photographer for 20 years. I'm booking about 75 days of shooting a year and billing $3k a day. So, successful? Yeah, I reckon. And... no, I don't have a BFA in Photography. Is one necessary to make a living at this? Obviously not. Do I value education? God, yes!

Here's a summation of my winding path.

2 years liberal arts education (thought I was gonna be an English major)
2 years bartending
3 years assisting
Back to school and 2 years at SAIC
12 years shooting for a major Arch Photo Studio
6 years shooting for myself
and now... at 45, I'm back in school. I needed a handful of classes to complete my BFA and I plan to move on to my MFA at SAIC, who now offer a low-residency program. Why? Because I realized from my first stint in art school that it messed my head up just enough to really improve my work. This time around has really opened my eyes to what other artists are doing, where the medium is at and allowed me to question where my own work sits in the greater paradigm. Also, I want my work to be taken seriously by galleries and to begin teaching part-time. An MFA is the entry to all of this.

What do I take away from my experience and what would I advise others? It's all very personal. Each individual needs to figure out what they really, honestly want and expect to be able to do with their lives. You don't have to go to college to make mediocre photographs and mediocrity (with its ensuing price-point) is a pretty good market if you want to get by. If you really want to do superlative work though, work that is actually relevant to the world at hand, then I believe that an education in art history, a development of critical thinking and an ability to speak (and write) intelligently about your work (all things that are the focus of a strong fine art program) will go a long way in helping you towards your goals.

-Chris "the Pro who is rethinking and questioning EVERYTHING" Barrett

Liked your site. Nice clean work!

As far as school or not? No hard and fast rules. Nothing wrong with schooling, but if you can do it on your own then do so.

[StoneNYC]

There are numerous limited residency MFA programs designed exactly for people working. Check out SCAD, SAIC, Hartford (IMO the most interesting-designed and run by a member here.). There are probably more-those are the ones I know of personally because friends/acquaintances are involved.

Tried PMing but you're full.

You mentioned Hartford, do you mean Hartford Connecticut?

[ImSoNegative]

I am a Chef by trade, i have always loved photography, starting shooting LF several years ago, i have made some money at it, not alot but i feel like it has paid for what i have gear wise, i owe all i know about LF to various book and this forum, mostly the forum. You folks are a great resource. : )

[Kirk Gittings]

Tried PMing but you're full.

You mentioned Hartford, do you mean Hartford Connecticut?

yes http://www.hartfordphotomfa.org/

[Darin Boville]

Since we are still talking about art education let me share with you what I tell young people.

For some inexplicable reason young people ask me for advice on being an artist. (Older people, equally inexplicably, ask me for advice on what camera to buy...).

Sometimes the person is already in art school. Here is what I tell them.

Quit now. Do something else, something more valuable to society. There is still time. Stay interested in art, maybe dabble in it, but quit. Quit today. Figure out something better for your life, some other way to leave your mark in the world. I tell them to imagine one of their large lecture hall classes. And then imagine how many of those people will still be doing art five years after graduation. Not many. And of those that do most will be doing so as a result of spouse money or trust funds. So very few will earn even a meager living doing what they want to do. So why not recognize that now and do something better? Better for you?

A surprising number of young people who hear this seem jazzed as a result. It could be they like the message or maybe they just like hearing me talk (I deliver these lines looking them straight in the eye and with passion in my voice and manner--this could be the first time anyone in their life has taken them seriously as an artist and been interested, really interested, in *them.* Or maybe there are a lot of people in art programs who are just looking for an honorable way out.

I give them a second to ponder what I've said and then I give them the bumper sticker:

If you *want* to make art, then quit. If you *have to* make art then nothing I or anyone else says really matters. You'll do it anyways.

I'm not talking about shooting any sort of commercial work or trade here, I'm talking only about those who dream of being serious artists.

You should hear my advice on what camera to buy... :)

--Darin

[Kodachrome25]

I'm not talking about shooting any sort of commercial work or trade here, I'm talking only about those who dream of being serious artists.

Funny thing is...I would have never been able to do the latter if I did not love to do the former just as much. It's pretty clear to me now that if I had chosen a different path in life as a career, I would have never had the creative freedom I did along the way and certainly not the amount I do now.

I suppose that is a metric of success too, freedom to create.

[Darin Boville]

I suppose that is a metric of success too, freedom to create.

That would be an excellent metric...

--Darin

[Tin Can]

I suppose that is a metric of success too, freedom to create.

Yes. I worked 50 years so I can now do what I want. I call that creative freedom.

And priceless.

The only good advice my father ever gave me was, 'Retire young.'

[Tin Can]

This popped up (http://hyperallergic.com/156068/indicting-higher-education-in-the-arts-and-beyond/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Indicting+Higher+Education+in+the+Arts+and+Beyond&utm_content=Indicting+Higher+Education+in+the+Arts+and+Beyond+CID_9ef2df799a4e7293a0b92295725dbba6&utm_source=HyperallergicNewsletter&utm_term=Indicting%20Higher%20Education%20in%20the%20Arts%20and%20Beyond) in my email today. Very on topic I believe.

[onnect17]

This popped up (http://hyperallergic.com/156068/indicting-higher-education-in-the-arts-and-beyond/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Indicting+Higher+Education+in+the+Arts+and+Beyond&utm_content=Indicting+Higher+Education+in+the+Arts+and+Beyond+CID_9ef2df799a4e7293a0b92295725dbba6&utm_source=HyperallergicNewsletter&utm_term=Indicting%20Higher%20Education%20in%20the%20Arts%20and%20Beyond) in my email today. Very on topic I believe.



Great link. Thanks! Right on target.

[gregmo]

Randy, thanks for the link.

Here is another article on a recent tax court ruling in artists favor:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/arts/design/tax-court-ruling-is-seen-as-a-victory-for-artists.html?_r=2

[StoneNYC]

yes http://www.hartfordphotomfa.org/

Wow I never thought of Hartford as a place for art, just a place to get shot over $3... It's worse than Bridgeport, CT (where I grew up).

Well, when I hopefully graduate I hope it's still around and maybe I'll go after that. I'm told by my professor that a few schools are working ok a Doctorate program in Photography since there currently isn't one...

[Tin Can]

Randy, thanks for the link.

Here is another article on a recent tax court ruling in artists favor:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/arts/design/tax-court-ruling-is-seen-as-a-victory-for-artists.html?_r=2

Yes, that ruling is great news. I saw it last week. My accountant would never let me run my 'hobby' as a business and yearly told me, no way.

She was usually great, but went too far making me pay back 'use' tax on all thing purchased out of state and online. She figured it was cheap insurance paying the relatively small amounts, rather than face an audit. I agreed and paid. Of course she also billed me for each revised tax return. The last year she worked for me, she revised my income taxes 4 times in one year. Sure glad that's over...

[gregmo]

Glad I don't have to pay an accountant. My father was a special agent for the IRS (now retired) and puts them together for me. For the last 15 years, I've just wrapped all my income from various sources into a schedule c.

[Tin Can]

Glad I don't have to pay an accountant. My father was a special agent for the IRS (now retired) and puts them together for me. For the last 15 years, I've just wrapped all my income from various sources into a schedule c.

I found my accountant usually saved me a bit of cake, over my DIY accounting methods.

She was worth it. I recommend her to many people, almost as much as I recommend therapy to people...

[Peter Lewin]

The tax article is interesting, although again a bit off-topic (the moderators are watching!). I wonder how wide the impact of the ruling will be, since the artist in question has works in major museum collections, and total sales over $600,000. There are "hobbies" and then there are "HOBBIES."

