PhotoPedagogy
  • Home
    • About
    • Contribute
  • Threshold Concepts
    • Threshold Concept #1
    • Threshold Concept #2
    • Threshold Concept #3
    • Threshold Concept #4
    • Threshold Concept #5
    • Threshold Concept #6
    • Threshold Concept #7
    • Threshold Concept #8
    • Threshold Concept #9
    • Threshold Concept #10
  • Resources
    • Teaching Resources >
      • KS3-4 Resources
      • Post 16 Resources
    • The RPS >
      • Squaring the Circles of Confusion
      • In Progress
      • Science and Photography
      • Exhibition Visit Activities
      • Sugar Paper Theories
      • Space Steps
      • Altered Ocean
    • Representing Homelessness
    • Blog
    • Class Photobooks
    • Starting a new course?
    • Photo Literacy
    • Photography writing
    • Articles
    • eNewsletters
    • Newspaper
    • Links
  • Shop
  • Contact

Blog

Very occasional musings about
photography education

On This Day in Photography: Insights from James McArdle

4/11/2017

8 Comments

 
By Chris Francis

On This Date In Photography is a remarkable blog written by Dr. James McArdle, artist and self-declared recovering academic - a retired Associate Professor from Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.  As the title suggests, each daily blog post takes the day's date as a starting point for offering rich servings from photography history. More than this though - and of particular relevance to A level students and teachers (with reference to the Personal Study) - is the manner in which James makes imaginative connections across times, places and personalities, many posts connecting rich historical research with contemporary references and concerns.

We were delighted when James agreed to share some insights into this wonderful resource.
Picture

What led you to create On This Day in Photography?

My reason for writing the blog was initially because I wanted to prepare material for a book and a survey of historical and contemporary photography. I had to choose a topic for the blog which would expose me to new material. I chose to write daily posts because that forces me to keep writing regularly, and actually, I find that makes writing easier, to have that expectation. 
 
I decided to base the research and writing on one simple rule - it has to be something that happened or is happening on that date. That is what presents me with the possibilities for the day.

Where do you begin with your research?

I go every day to a number of sources. Alan Griffiths’ Luminous Lint is excellent and provides, amongst many other resources, a calendar of photographic happenings. It is a subscription-funded American site however and this leads me to another principle I have adopted for the blog. American photography has been given plenty of exposure and as a photography student in the 1970s everyone looked to the USA. Since I am interested in stuff I don’t know about I don’t write on American photographers except where they are unknown, though of course I do mention them in posts for comparison since everyone knows them and they provide a common talking point.
 
Andrew Eskind and Greg Drake still edit http://photographydatabase.org based on 30 years of research compiled for American publisher of photography books G.K. Hall. It has expanded to include photographers world-wide. I find any resource needs double-checking, and that process of course is not wasted time - you just find out more.
 
David Lowe, Photography Specialist at the New York Public Library, compiles Photographers’ Identities Catalog (PIC) which has a global map interface that is idiosyncratic but actually very helpful once you get used to it.

If I am lucky there may be two or more photographers who were born or died on the day, a significant photo taken or an exhibition that all relate to each other in some useful way that triggers ideas that I would not have thought of otherwise - I am only too happy to be directed by coincidence since the accident of date is just that (unless you believe in astrology), and sometimes the ball just drops into place in this "calendric roulette”. It’s fun.

How do you start with your writing?

The best way to get the writing flowing is to get hold of images by the photographer. Like most photographers I respond to visual stimulus and I find it easy just to get words down by imagining myself taking their pictures myself…that’s stuff we know about. That allows me an entree into the thinking behind the work.
 
Then I research the biographies of the photographers which leads to discovering how they fit into history, including the political, social and technological environments of their country or city. I am eager to find statements by them about their work which I tag in my posts. Then, and only after I have formed and am comfortable with my own ideas, will I look at academic essays, online books, newspaper articles or critiques of the photographer or exhibition. I may quote them or summarise them, acknowledging the source, but because a blog is not an academic exercise, I don’t include a bibliography or footnotes, but I include links where I can.
 
