My Photopedagogy
By Nicole Stager
I’ve been spending time thinking about the things that have so significantly changed in my life as a photography teacher* and also about the things that seem so familiar—the things that make photography exactly what it is regardless of the enormous changes that happen in the medium. What makes us still call this 'photography' and what links digital photography to the Daguerreotype? And as the medium changes, what provides the sustainable connection I need with any practice that makes it an enjoyable and meaningful practice to teach?
In many ways, teaching photography feels more difficult to me. It seems in the face of the flat compliments one receives on photo-based social media sites it’s tough to get students to look deeper for an honest critique and to consider how ideas can be communicated visually with this medium. I’ve had to reflect, not only on the slow change that I’ve seen in the students’ ideas about meaning, but also on what makes my own photography meaningful. On the surface, the gap seems to be widening but, on closer examination, I think we all come to the table with a desire to communicate what’s at the core of our being.
When I began teaching in 2002, my students and I spent most of our energy perfecting the technical—the specific value of an aperture number and its control over depth of field or the particular chemical make-up of fixer and how it affects light sensitive paper. At the same time, there were long critical conversations about work and a wide-spread appreciation for art history and the aesthetic value of work that the students made. Now I share that time with types of things I never imagined teaching, such as how to observe light or simply wait for a shot. Our collective perception of time has changed; not surprising given that we work in a medium tied to time as an element of visual data?
I’ve taught a pretty wide variety of darkroom, digital, and alternative process classes that all fall under the umbrella of photography. At the high school level I teach a Photography Studio II class that begins with advanced darkroom techniques, moves into large format photography, then color darkroom photography, and ends with advanced digital training. The transitions are significant and because of the extreme differences in processes, we all struggle to move from one to another without feeling overly eager or anxious about the fast pace of the class.
This year there was one specific transition that felt more graceful than the others. The assignment was easy—make your last image. In other words, if you could only take one more photograph, what would you shoot? And truly, they had only a few negatives to shoot because we were using a large format camera. With a light meter, black cloth, and shutter release in hand, they did it; they mastered the camera. Since we were in the classroom studio they truly had to slow down to observe the light closely. And they mastered light for portraits and for still lifes. It was beautiful to watch. Afterward, they processed those enormous negatives and were astonished by the detail. I gave them the choice of enlarging the negatives in the darkroom or scanning them into the computer and was kind of sad when they said they’d prefer to scan them, but I couldn’t have been happier to see the results. Scanning the images meant they learned about that process and how to most effectively scan images and negatives. On top of that, they were introduced to some of the fundamental tools in Adobe Photoshop simply because they had to clean up the scans, adjust resolution, and tone the images before we set each one up for printing. We have an Epson 3880, so we can print up to 17 inches—seemingly small for professionals, but excitingly large for us! They made particular choices about paper type and quality and then we printed each one. What a joy! It was a slow process, but now that some of them have been matted, framed, and even shown in our gallery space, the results have made me so happy.
There’s a tangible sense of pride and a collective energy that we’ve shared throughout the making of these images. It has felt like a real journey for the students and for me to feel like the process and the resulting images were meaningful. They understood the technical details while having the patience to slow down to see what makes an image beautiful. We spent time digging into art history, camera history, their personal aesthetics, and the resulting images led to a richer critique than I’ve felt was possible lately.
I forge ahead with this experience alive in my mind and hoping to have many more that inspire me to continue on this path.
In many ways, teaching photography feels more difficult to me. It seems in the face of the flat compliments one receives on photo-based social media sites it’s tough to get students to look deeper for an honest critique and to consider how ideas can be communicated visually with this medium. I’ve had to reflect, not only on the slow change that I’ve seen in the students’ ideas about meaning, but also on what makes my own photography meaningful. On the surface, the gap seems to be widening but, on closer examination, I think we all come to the table with a desire to communicate what’s at the core of our being.
When I began teaching in 2002, my students and I spent most of our energy perfecting the technical—the specific value of an aperture number and its control over depth of field or the particular chemical make-up of fixer and how it affects light sensitive paper. At the same time, there were long critical conversations about work and a wide-spread appreciation for art history and the aesthetic value of work that the students made. Now I share that time with types of things I never imagined teaching, such as how to observe light or simply wait for a shot. Our collective perception of time has changed; not surprising given that we work in a medium tied to time as an element of visual data?
I’ve taught a pretty wide variety of darkroom, digital, and alternative process classes that all fall under the umbrella of photography. At the high school level I teach a Photography Studio II class that begins with advanced darkroom techniques, moves into large format photography, then color darkroom photography, and ends with advanced digital training. The transitions are significant and because of the extreme differences in processes, we all struggle to move from one to another without feeling overly eager or anxious about the fast pace of the class.
This year there was one specific transition that felt more graceful than the others. The assignment was easy—make your last image. In other words, if you could only take one more photograph, what would you shoot? And truly, they had only a few negatives to shoot because we were using a large format camera. With a light meter, black cloth, and shutter release in hand, they did it; they mastered the camera. Since we were in the classroom studio they truly had to slow down to observe the light closely. And they mastered light for portraits and for still lifes. It was beautiful to watch. Afterward, they processed those enormous negatives and were astonished by the detail. I gave them the choice of enlarging the negatives in the darkroom or scanning them into the computer and was kind of sad when they said they’d prefer to scan them, but I couldn’t have been happier to see the results. Scanning the images meant they learned about that process and how to most effectively scan images and negatives. On top of that, they were introduced to some of the fundamental tools in Adobe Photoshop simply because they had to clean up the scans, adjust resolution, and tone the images before we set each one up for printing. We have an Epson 3880, so we can print up to 17 inches—seemingly small for professionals, but excitingly large for us! They made particular choices about paper type and quality and then we printed each one. What a joy! It was a slow process, but now that some of them have been matted, framed, and even shown in our gallery space, the results have made me so happy.
There’s a tangible sense of pride and a collective energy that we’ve shared throughout the making of these images. It has felt like a real journey for the students and for me to feel like the process and the resulting images were meaningful. They understood the technical details while having the patience to slow down to see what makes an image beautiful. We spent time digging into art history, camera history, their personal aesthetics, and the resulting images led to a richer critique than I’ve felt was possible lately.
I forge ahead with this experience alive in my mind and hoping to have many more that inspire me to continue on this path.
Nicole teaches at Nazareth Area High School, a public high school with grades 9-12 (ages 13-18) in Pennsylvania, USA. She is a conceptual artist (www.nickistager.com) and has been teaching photography and design at this high school and a few different colleges and universities for about 15 years. There are four art teachers at the school - Nicki teaches photography and design; another colleague teaches 3D arts and the other two teach a wider variety of drawing, painting, fashion, and ceramics classes. The school is fortunate in having four specialists and good facilities.