But Stone NYC's post caught my eye. Would you be willing to say a little about the degree you are working on, since you mention graduating and one of your professors? I know you received a lot of (sometimes conflicting) advice on APUG, and I'm interested in your final decision. I'm also interested in your professor's thoughts about that Doctorate in Art degree, since many in this thread have even questioned the real value of an MFA.

[jnantz]

yes http://www.hartfordphotomfa.org/

their mfa program ( i am not sure about how long they have had it in photography )
has been strong for decades. i had a teacher who graduated with a degree in sculpture from there
that he got in the 1970s ( guessing ) ...

[Kirk Gittings]

I found my accountant usually saved me a bit of cake, over my DIY accounting methods.

She was worth it. I recommend her to many people, almost as much as I recommend therapy to people...

:)

[Kirk Gittings]

their mfa program ( i am not sure about how long they have had it in photography )
has been strong for decades. i had a teacher who graduated with a degree in sculpture from there
that he got in the 1970s ( guessing ) ...

I don't know about their regular photo program. Their limited residency MFA I think is just 3 years old and has gained a lot of positive notoriety in that short time because of the subsequent success their students.

[tgtaylor]

Looking over the curriculum posted a lot of it is elementary from my viewpoint. Will they allow you to challenge the coursework? My college degree was in mathematics and they would allow you to challenge a course but you better really know it.

Thomas

[koh303]

I don't know about their regular photo program. Their limited residency MFA I think is just 3 years old and has gained a lot of positive notoriety in that short time because of the subsequent success their students.
Names?

[Tin Can]

Names?

Really, are you joking? You of all people want names!

[tgtaylor]

On the schools website there are links to students currently in their first and second as well as alumni. I arbitrarily clicked on a second year student and an alumni and went to their webpages and found essentially just snapshots. Finding a subject that is worthy of having its picture taken is not easy and IMO the hardest part of photography. AA wrote "If you (find) one a month you're doing good."

Thomas

[jnantz]

Looking over the curriculum posted a lot of it is elementary from my viewpoint. Will they allow you to challenge the coursework? My college degree was in mathematics and they would allow you to challenge a course but you better really know it.

Thomas

hi thomas

i know what you mean.
i didn't challenge the coursework where i went
(pre-architectural major photography minor )
but they ran out of courses
so i designed my own classes for a year ...

[djdister]

Looking over the curriculum posted a lot of it is elementary from my viewpoint. Will they allow you to challenge the coursework? My college degree was in mathematics and they would allow you to challenge a course but you better really know it.

Thomas

Rather than elementary, I think their curriculum is somewhat vague, which can be okay. If they allow the student to use a vague concept as a springboard towards pursuing their own idea, then that's even better. I did notice a strong theme of creating a photo book, which may or may not be one's cup of tea.

[DrTang]

I would bet Cindy Sherman does

maybe she quit before graduating..but I bet she was in a program


Or, how many "successful" photographers can we name that have degrees on Fine Art? Working on the presumption that money is the definition of success that Kirk is enquiring about. I.E. Making a living at it. here is the top 19.
Andreas Gursky does
Jeff Wall maybe, not sure
Peter Lik, No
Cindy Sherman, No, I think
Dmitry Medvedev, no
Richard Prince, no
Robert Mapplethorpe, yes
Ansel Adams, no
Eugène Atget, no
Weston, no
Steiglitz, no
So the answer is a definite maybe.

Or is the definition of success (earning a living) defined in a more personal manner?
A close to home example; Owning and running a Camera store for thirty years after a photography degree at Sheridan College (in Southern Ontario) is a success.
Even closer to home, my degrees are in Science and Medicine. Haven't made a penny at Photography, enjoy it immensely and consider my photographic career a great success.

[Kirk Gittings]

If anyone wants to know more about the success of the Hartford program (or more info) they should email the director. I had dinner with him a few months ago out his way in the Catskills and he ran through the list-good shows at good institutions plus a few got books published. I (and he) thought it was was pretty impressive for a bunch of new grads, but I didn't bother trying memorize them or their accomplishments-no room on my mental hard drive-nor does it have any import in my life :). There has been a fair amount of buzz about it for a couple of years amongst people "in the biz", which is why I was looking forward to talking with the director. Here is one I remembered from a lunch with the writer: http://www.fractionmagazine.com/issue-65

[DrTang]

POIFECT Timing!


http://petapixel.com/2014/10/22/advice-aspiring-full-time-photographers/

[koh303]

Looking over the curriculum posted a lot of it is elementary from my viewpoint. Will they allow you to challenge the coursework? My college degree was in mathematics and they would allow you to challenge a course but you better really know it.

Thomas



I had the pleasure of studying with a professor who is now one of their "senior" lecturers. Lost of big names on their roster, which is why they can charge the big bucks. For that much money you can do whatever you want as a student. Challenge the course structure? Make awful work, or none at all, and be told you are great? Limited residency...? no worries.

I had the chance to spend 2 days sitting next their table at the previous SPE conference, and hearing what they are selling, seems like a great way to sell MFA in photo to many an upper class mid lifers who have lots of cash to burn but do not have the time to actually spend on going to school full time (or do not want to for any reason). This is the best of all worlds - pay big money, say you studied with famous magnum photographers, and other big names to be dropped, and never had to loose a good nights sleep in the burbs to do it, and have the real McCoy paper to show for it! Now, who would not want to do that?

[Tin Can]

I see Jesus just left Chicago.

That's a song most of us know.

[Kirk Gittings]

http://hyperallergic.com/156068/indicting-higher-education-in-the-arts-and-beyond/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Indicting+Higher+Education+in+the+Arts+and+Beyond&utm_content=Indicting+Higher+Education+in+the+Arts+and+Beyond+CID_9ef2df799a4e7293a0b92295725dbba6&utm_source=HyperallergicNewsletter&utm_term=Indicting%20Higher%20Education%20in%20the%20Arts%20and%20Beyond

Going back to this study. It is consistent with a study that was done by the San Francisco Institute of Art (if I remember correctly) some 20-25 years ago. They did a follow up study of their MFA graduates and looking at them 10 years down the road-only some 11% were working in the arena they got their degree in (again if I remember right). I remember there was a lot of discussion about it at the time at UNM and SAIC. So this study reaffirmed a scenario that was widely known in Art Academia. I remember wondering how many history/sociology/biology etc graduates ended up working in such disciplines. Art as a career has never been for the faint of heart. You want security from your education investment/ do what my girls did, one is a doctor of physical therapy and one is a nurse practitioner. I think ANYONE who manages to make a living in the arts at any level has done something extraordinary.

[Greg Miller]

I had the chance to spend 2 days sitting next their table at the previous SPE conference, and hearing what they are selling, seems like a great way to sell MFA in photo to many an upper class mid lifers who have lots of cash to burn but do not have the time to actually spend on going to school full time (or do not want to for any reason). This is the best of all worlds - pay big money, say you studied with famous magnum photographers, and other big names to be dropped, and never had to loose a good nights sleep in the burbs to do it, and have the real McCoy paper to show for it! Now, who would not want to do that?

Sounds like an interesting business model. Open an accredited degree program but not actually teach anything. Target a niche of upper class mid-lifers who were smart enough to amass a small fortune to afford a high price degree program to participate in during their their abundance of free time, but not smart enough to realize that the degree program somehow faked their way through the accreditation program and did not manage to educate them whatsoever. And not smart enough to sue when one of their smarter friends informs them they've been duped. That target niche must be at least 50 to 100 people.