At this point I have bits and pieces of writing that need to come together into a coherent whole. The theme of the post may only become apparent at this stage as the pieces are shuffled and come together. A little editing is needed then to look after tense and syntax. It is a matter then of writing the concluding paragraph. and after that an introduction that will fit into the character limit in Twitter..necessarily a very short, pithy statement with a picture that will find some interested readers; and even just that process of distillation will make me go back and revise or add ideas. A blog post is never set in stone. 
 
Inevitably, once I read the post as  it appears online, I may see mistakes and have to go back in and make corrections, and since this is an intense process, I have to be prepared for new information about the subject to pop up (since I am now sensitised to it), or for other ideas to form in the night or under the shower next morning. 
 
The pressure of writing the next day’s post comes along and I start all over again.

Which photography writings have influenced you the most?

Photographs influence me most; that is where my ideas come from, so photobooks come first for me. It was formative for me to have in the house, as I grew up in the 1950s, the sumptuous slip-covered Moments Preserved by Irving Penn (Simon and Schuster, 1960), The Family of Man (MoMA, 1954), The World Is Young by Wayne Miller and Een liefdesgeschiedenis in Saint-Germain-des-Prés (Love on the Left Bank) by Ed van were Elsken (1956). Since then the world has filled with photobooks, a bewildering but ever-tempting feast of them.
 
The first photography book I read in depth (and still read and consult) was Aaron Scharf’s Art and Photography - my mother gave it to me for my seventeenth birthday in 1968, the year it came out. It was his PhD at the Courtauld Insitute and must be one of the earliest of research at that level; meticulous. It’s illustrations were all monochrome in that edition. It was a lucid, convincing account of the way art and photography interacted - and made it clear that photography could be art. 
 
I loathed Sontag’s On Photography for her supercilious pontificating, and that came out while I was a photography student and led to furious rows with other students who had been told it was God’s Word. Max Kozloff’s writing is clear and to the point, and I recommend in particular his 'Contention Between Two Critics About a Disagreeable Beauty' on Joel-Peter Witkin in his The Privileged Eye: Essays on Photography, University of New Mexico Press, 1987 for a demonstration of incisive critical writing.
 
A helpful history of photography is Nouvelle histoire de la photographie by Michel Frizot (Bordas, 1995), available in a fairly good English translation, which gives a world-view of the medium not found in others which tend to be more US-centric. More recent and both very readable are Charlotte Cotton’s The photograph as contemporary art (Thames & Hudson, 2004) which is thematic in a thought-provoking way and thus still relevant; and  Photography : a critical introduction edited by Liz Wells, Fifth edition (Routledge, 2015) which contains essays by various writers organised chronologically and thematically. Really there is so much online, such as 1000Words (to which I’ve contributed) and American Suburb X, and countless blogs, that we are spoilt for choice.

Finally, I'm interested in what you think of our Threshold Concepts for Photography?

I like the way these statements distil characteristics of photography to make sustaining concepts. They are necessarily generalisations, of course, but helpful in debating the essence of photography because their expression in your Threshold Concepts is deliberately and helpfully provocative. I’d take issue with #4 and #6 but defend #1 #8 and #9 with my blood! All of them are the kind of thoughts that inspire my writing and especially my own provocations expressed compactly as tweets (@JamesmMcArdle). Each is a thread I have been following in my teaching, and now in writing, and with them I feel a connection to what you are doing at photopedagogy.com

Our many thanks to James McArdle for taking the time to share these valuable insights, and more so for providing such a rich daily dose of photography writing - Cheers James, very appreciated. We look forward to the possibility of collaborating with you in the future.
8 Comments
Jon Nicholls link
5/11/2017 09:32:52 pm

I'd like to echo Chris's thanks to James who provides such an inspiring model of research and writing. I've spent a good deal of time exploring the blog and following links to images and artists whose work I did not know. A-level photography students could find no better example of the kind of inquisitiveness and rigour that is required for writing the Personal Investigation essay.

Reply
Rhys Baker link
6/11/2017 06:50:56 am

This is fantastic, a wealth of information. Fascinating, there are artists and genres that I didn't even know existed. Great online reading material, thanks.

