Anyone here teaching photography?

[jantman]

I was just wondering if anyone here is teaching photography, and where and on what level?

As a prospective college student, I'm interested that very few schools that I look at have faculty members who I have ever heard of.

[Kirk Gittings]

I currently teach in the summers at the Art Institute of Chicago (though I took this summer off to finish a book project) and did teach for twelve years at the University of New Mexico and am close with some of the current faculty there.

What are your questions? What are you looking for?

[Donald Brewster]

As a former boss of mine said regarding to my making a similar statement: "They've never heard of you either." There are many good photo teachers out there who aren't household names, and just because a photographer is "famous" that doesn't mean he's a good teacher. And many fine artists of every stripe toil in relative anonymity. Since Kirk mentioned the University of New Mexico -- they have one of the better photo faculties in the country.

[tim atherton]

It really depends on what exactly you are wanting to do?

There's the likes of Sarah Lawrence College (Joel Sternfeld)

or Bard College (Stephen Shore) etc (hey or even Harvard - witht he excellent Chris Killip...)

And yes, the Art Institute of Chicago

and also Columbia College, Chicago (Bob Thall)

or even the University of Ottawa (Lynne Cohen)

But there are also many courses/schools out there with numerous excellent "no name" teachers

And it depends if you are looking for a more technical course or a more creative type course.

In my (probably not so humble...) opinion, taking a broader arts course, but maybe biased towards photogorpahy, is probably of most value - you will probably learn more about being creative in your photogrpahy by exposure to the other creative arts and artists than by a course which is mainly just photography

(but if you really want to make money at it, take a business course instead....)

[adrian_4747]

There is a guy called John Blakemore here in England. He used to teach at Derby University
but has retired. 20 years ago he was one of the most famous and studied landscape artists
here, and still commands a lot of respect. Now? - I doubt many people could tell you who he is.
His work is as good as ever, just that the spot light of fame is a fickle thing. Don't let yourself
be guided by that alone.

If I may offer you some advice - a degree is merely a stepping stone to whatever comes next.
Decide on the path you want to take then work backwards to find the faculty for you. Got a
passion for architecture? Then look for a photography school with a strong presence there.
Look at their exhibitions - are they all flowers, weird modern stuff or more in tune with
what you want to do? Then you will know. The fit will never be exact, but you can rapidly
weed out the faculties that are just plain wrong for you.

Best regards,

Adrian

[Louie Powell]

Jason -

My sense is that its relatively unusual for famous photographers to teach regularly at the college level. There were a couple of exceptions - Steiner at RISD, for example. And of course RIT has Andy Davidhazy.

That is not to say that college programs aren't any good , or that the instructors are turkeys. An example is College of St. Rose - they have a very small photography program, led by an excellent and creative photographer. But he chooses to not push himself on the international scene, and he doesn't do commercial work.

A better question might be which schools offer the best and most challenging programs. But when you ask that, you also need to specify what kind of program you are looking for - commercial, journalism or art.

Louie

[Frank Petronio]

If you want to learn from the famous (and the not-so-famous but good teachers), spend the summer at the Maine Photo Workshops (or equal) for college credit, and get a BS or BA from a good liberal arts or technology school. In other words, don't major in photography but get a more well-rounded education in the Sciences, or History, or English, or Art History - so that you actually have some ideas and reasons to photograph.

Mark Klett studied Geology; Robert Adams has a Phd in English; many of the best commercial and fine art photographers are educated, but not in photography.

Photography is a medium, not a lifestyle or an end of itself, although many hope to elevate it to that level. To my way of thinking, this is wrong - photography should be like a language you learn, a tool that you know, a way to communicate IDEAS. To major in photography is kind of like being incestous with your brain...

If you must, go to a photo grad school for an MFA, but I hestiate to suggest that anyone waste time and money getting an MFA. To get an MFA so that you can get a teaching job only perpetuates the photo education industry, without actually creating better photographers. If photographers with MFAs are so much better than photographers without, then we should be awash with 10,000X more great photographers after 40 years of granting MFAs in photography...

I've taught and lectured at several schools, but once I give that speech I usually don't get invited back...

[David A. Goldfarb]

If you're looking to stay in the area, Jason, NYU has a degree program affiliated with ICP. An acquaintance of mine who shoots for the _New York Times_ and did his degree at NYU (probably prior to the NYU/ICP program though), says that in retrospect, as a photojournalist, it would have been better for him to have majored in history or poli sci and just done enough photography courses to learn technique and art history without actually majoring in the field.

[Joe Smigiel]

I took a workshop from Mark Klett a couple years ago and was very impressed with him as a fellow teacher. He teaches at Arizona State. Don't forget our list friends Sandy King and Sam Wang at Clemson.

[Frank Petronio]

Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester is part of the SUNY (Brockport) system and offers a good but low priced grad program - so if you have to go to grad school, why spend $100K?