Perhaps you can point me to the legions of former students who are complaining about this sham. Somehow I seem to have missed them. Maybe 60 minutes would be interested in doing a segment about this sham. We need to protect these people from themselves.

[Greg Miller]

http://hyperallergic.com/156068/indicting-higher-education-in-the-arts-and-beyond/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Indicting+Higher+Education+in+the+Arts+and+Beyond&utm_content=Indicting+Higher+Education+in+the+Arts+and+Beyond+CID_9ef2df799a4e7293a0b92295725dbba6&utm_source=HyperallergicNewsletter&utm_term=Indicting%20Higher%20Education%20in%20the%20Arts%20and%20Beyond

They did a follow up study of their MFA graduates and looking at them 10 years down the road-only some 11% were working in the arena they got their degree in (again if I remember right).

It would be interesting to know the % for all degrees. I'm thinking 11% would not be too different than any degree. Most people switch careers 2 or 3 times in their lifetime. So I bet around retirement age, very few people have a job related to their field of study.

[Peter Lewin]

POIFECT Timing!
http://petapixel.com/2014/10/22/advice-aspiring-full-time-photographers/

Interesting that the author, Mr. Kim, sees little future for photographers, but a large market for running photography workshops. I have trouble following that logic, but that's only me. For those who don't like to follow links in articles, I've excerpted the portion which relates most directly to this thread. In Mr. Kim's opinion:

"Don’t go to photography school.

I think one of the biggest pieces of advice I would give to people is to avoid going to photography school. Based on all the photographers I have met, almost all of them regret going to photography school. Why? They go into massive amounts of debt ($200,000+) and all of the technical things they could have learned via the internet. In terms of mentorship, they could have been an assistant to a working photographer, or read loads of photography-books (and perhaps even took workshops instead).

Going into debt is one of the worst things you can do to yourself. It makes you a slave — and the stress of debt is one of the worst things you can do for your creativity."

[Tin Can]

Yes, instead pay me (him) for a workshop...

[StoneNYC]

The tax article is interesting, although again a bit off-topic (the moderators are watching!). I wonder how wide the impact of the ruling will be, since the artist in question has works in major museum collections, and total sales over $600,000. There are "hobbies" and then there are "HOBBIES."

But Stone NYC's post caught my eye. Would you be willing to say a little about the degree you are working on, since you mention graduating and one of your professors? I know you received a lot of (sometimes conflicting) advice on APUG, and I'm interested in your final decision. I'm also interested in your professor's thoughts about that Doctorate in Art degree, since many in this thread have even questioned the real value of an MFA.

I don't have class with the professor who told me about the doctorate program he is working on designing, and or helping with, until next week.

He also teaches at a school in New York city, and that's where he's helping with that, not at my school. but he did say that the college he's at isn't the only one working on a doctorate program for photography.

As far as the my degree, right now I'm going for an AFA entirety, but the way the school is designed, the BFA is simply a continuation of that, so if I should choose to, I can simply continue going after the AFA and take more classes to get my BFA.

I'm not sure exactly what more you want to know. I can't find the current class list but the one from last year is here...

AFA

123750

BFA

123751

Course descriptions

123752
123753

[StoneNYC]

Courses (cont)

123754
123755
123756

That should be more than enough to satisfy the curiosity here.

[Jim Galli]

Back to the original question; Dumb Luck. Some intelligence. Some natural talent. Right place at the right time.

I understood what a Nikon with prime lenses, a tripod, and Velvia could do, and I milked it a bit. Nevada was a good state for that. The ratio of art wannabe's and people doing anything worthwhile is in your favor here.

As a young dad committed to my marriage and raising a family, college was never an option. I eventually stumbled into a government testing range as an electrician, and had exactly what they needed to make high speed movies of test objects in flight. I pushed 400 ASA Ektachrome to it's very limit, and have seen the range through from film to digital.

So, I make a decent living in photo-metrics. No art involved. Yes, I still make artistic images, but have no heart or desire to self promote or sell anything. I guess you could say at work I make a living making 4000 pictures in a second, and at play I make 1 picture in 4000 seconds.

[Tin Can]

Back to the original question; Dumb Luck. Some intelligence. Some natural talent. Right place at the right time.

I understood what a Nikon with prime lenses, a tripod, and Velvia could do, and I milked it a bit. Nevada was a good state for that. The ratio of art wannabe's and people doing anything worthwhile is in your favor here.

As a young dad committed to my marriage and raising a family, college was never an option. I eventually stumbled into a government testing range as an electrician, and had exactly what they needed to make high speed movies of test objects in flight. I pushed 400 ASA Ektachrome to it's very limit, and have seen the range through from film to digital.

So, I make a decent living in photo-metrics. No art involved. Yes, I still make artistic images, but have no heart or desire to self promote or sell anything. I guess you could say at work I make a living making 4000 pictures in a second, and at play I make 1 picture in 4000 seconds.

Jim, I totally agree with luck, placement and affinity.

Now we know how you afford your hobby.

I, as a fellow hobbyist, admire avid hobbyists and used that as a criterion in hiring lab personnel at the factory. If they had a serious hobby that required skill, innovation and mechanical prowess, they got hired, and worked out well. I found racers, mechanics that worked for book rate and most existing lab techs just too anxious or dull and had no ability to pursue the daily drudgery of precision lab testing. We also needed extreme fabrication skills and often encouraged 'govt work' as a way to increase skill levels during slack times. If we were simply waiting for a endurance test to complete, I would assign project time, for projects that looked like they belonged in our lab. The projects got pretty intense and hiding large ones in plain site a daily adventure.

Actually the entire engineering department did this on a large scale.

I made 'art'.

[Jac@stafford.net]

Back to the original question; Dumb Luck. Some intelligence. Some natural talent. Right place at the right time.

I appreciate that, and thank you for breaking the ice. I grew up with parents who raised their lives as first generation Americans from the labor pool. My father's success was intimidating to me. One, day in my teens I asked him how he got into his career track and he replied, "They liked my suit, Irish accent, education and I am a good speaker." He was also bright.

When I left military service after four years I lived in the city of Chicago during the years from the Chicago Democratic Convention riots, the Days of Rage, and I did the newsy street photography I had learned on my own. I was stone poor and in distress then got lucky. My portfolio got me a job as a daily newspaper photographer. Luck, somewhat because I was there and besides, not many young people wanted to do that kind of work. (If nobody was shooting at me, I was just fine.) Even though newspapers were failing at an alarming rate, for some reason editors liked me and I moved through a few staff positions to director. I went freelance and to a part-time magazine editor position and found that people liked me and hired me repeatedly. It is often not how talented you are, but how well you work with clients that matters.

College? Yes, on and off as I could. I was supporting others. Study, work, and family limited scholarship. Eventually I was making amazing money but I eventually burned out, and just plain quit and moved to the rural Midwest, worked as a steel fabricator, construction, and lucked out again when I took a low-pay position as a computer programmer for a prestigious private college. To my surprise I found I was a natural programmer, and I loved the college for its opportunities to audit classes for free. I moved from a couple colleges to industry, then back to university positions as director, analyst and R&D where I had more high-tech toys than I could use.

Higher education has been enormously valuable because I considered an eclectic, no-path, no-goal approach which I recommend to anyone who wants to stay out of a killer rut, to remain fresh and in-touch with the integration of disciplines.