Reply
James McArdle link
7/11/2017 11:30:31 pm

Thank you Rhys! Yes I am constantly astounded to find brilliant work and organisations that have somehow slipped under the radar, especially those emerging from those countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain, South America (and Mexico...wow!) Africa, and even nearby. The photography world may seem quite small to begin with, but it's never-ending and exciting for the curious..

Reply
Katie Reynolds
7/11/2017 05:51:56 pm

Wow! Thanks so much for featuring James' work – I'd never come across his site before but it's now firmly bookmarked in my browser for daily reading. What a huge amount of work it must take to keep this up, and how generous James is with his insights!

Reply
James McArdle link
7/11/2017 11:40:21 pm

Thank you for your kind comments Katie. I'm very glad to contribute something to teachers and students; having been there myself I know how frantic a scene it is, and now I have the luxury time and leisure to research the things I always wanted to know about, and to find out I know nothing about so much, I enjoy writing so much that it is not work. I forgot to include in the resources I mentioned Claudia Stein's & Michael Steinke's huge http://www.photography-now.com based in Berlin which you could add to your breakfast browsing if you haven't already...a constantly refreshed stream of exhibitions from around the world with direct links to the galleries and artists...just go to the bottom of the page and keep clicking 'more' and you'll see what I mean!

Reply
MckimmeCue link
13/1/2022 12:33:05 pm

This is a very informative—edifying article to all. Thanks a lot! Continue to post!
If you are looking for coupon codes and deals just visit coupon plus deals dot com

Reply
MckinneyRee link
28/1/2022 08:42:18 am


This is a very informative—edifying article to all. Thanks a lot! Continue to post!
If you are looking for coupon codes and deals just visit coupon plus deals dot com

Reply
clairehoover link
28/1/2022 08:43:26 am


This is a very informative—edifying article to all. Thanks a lot! Continue to post!
If you are looking for coupon codes and deals just visit coupon plus deals dot com

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Blog

    Guest blog posts by members of the photography teaching and learning community. 

    Archives

    August 2022
    June 2021
    January 2020
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    July 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015

    Categories

    All
    Advice
    Aesthetics
    Alevel
    Alexschady
    Annalucas
    Art
    Artanddesign
    Arthistory
    Assessment
    Audio
    Auschwitz
    Autographabp
    Books
    Bookshelf
    Bush
    Camera
    China
    Communication
    Concepts
    Conference
    Contemporary
    Course
    Cpd
    Cultures
    Curriculum
    Dafnatalmor
    Damoward
    Danielrose
    Democracy
    Design
    Desire
    Development
    Document
    Ebacc
    Editing
    Education
    Eggleston
    Elliottwilcox
    Enquiries
    Essay
    Ethics
    Event
    Eventbrite
    Examination
    Exchange
    Experiments
    Film
    Framing
    Frank
    Freedom
    Game
    Gcse
    Gertbiesta
    Guest
    Homework
    Howiseethings
    Identity
    Images
    Indeterminacy
    Instructions
    Internet
    Interview
    Kit
    Knowledge
    Language
    Learning
    Leiter
    Lies
    Linear
    Literacy
    Marysadowling
    Materials
    Memory
    Meyerowitz
    Notknowing
    Nsead
    Openness
    Padlet
    Pedagogy
    Pedgaogy
    Performance
    Philosophy
    Photobooks
    Photofilmpingpong
    Photographersgallery
    Photoliteracy
    Photopedagogy
    Photopingpong
    Photoworks
    Planning
    Pointing
    Practice
    Production
    Programme
    Projects
    Questioning
    Red
    Relationships
    Research
    Resistance
    Resources
    Review
    Risk
    Shore
    Skills
    Socialmedia
    Specifications
    Statement
    Steam
    Stem
    Stephenshore
    Street
    Study
    Subjectification
    Summerschool
    Tate
    Tateexchange
    Taxonomies
    Taylorwessing
    Teaching
    Text Exchange
    Theory
    Threshold
    Tickets
    Time
    TLR
    Traditions
    Training
    Truth
    Unhomework
    University
    Walkerevans
    Website
    Welcome
    Wessel
    Winogrand
    Workshop
    Writing
    Yashica
    Year13

    RSS Feed

Social

Contact

photopedagogy@gmail.com