Because a person does not take the strict, linear college route all-at-once does not mean he will not benefit by just farting around in diverse educational opportunities for the rest of his life. I recommend the same to young students today who, by the way, believe they will have several careers anyway. It seems to work. Life is good.

The photography, graphic design and art students I encountered generally were clueless of the realities of life, the daunting issues of working in the field, but that is true for most young people. Acceptance of that fact rather than railing against the reality is part of living well. The best, most accomplished professional artist and professor I know is a hyper-critical miserable SOB who won't recant or retire.

Long winded. Sorry. Too little sleep, too much coffee. :)
.

[Kirk Gittings]

dumb luckJim Galli


Chance favors the prepared mindLouie Pastuer

and:

It is often not how talented you are, but how well you work with clients that matters. Jac Stafford

I very much agree with that and would add how hard you work.

[Kodachrome25]

I just had a fond memory of one of my most revered mentors (http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/George-Hall-pioneering-photographer-of-jet-2498487.php) regarding formal education in photography. He was the one who I asked if I could help carry his gear around and he reviewed my work and said no, I need to help him shoot the book he was working on of which I ended up splitting the title. The memory I had was when I told him I wanted to attend Brooks Institute...he said don't bother, just get to work...it's all about the work you do. I wondered if he was merely saying that because he knew I could not afford it.

He then assigned me to shoot some in flight shots of aircraft, with a catch: I had to get "Back Seat" qualified which required me to endure the "Dilbert Dunker" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_Dunker). When I asked him why on earth did I need to do that, he replied "Because you are going flying in an F-18!"

So I did....I passed on Brooks, got dunked and got to work. The path matters, it's your journey in life and no destination is is worth a damn if you did not grow along it and personalize the path in which you took to get there. I guess that is why I love shooting film, it's now a "different" path...

Respectfully and in conclusion,

Dan

123797

[Kirk Gittings]

So I did....I passed on Brooks, got dunked and got to work. The path matters, it's your journey in life and no destination is is worth a damn if you did not grow along the path in which you took to get there. I guess that is why I love shooting film, it's now a "different" path...

Respectfully,

Dan

123797

Film is now very much an "alternative" process and is now more unique and has more juice than when everyone did it.

[StoneNYC]

I just had a fond memory of one of my most revered mentors (http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/George-Hall-pioneering-photographer-of-jet-2498487.php) regarding formal education in photography. He was the one who I asked if I could help carry his gear around and he reviewed my work and said no, I need to help him shoot the book he was working on of which I ended up splitting the title. The memory I had was when I told him I wanted to attend Brooks Institute...he said don't bother, just get to work...it's all about the work you do. I wondered if he was merely saying that because he knew I could not afford it.

He then assigned me to shoot some in flight shots of aircraft, with a catch: I had to get "Back Seat" qualified which required me to endure the "Dilbert Dunker" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_Dunker). When I asked him why on earth did I need to do that, he replied "Because you are going flying in an F-18!"

So I did....I passed on Brooks, got dunked and got to work. The path matters, it's your journey in life and no destination is is worth a damn if you did not grow along it and personalize the path in which you took to get there. I guess that is why I love shooting film, it's now a "different" path...

Respectfully and in conclusion,

Dan

123797

Kodachrome?

[Kodachrome25]

Kodachrome?

Word.

[Greg Miller]

I just had a fond memory of one of my most revered mentors (http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/George-Hall-pioneering-photographer-of-jet-2498487.php) regarding formal education in photography. He was the one who I asked if I could help carry his gear around and he reviewed my work and said no, I need to help him shoot the book he was working on of which I ended up splitting the title. The memory I had was when I told him I wanted to attend Brooks Institute...he said don't bother, just get to work...it's all about the work you do. I wondered if he was merely saying that because he knew I could not afford it.

He then assigned me to shoot some in flight shots of aircraft, with a catch: I had to get "Back Seat" qualified which required me to endure the "Dilbert Dunker" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_Dunker). When I asked him why on earth did I need to do that, he replied "Because you are going flying in an F-18!"

Interestingly, Brooks is the only photography institute, that I am aware of, that has actually been sued for painting unrealistic picture about job prospects for graduates. i could be wrong but I think that suit was struggling, and ended up being settled out of court (which usually means neither side wanted to continue forking out big bucks to their legal team to continue for an uncertain outcome).

So I did....I passed on Brooks, got dunked and got to work. The path matters, it's your journey in life and no destination is is worth a damn if you did not grow along it and personalize the path in which you took to get there. I guess that is why I love shooting film, it's now a "different" path...

Respectfully and in conclusion,

Dan

123797

[Kirk Gittings]

Interestingly, Brooks is the only photography institute, that I am aware of, that has actually been sued for painting unrealistic picture about job prospects for graduates. i could be wrong but I think that suit was struggling, and ended up being settled out of court (which usually means neither side wanted to continue forking out big bucks to their legal team to continue for an uncertain outcome).

I believe that the "Art Institute" chain (not to be confused with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago or the San Francisco Art Institute) have been sued for the same.

[Greg Miller]

I believe that the "Art Institute" chain (not to be confused with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago or the San Francisco Art Institute) have been sued for the same.

Thanks for mentioning them.. I had never heard of them. Judging from their web site, I'm guessing their tuition is wee bit less than Brooks ;)

[Kirk Gittings]

FWIW, Here are the only college rankings that I'm aware schools pay attention to. These are from 2012. There is a lot of effort put into these so they are not done every year.

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-fine-arts-schools/photography-rankings?int=9a8908

Having taught at two of the top 5 (UNM and SAIC and one that is not even on the ranking horizon SFUAD), I can tell you that no school is perfect by any stretch of the imagination and that small schools unpretentious schools have some unique strengths-like more personal attention.

[koh303]

Here are the only college rankings that I'm aware schools pay attention to.

When or how exactly do said school pay attention to this list outside of marketing or PR?

As this thread has turned into a self congratulatory orgy of rags to upper middle class by nothing more then shear will, perhaps i can add something more to re ground this discussion:

1. At many top tear schools, on the above list, or other "best top 5 MFA photo depts in the US" lists, of which there are many with only slight variations, many students are advised day and night about those lists, and their self importance due to the placement of their respective school on those lists, which often leads to somewhat of over self importance in relation to the world in general (especially in photo depts, which tend to be the smallest, and sometimes underfunded/staffed/houred). The effects of this can be seen in how the soon to graduate BFA students prepare their next steps. Of those who want to continue onto an MFA program, many will apply to only one school, which is similarly placed on the above lists, with the expectation, that as soon as they graduate, and step out their top 5 BFA school, there will be a limo driver holding up a sign with their name, smiling, holding the door open to a car with a YALE MFA logo on the side, and on a small LCD inside a video of a warm welcome form Phillip Lorca diCorcia saying "we have been waiting just for you to graduate!" Needless to say, many are not accepted and the dream is crushed right then and there, and the coin of reality then drops - going to a top tear school does not really mean a thing outside of that school's PR system. No doors were opened, no meaningful contact were made, and the ultimate realization, that most MFA programs rarely accept students fresh out of BFA (usually not more then 1 per year), as MFA, especially in photo, is for mid career/ "working" artists who have or have access to lots of money (with or without loans/grants the actual out of pocket cost is high).
For reference, i applied to 6 "top 5 MFA schools" (go figure) schools and was accepted to 3, as was advised to me by a few professors.

2. The last sentence above brings me to the second point - each MFA application costs hundreds of dollars. Even schools where tuition is very low such as UNM and MassART, have expensive and non refundable application fees. When i applied the cost, along with slides/portfolio and express signature shipments, was in excess of 2500$. There is no loan or grant for this particular step in the game.

3. The selection process of MFA programs (as far as i have seen in 3 different schools), is reduced to something almost comical, that puts "stars born to sing" type shows to shame. In essence, the level of work or previous level of education of the applicants is mostly irrelevant. I sometimes felt like the most important part was weather or not an applicant could actually afford his tuition in a way that would allow him to actually attend the program. This leads to funny situations like the one i had with my first year MFA peers - of 7 (not including me), only 3 had BFA's, of those only 2 in photo. The other 4 had totally unrelated Bachelor degrees, in fields from biology to literature and theater, and had zero previous photo education. This often led to some silly crit discussions, which in a way were exactly the same as a BFA photo I class, as the level of discussion is limited by the level of the lowest common denominator, which was, well, zero knowledge in art history/photo history/etc.

4. Due to the above point, the level of academics one can expect from an MFA, is actually much lower then that of a BFA, where most people are invested in a 4 year program in a specific field, and devote themselves to that aspect of study, where as in MFA, a lot is ASSumed, taken for granted, and overlooked so that those who can pay, but do not have the prerequisite knowledge can also play.

[Corran]

...of 7 (not including me), only 3 had BFA's, of those only 2 in photo.

That shouldn't matter. If they couldn't hack it they should have to take a remedial Art/Photo History course.
(This is standard practice for graduate-level Music degrees. Many have to take remedial history or theory courses if they aren't up to snuff.)

[Peter Collins]

I got into photography in seventh grade because my Dad was into it. I had a Ricoh rangefinder. I remember sending off my 35mm film for development, and when I got the small prints back, he said, "You should throw at least 25% away." He had no darkroom, but photofinishers were common and near.

Fast forward to my 25th year: A friend, working with a Canon copy of a Leica III, got me going, and the camera was a Honeywell Spotmatic. From him I learned the rudiments of printing in the makeshift darkroom in his basement.

Then, later in the same year, I went to a nearby town with him, his wife, and my wife to see Ansel Adams photographs exhibited at a private gallery. I knew then that A.A. had written some books, and that some of A.A.'s work had been made into posters. But what I saw in the silver print that night grabbed me for good. Completely.

I had a year or two with a Hassie, but sold it to by a view camera--an Arca Swiss. By this time I was trying to decipher A.A.'s first set of slim volumes, and it was tough. I really didn't get it. But then I met Howard Bond at an Ann Arbor art fair, and saw that he had the same technical mastery of the medium that A.A. showed in his prints. So, I took an evening course with Howard and struggled through the Zone System. Doing it finally made it sink in. And in the summer of '74 I went with him and some other students to Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario, and we photographed and talked about photography.

I worked at being a better artist and better printer until daughter #2 came along. Two years later, dealing with work and children, I sold all my LF gear and darkroom equipment. (And I sold my two beehives and beekeeping equipment.) There just wasn't time.

Two years ago I retired, and I now have time for photography. I now can understand A.A.'s three-volume set: Camera, Negative, Print. However, since daughter #2 ('84), a lot of the materials I worked with have disappeared and new ways of printing (e.g., VC illumination) are on the scene. So, I am re-learning and re-experiencing aspects of the craft I once knew.

And enjoying it. And, at 69 years old, sometimes a little intimidated by it!

To sum up, I owe to my Dad, to Paul with the Canon copy of the Leica, and Howard Bond. And I try to learn from every BW silver print I see.

[Darin Boville]

By this time I was trying to decipher A.A.'s first set of slim volumes, and it was tough. I really didn't get it.

I think the versions of the books you had then are almost indecipherable. :)

--Darin

[Tin Can]

So purveyor of plastic widgets undefines success and rails at working stiffs as upper middle class.

Popularity zooms into focus.

Walls of words, best comment this week.

[koh303]

That shouldn't matter. If they couldn't hack it they should have to take a remedial Art/Photo History course.
(This is standard practice for graduate-level Music degrees. Many have to take remedial history or theory courses if they aren't up to snuff.)
When yo pay that much for what is ultimately a useless product, no one can make you do anything, especially not tell you that you are behind/not well versed enough/etc., so much so that you need to take some basic classes in________ (fill in the blank).

[Corran]

a useless product

In your opinion.
Maybe you should stop espousing your opinions and biases as FACT?

[Kirk Gittings]

I think the versions of the books you had then are almost indecipherable. :)

--Darin

me too :) same with the Minor White book. It took for the Zone VI book coming out and working the tests till I got it.

[Greg Miller]

At many top tear schools, on the above list, or other "best top 5 MFA photo depts in the US" lists, of which there are many with only slight variations, many students are advised day and night about those lists, and their self importance due to the placement of their respective school on those lists, which often leads to somewhat of over self importance in relation to the world in general (especially in photo depts, which tend to be the smallest, and sometimes underfunded/staffed/houred).

And these top 5 schools make it to their position on the list how? By their tremendous deceitful marketung tactics and lies? Not because of the success of their graduates or the ratings provided by their students?

[Kirk Gittings]

Greg as I understand the process for these ratings, they are largely based on polling graduates and faculty at schools across the country.

[Greg Miller]

2. The last sentence above brings me to the second point - each MFA application costs hundreds of dollars.

And they can do this because why? Perhaps because demand is greater than supply. When schools apply a fee to an application, that, in part, is done to keep people who know they are not qualified from applying. Which leads to lower costs of processing the applications. yes, there is a cost to the school for processing applications.

[Greg Miller]

Greg as I understand the process for these ratings, they are largely based on polling graduates and faculty at schools across the country.

Yes, that's what I expected. Mr. Koh303 seems to think they magically end up on top of the list through some dark magic.

[Greg Miller]

3. The selection process of MFA programs (as far as i have seen in 3 different schools), is reduced to something almost comical, that puts "stars born to sing" type shows to shame.

And somehow these schools accept low qualified students and bypass more qualified students because why? Isn;t it in their best interest to take the most qualified students so that they can keep their top 5 rating?

[Kirk Gittings]

SAIC application costs. Domestic application fee: $80, International application fee: $100-seems a tad higher than some schools that are like $60 and $80.

[Greg Miller]

4. Due to the above point, the level of academics one can expect from an MFA, is actually much lower then that of a BFA, where most people are invested in a 4 year program in a specific field, and devote themselves to that aspect of study, where as in MFA, a lot is ASSumed, taken for granted, and overlooked so that those who can pay, but do not have the prerequisite knowledge can also play.


And yet people still pay money to apply to these program? And more money to attend? And sweat their Masters Thesis? Because why? Their willing to accept a lower standard of education then their BFA simply for a piece of paper that shows they graduated form a top school. And according to you they'll never be able to re-compensate themselves for all that expense.

Wow, we really do need to protect these otherwise intelligent people from themselves.

[koh303]

And yet people still pay money to apply to these program? And more money to attend? And sweat their Masters Thesis? Because why? Their willing to accept a lower standard of education then their BFA simply for a piece of paper that shows they graduated form a top school. And according to you they'll never be able to re-compensate themselves for all that expense.

The MFA in Photo is a terminal degree, which is required in order to teach at a college level.
I have yet to see someone "sweat" their MFA thesis paper. The thesis shows sure "sweat" some cash towards massive prints and elaborate presentation, but the academics behind it are not close to what a liberal arts or exact science masters thesis would be. The minimum requirements, are set at art student levels.

[StoneNYC]

The MFA in Photo is a terminal degree, which is required in order to teach at a college level.
I have yet to see someone "sweat" their MFA thesis paper. The thesis shows sure "sweat" some cash towards massive prints and elaborate presentation, but the academics behind it are not close to what a liberal arts or exact science masters thesis would be. The minimum requirements, are set at art student levels.

And if you were getting a masters in engineering you wouldn't simply need to write about the engineering you have to design and implement the design in practice. It's the same with photo, describing the process in a paper is all well and good but you need to PRODUCE something.

[Kirk Gittings]

I sweated bullets over my written thesis, but neither I nor anyone else in my program had any illusions about how it compared to what an art historian might write for their masters. But nor was the intent comparable. The thesis exhibition was overwhelmingly the main effort for the MFA as it should be.

[Tin Can]

Ok, time to jump in.

On that other thread about the 'Master', I told my education history, well only the later years. No point in repeating that.

I didn't study photography at SAIC, and as they don't issue MFA in any particular field, you graduate with nice paper and do any damn thing you please. Before, during and after. As it should be.

I made various art works, but my final project in 2001 'Master's Thesis' was about student loans and the high cost of advanced degrees. I made websites, advertised in art mags, and SAIC student newspaper. Hung signage on walls. On location, at the 847 Jackson SAIC MFA exhibition, I conducted video interviews with 100's of graduates, professors and just people walking by. Everybody wanted to get into my AirStream trailer parked outside downtown for 4 weeks. I called the whole mess "TIN CAN COLLEGE" and I still use that as antithesis to expensive degrees.

Unfortunately I was premature in my concern and gathered very little interest from outside media, or SAIC principles. Four months later 911 happened and the shit really hit the fan. I pulled down my entire effort. My project was deemed un American.

It was definitely NOT ART.

Fact is, nobody cares.

[Greg Miller]

The MFA in Photo is a terminal degree, which is required in order to teach at a college level.
I have yet to see someone "sweat" their MFA thesis paper. The thesis shows sure "sweat" some cash towards massive prints and elaborate presentation, but the academics behind it are not close to what a liberal arts or exact science masters thesis would be. The minimum requirements, are set at art student levels.

You're painting a picture with these little sound bites, that don't make sense when taken as a whole.

You are asking us to believe that there is this competitive system, of top 5 schools, where applicants are willing to pay an exorbitant fee just to apply, and where the school will select unqualified applicants to be part of their program, where they will pay too much tuition to participate in an inferior learning environment, only to graduate into a job market where they cannot recover their education expense, yet rate the school highly so it can stay top 5 and perpetuate the process. It just doesn't add up.

[Peter Lewin]

Slight change in direction. I'm just back from a performance of Shakespeare's Henry VIII at the NJ Shakespeare Festival. Because of this thread I paid more attention than usual to the cast notes, and noticed that in the large cast, a good 2/3rds of the actors had MFA degrees. It made me wonder if MFAs are more useful for actors than photographers. It did make me think that the MFA degree might be more useful than I had thought until now.

[Darin Boville]

yet rate the school highly so it can stay top 5 and perpetuate the process. It just doesn't add up.

I'm not weighing in on all of this per se but just wanted to pint out that *I think* US News doesn't put much emphasis on student feedback or job prospects or anything like that. One of their big factors is simply "exclusivity"--the ratio of applicants to acceptances. At least that si the case with other degrees.

The new head of the University of Chicago, for example, has made no secret that he plans to be aggressive this year in getting kids to apply "just so we can reject them." His words. That will be a big factor in getting their ranking up.

The problem with the art rankings is they are often ranking all sorts of degrees all rolled into one. Graphic artist? You're in. Interior Designer? You are in.

If we are just talking about the kind of artist that exhibits on galleries then the rankings really don't apply.

--Darin

[Greg Miller]

I'm not weighing in on all of this per se but just wanted to pint out that *I think* US News doesn't put much emphasis on student feedback or job prospects or anything like that. One of their big factors is simply "exclusivity"--the ratio of applicants to acceptances. At least that si the case with other degrees.

The new head of the University of Chicago, for example, has made no secret that he plans to be aggressive this year in getting kids to apply "just so we can reject them." His words. That will be a big factor in getting their ranking up.

The problem with the art rankings is they are often ranking all sorts of degrees all rolled into one. Graphic artist? You're in. Interior Designer? You are in.

If we are just talking about the kind of artist that exhibits on galleries then the rankings really don't apply.

--Darin

Perhaps true. And if so hardly unique to MFA programs. Even west point military academy brags about its exclusivity and applicant to acceptance ratio. Every degree program in every ivy league school does it.

But my point is still the sum of the parts of this story doesn't add up

[Kirk Gittings]

The rankings I posted were for photography graduate programs. No one seems to know exactly how the polls are used exactly for the rankings or how they are weighted. In the many years I have been associated with two of the top five, I have never heard about exclusivity being a factor. Maybe it is so but I have never heard it. What I have heard about is about the graduates, faculty and department heads being polled about the facilities, resources, quality of faculty, educational strengths and about their views of the strengths of schools etc. All I know is that the WN ratings are taken seriously and that with some hiring and facility spending decisions the effect on the ratings are considered. I was told that Joyce Neimanas' being hired away from SAIC by UNM some years ago was aimed to some degree at UNM bolstering their ranking (they used to be in the top 3) and that there was some frustration that it had no effect.


The problem with the art rankings is they are often ranking all sorts of degrees all rolled into one. Graphic artist? You're in. Interior Designer? You are in.

If we are just talking about the kind of artist that exhibits on galleries then the rankings really don't apply.

Darin the rankings I posted were for art photography graduate programs "Graduate Schools > Fine Arts > Photography"

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-fine-arts-schools/photography-rankings?int=9a8908

[Kirk Gittings]

This is what USN&WR says about their criteria for ranking MFA programs and it is far simpler than I thought.


The specialty fine arts rankings are based solely on ratings by educators at peer schools. Art school deans and other top art school academics, two per school, were asked to nominate up to 10 programs noted for their excellence in each specialty. Those receiving the most nominations are listed.

[StoneNYC]

Slight change in direction. I'm just back from a performance of Shakespeare's Henry VIII at the NJ Shakespeare Festival. Because of this thread I paid more attention than usual to the cast notes, and noticed that in the large cast, a good 2/3rds of the actors had MFA degrees. It made me wonder if MFAs are more useful for actors than photographers. It did make me think that the MFA degree might be more useful than I had thought until now.

I did acting for 7 years... To answer this, the sad truth, I made 80% of my money from acting 15% from eBay sales of various items I no longer needed and 5% from photography.

Acting pays better than making physical art.

Which is sad, because we all know how much non-famous actors make LOL

[Darin Boville]

This is what USN&WR says about their criteria for ranking MFA programs and it is far simpler than I thought.

Oh my. That's no methodology at all....

--Darin

[Darin Boville]

This has to be my all-time favorite article on art education:. I reread it every few years and still smile, still laugh out loud.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/27/magazine/how-to-succeed-in-art.html?src=pm&pagewanted=1

--Darin

[Tin Can]

This has to be my all-time favorite article on art education:. I reread it every few years and still smile, still laugh out loud.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/27/magazine/how-to-succeed-in-art.html?src=pm&pagewanted=1

--Darin

I think that was old when it was written.

[analoguey]

Thought I had asked the question earlier - has anyone here read the book ' The Artist's Guide' by Jackie Battenfield? And what's your take on the contents - or if you know of the author's work, on that too?

[djdister]

If we could put the same question to the greatest photographers (who are all dead), what do you think they would say?

[Jac@stafford.net]

If we could put the same question to the greatest photographers (who are all dead), what do you think they would say?

"Leave me alone, already. I'm dead. I'm over it!"

Better yet, examine how (which implies 'why') certain photographers were declared great.

[koh303]

You're painting a picture with these little sound bites, that don't make sense when taken as a whole.

You are asking us to believe that there is this competitive system, of top 5 schools, where applicants are willing to pay an exorbitant fee just to apply, and where the school will select unqualified applicants to be part of their program, where they will pay too much tuition to participate in an inferior learning environment, only to graduate into a job market where they cannot recover their education expense, yet rate the school highly so it can stay top 5 and perpetuate the process. It just doesn't add up.

The MFA in photo is a terminal degree, and thus is is a requirement for teaching at a college level.
Weather or not there are such college level jobs available is irrelevant, because even though not every one can be a rock star, many people spend lots of time and money trying to become one. The dream of upward mobility lives on.

[onnect17]

Talking about formal education VS "Art is in the eye of the beholder". Check this article in the WSJ

http://online.wsj.com/articles/everybodys-an-art-curator-1414102402

[jnantz]

If we could put the same question to the greatest photographers (who are all dead), what do you think they would say?

dan

was there any education in photography before correspondence schools took up the cause during the great depression ( in the usa at least )
most people who were photographers learned by apprenticing in a studio. the current way of informal workshops is pretty much
a concentrated version of the same thing. art schools and schools have been around for hundreds of years but they have typically focused
on what some may refer to as "fine arts" ( painting, drawing and sculpture ) photography has always been considered a technical skill
( even today by many ) and not a "fine art".





The MFA in photo is a terminal degree, and thus is is a requirement for teaching at a college level.
Weather or not there are such college level jobs available is irrelevant, because even though not every one can be a rock star, many people spend lots of time and money trying to become one. The dream of upward mobility lives on.

it looks like finally, photography has earned its place in the realm of the fine-arts!

[gregmo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artifact_(film)

Here's a link to an interesting documentary (Artifact) by rock band 30 Seconds to Mars. It chronicles their time during a lawsuit with their label. It took the band nearly 10 years to reach financial success. Every now & then it will air on Palladia or VH1.

Sure it's another industry, but the underlining struggles for most artists is relatively the same. Regardless of the medium, it's not too difficult to pull concepts & apply them to your own needs.

[gregmo]

This has to be my all-time favorite article on art education:. I reread it every few years and still smile, still laugh out loud.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/27/magazine/how-to-succeed-in-art.html?src=pm&pagewanted=1

--Darin

I think the money would be a better return on investment if it was applied to marketing efforts. Bottom line..it's a numbers game. Match the right piece to the right buyer & get enough eyes on the artwork by those who can afford it.
I think eventually, art dealers will be pushed out of the business.

PBS's Frontline recently ran an episode "Generation Like." They asked the HS kids what was the definition of "sellout"..none of them knew the answer. A lot has change from the baby boomer generation & now.

[Sal Santamaura]

...trying to figure out what else a VC was good for beyond making "art"...After being away from Internet access a while, I've just read every one of the nearly 200 posts in this thread. These are the things that jump out as most interesting:


Kirk asked about success in photography, but much discussion centers on "art."
Soon after the thread's start, Kirk first brought up "art," but he appropriately put quotes around it.

In my opinion, despite all the effort that's gone into writing about, discussing, documenting and "analyzing" it over many years, "art" is a meaningless word.

There seem to be two distinct aspects of formal photography education. The first, which covers craft, while possibly still involving wet processes, today mainly addresses electronic methods/tools. This focus may be appropriate preparation for some commercial work. Although one could likely be self-taught to just as high a level of competency, the "admission ticket" aspect might be valuable when competing for a position.

The second aspect of formal education involves photographic "art." I believe that anyone who has the time and resources to pursue this amorphous area of study should be free to do so, but ought not expect any benefit from it other than networking in the "art" world. That may or may not lead to "success," with the probability being rather low.

Given the way things have changed in the last 10-15 years, it's not clear that anyone knows whether there actually exists a path to success in photography any longer for those young people now leaving high school. I plan to resurrect this thread in another decade to ask how things have developed by then.


Joe...JohnsonOmer, did you switch identities with the owner of Really Right Stuff?

My personal perspective is gratitude for having the wisdom at an early age to pursue a non-photographic career and, thereby, not ruin what has been and continues to be a very enjoyable hobby by (hopefully) making it a job. :D I probably don't possess the talent/vision to have "succeeded" in photography anyway.

[Tin Can]

What is success? Money and fame, how do we know of success? Advertising and advertising has always existed, since the first profession.

All art is advertising. It is advertising concepts, stories, skills, egos, political and religious agendas. No art is void of purpose. It may not be successful, yet we often herald the artist once dead.

Training in art under the master's gaze was and is often an unpaid or subsistence level position. Additionally interns are used for extracted profit. Some question who actually painted our most valued canvases. The intern or the master. The paying of huge sums to learn art is an economic equalizer that impoverishes the middle class, further punishes the poor yet exalts wealth, as it always has. Maintain status quo at all cost. Revolutions have been art based. Religions have used awe inspiring art to transmit their message. Any cathedral is a powerful advertisement. The cave paintings at lascaux and altamira may have been training for hunting and not art. Perhaps they advertised hunting success.

Success=Advertising=$$$$

[cowanw]

dan

was there any education in photography before correspondence schools took up the cause during the great depression ( in the usa at least )
most people who were photographers learned by apprenticing in a studio.

Clarence White opened the first independent school in America in 1910, then the White school in New York in 1914 and taught at Columbia College at that time.

[Mark Sawyer]

There are several other paths of "semi-formal" education that have come into vogue fairly recently that are having some degree of success. I've never been involved with any of them, so can't speak too knowledgeably about whether they bring success for the photographer too, but they're proliferating, so something's going on.

One is the professional personal art consultant. The local such person here in Tucson is Mary Virginia Swanson, (http://mvswanson.com/), who for a mere $300 an hour, (two hour minimum), will consult with you about your photography. I've noticed a number of these consultants popping up, but what they promise to deliver seems pretty vague, ("take your work to the next level/find your direction/realize your potential/see your work in a new light", etc.)

The other is the portfolio review events, where for around $500 to $800, you get a few 15-20 minute sit-downs with assorted people, often gallery owners, publishers, curators and the like. These are usually at "photo festival" events, where lots of gallery shows, lectures, and the like allow for lots of "industry contact" too.

Both of these seem to cater to the BFA/MFA crowd. I honestly don't know if either of these are bringing people the success they promise, or are just an indicator that some students still have money left after getting a degree, and even after all those years in school, they still haven't learned their lesson... :rolleyes:

[Tin Can]

Mark, Chicago has one guy too, a former gallery owner who sells webinars offering valuable advice. As he is an insider, he has 'important' big name connections and constantly seeks new paid customers with email advertising.

I just watch and observe.

[onnect17]

Got art?

Somebody thinks this sculpture is worth $100 million. I am sure many curators in well known museums will consider it a gracious paper weight. Who knows!

123865

[Mark Sawyer]

I just watch and observe.

But you'll never know for sure whether a couple of webinars could have turned you into history's richest, most famous and respected photographer ever. Whitens your teeth and prevents hair-loss too! :rolleyes:

[Tin Can]

But you'll never know for sure whether a couple of webinars could have turned you into history's richest, most famous and respected photographer ever. Whitens your teeth and prevents hair-loss too! :rolleyes:

No, I do know.

I am actually quite happy as I am. A continual seeker of 'art', 'happiness' and the next good meal. I cook for myself. I bake good old country bread. I am warm at night and have a private studio. My health has improved. I'm walking to early vote in 5 minutes.

All this artist needs, is right in front of me.

[djdister]

As someone wisely pointed out, we somehow conflated success in photography with being a "fine art photographer," whereas success in the field of photography could mean a number of different sub-specialties of the craft. Given that broader spectrum, there are surely many paths possible to reach success, formal education or not.

[Mark Sawyer]

No, I do know.

I am actually quite happy as I am. A continual seeker of 'art', 'happiness' and the next good meal. I cook for myself. I bake good old country bread. I am warm at night and have a private studio. My health has improved. I'm walking to early vote in 5 minutes.

All this artist needs, is right in front of me.

Actually, I think we're in the same boat, as a few others here. And a nice boat it is... :)

Maybe the biggest disappointment about the current state of Fine Arts is that the university system has successfully co-opted and monopolized so much of the fine arts world.


As someone wisely pointed out, we somehow conflated success in photography with being a "fine art photographer," whereas success in the field of photography could mean a number of different sub-specialties of the craft. Given that broader spectrum, there are surely many paths possible to reach success, formal education or not.

It's a broad spectrum indeed, but most here I believe have interests that fall under the Fine Arts category, be it very traditional or post-post-ever-so-post-modern. Very few posts about the business side of things...

[Tin Can]

Picked up a book while at the library.

Oxford History of Art series, American Photography, Miles Orvell, 2003.

Looks good already within the first few pages. He gets right into it. Meaning art, photography, success, significance, historical aspects, bla bla bla.

[Tin Can]

As someone wisely pointed out, we somehow conflated success in photography with being a "fine art photographer," whereas success in the field of photography could mean a number of different sub-specialties of the craft. Given that broader spectrum, there are surely many paths possible to reach success, formal education or not.

My well meaning younger photographic friends consider EVERY silver gelatin print, alt process print, basically anything not digital, 'fine art.' They are well schooled and form peer 'fine art' exhibitions. I am not a peer. I am supposed to be a buyer. I don't buy art... I have purchased only one 'art' a wood print for a charity auction. It was a bargain.

[djdister]

So, does architectural photography meet the definition of "fine art?" What about portraiture?

[Tin Can]

So, does architectural photography meet the definition of "fine art?" What about portraiture?

That's whole different thread.

I seldom define art, crap or fine art Plenty of others are willing to do that.

Everybody is a critic.

[Jac@stafford.net]

So, does architectural photography meet the definition of "fine art?" What about portraiture?

Fine art is not about the subject.
.

[Mark Sawyer]

Fine art is not about the subject.
.

Ansel Adams work wasn't about the western American landscape?

Atget's work wasn't about old Paris?

Karsh's portraits weren't about the people he photographed?

[h2oman]

I think the implication is that any subject could potentially be rendered in such away as to result in a fine art image.

That's how I took it, anyway. :D

[Peter Lewin]

In terms of photography, isn't "fine art" defined by elimination, i.e. if it isn't commercial (advertising, catalog, portraiture or architecture for a client, etc.), and it isn't a casual snap-shot taken simply to remember a place or event, what is left is "fine art?" Granted, much of what is left may not be exhibition-grade art, but what other category does most of what we do fall in?

And once again, we are miles away from Kirk's subject in beginning this thread! I'm still curious why MFA's seem more prevalent, and less controversial, in acting than in photography.

[Sal Santamaura]

...isn't "fine art" defined by elimination...what is left is "fine art?"...Not really, because "art," even when modified by "fine," is a meaningless word. "Art" is whatever the observer thinks it is.


...what other category does most of what we do fall in?..."Photography." :D

[jnantz]

Fine art is not about the subject.
.

you are right, "fine art" is about marketing, nothing more than that. it can be
about every subject, or none at all ...

[Bernice Loui]

Perceived value is often what gives an item it's market value.

Ansel Adam's fame and market value for his work never "took off" market wise until one of his students an MBA marketed Ansel's work to the general public. The rest became history.

How many paintings did Van-Gough sell in his life time, what became of his paintings during his life time and what are the market value of these paintings today.

Have a look at air cooled Porsche cars today, why have they suddenly become so precious?

Stuff like smart phone cameras, Instagram, digital imaging and all that have diluted, discounted the entire world of image-making bring the ability to make instant images with little to no real effort. Given this point of reference, the majority of image consumers have difficulty seeing the difference and value of truly well crafted and expressive images.... unless they have been told or propagandize or marketed to believe any specific image is "extremely valuable" .

Years ago, met a photographer who got a MFA from Stanford U. He did a show, published 2-3 books, has images in a museum collection. Yet he makes a living doing wedding photography.

Another photographer friend fell into the business of photography. She inherited the business from the family. Not the best photographer, learned on the job. She did have a MBA which made a BIG difference in knowing how to run a business. Today, the business is doing well, with a several photographers and video folks doing everything from weddings to corporate business image needs. The work, meets the expectations of their clients.

Finding an audience to support one's offerings and works can make all the difference.

As for universities in general, professors are often in academia for their own agenda and to promote the universities agenda. Professors tend to be focused to publish papers to gain fame, notoriety, grants, funding for the university or higher education institution. It less common for professors to completely focus on undergraduate education, or real benefits for their student's future. Those professors who do not produce for their academic institution, are up for replacement by the line of professors jockeying for their position and tenure.

Education can proved knowledge, practice of skills, learning new skills and gives credentials. It is not a substitute for innate talent, passion or the gift of being artistic-creative.

Me, photography is a creative outlet much like those who play piano in this documentary,"They Came To Play."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2SedHd93DQ


Bernice


you are right, "fine art" is about marketing, nothing more than that. it can be
about every subject, or none at all ...

[Tin Can]

Art is what an artist makes, definetly circular and does not require outside affirmation.

I have real problems with 'rights' of art as property and lack of residuals accruing to the maker.

Success rewards the collector or museum, not the artist. Koons and company are recent aberrations. Art as pure business made in factories. Not pursuit of the sublime, but sublime cash flow.

[Kirk Gittings]

Art is an easy dog for the cynical to kick around.

[Jac@stafford.net]

Art is an easy dog for the cynical to kick around.

That should be cast of in iron.

[Bernice Loui]

Art in many ways is the heart, soul and personality of any given culture. How much each individual within that culture values art, what it offers to the human experience, it's soul and spirit is great.. yet how many stop to appreciate what art can and does offer. Or even place a significant value on it.

It is sadly why so many great and gifted artist have such a difficult time earning a living at their passion and in-born talents and skills. For they have so much to offer humanity, society and culture.

Joshua Bell playing in public, unannounced and unknown to the majority.. Note how many stopped to listen or even noticed..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyrS0GZdFps

Art is in many ways a language, one need to spend some time to become literate in this language before that world can be accessed and available to a given individual or group or whole of human family.


:(
Bernice



Art is an easy dog for the cynical to kick around.

[Mark Sawyer]

That should be cast of in iron.

Indeed...