My PhotoPedagogy (Part 2)
Still photographs, still teaching and still teaching photography, or
The Nurture of Photography.
By Graham Hooper
A little more background:
Once a month on average I get an email expressing an interest in something posted on this site some years ago now. It’s very flattering and I’m delighted to have touched so many readers with my thoughts and opinions. I still stand by everything I wrote back then, as re-reading it it does seem as though very little if anything of significance has changed.
What I offer up here then is part two of the list (points 13-24), because I do feel that it would benefit from some additional remarks, if you’ll oblige me. Make of it what you will. I’m sorry if it sounds pompous - it’s not the intention.
Once a month on average I get an email expressing an interest in something posted on this site some years ago now. It’s very flattering and I’m delighted to have touched so many readers with my thoughts and opinions. I still stand by everything I wrote back then, as re-reading it it does seem as though very little if anything of significance has changed.
What I offer up here then is part two of the list (points 13-24), because I do feel that it would benefit from some additional remarks, if you’ll oblige me. Make of it what you will. I’m sorry if it sounds pompous - it’s not the intention.
13. Entertain
Every lesson needs to be a party. If they’re not entertained (funny hats, surprise bubble blowing - use the aircon vent, it works perfectly - old wooden bird calls…) they’ll not want to come, or at least arrive on time, and frankly if they're not entertained nor will I be. The first five minutes is a funny story, amazing fact, music video with commentary. They’ll want to boot up a PC, update their neighbour and take off their coat anyway. But the rest of the session ideally needs to be an entertainment too ideally.
14. See every student, every lesson
So three times a week I check in with all of them, face to face. Some of them will need 30 seconds, just to confirm they are continuing with the problem you gave them to solve last time you spoke, others might need 30 minutes. That said, I aim to make every interaction as short as possible. I just give the single biggest, simplest thing they can do to improve (develop and refine, to use the language of the specification) not a list of everything they could do - it’s overwhelming and would take all day. They can come back later if and when they’ve done that and get the next thing on the list. There’s probably only about 10 in the list (“make the light work harder in your photographs”, “use words in your presentation to signpost how you’re explicitly meeting the assessment criteria”…), and then you still have time to find something good in their work to praise too (“Your language is rich and powerful, and I love reading what you have to say about what you’ve noticed, so thank you”). Happy days.
Every lesson needs to be a party. If they’re not entertained (funny hats, surprise bubble blowing - use the aircon vent, it works perfectly - old wooden bird calls…) they’ll not want to come, or at least arrive on time, and frankly if they're not entertained nor will I be. The first five minutes is a funny story, amazing fact, music video with commentary. They’ll want to boot up a PC, update their neighbour and take off their coat anyway. But the rest of the session ideally needs to be an entertainment too ideally.
14. See every student, every lesson
So three times a week I check in with all of them, face to face. Some of them will need 30 seconds, just to confirm they are continuing with the problem you gave them to solve last time you spoke, others might need 30 minutes. That said, I aim to make every interaction as short as possible. I just give the single biggest, simplest thing they can do to improve (develop and refine, to use the language of the specification) not a list of everything they could do - it’s overwhelming and would take all day. They can come back later if and when they’ve done that and get the next thing on the list. There’s probably only about 10 in the list (“make the light work harder in your photographs”, “use words in your presentation to signpost how you’re explicitly meeting the assessment criteria”…), and then you still have time to find something good in their work to praise too (“Your language is rich and powerful, and I love reading what you have to say about what you’ve noticed, so thank you”). Happy days.
15. Be a butler
We have the encyclopaedic photographer database that they don't, built up over years of looking at books and going to exhibitions, so we are best placed to offer them connections to work of others that they can use to discover a) the shortcuts, b) the trapdoors. Save them the time and effort. It’s a gift to yourself and them.
16. Books and magazines
Our department has invested a lot of money over a long period of time in good photography books, and we subscribe to Aperture and The British Journal of Photography. We’re lucky like that I think and have a solid collection of monographs by key practitioners with little writing. There are some big go-tos. If you can dig out a copy of Jonathan Miller’s Nowhere in Particular, you’ll get what I mean. Every page is a project.You’ll have your own maybe. Likewise exhibition catalogues. It also saves them endlessly googling “Cool Photographs for projects”. How depressing that is. I don’t use Pinterest, that’s a personal choice, and Colossal is a lot of Photoshop gumpf by the looks of things, no disrespect. I need them to have reference points they can assimilate.
17. No written feedback
They don't read it anyway. All our projects are presented on Google Slides which has a very useful feature allowing you to record audio feedback (and video, should you wish), up to 30 minutes long. That saves time and fingertips, let me tell you. Use your shutdown marking and feedback weeks to (what, you don’t get them?!…ask your senior leadership team, you NEED those!) blast through them, with time afterwards for them to develop, improve and modify their work.
We have the encyclopaedic photographer database that they don't, built up over years of looking at books and going to exhibitions, so we are best placed to offer them connections to work of others that they can use to discover a) the shortcuts, b) the trapdoors. Save them the time and effort. It’s a gift to yourself and them.
16. Books and magazines
Our department has invested a lot of money over a long period of time in good photography books, and we subscribe to Aperture and The British Journal of Photography. We’re lucky like that I think and have a solid collection of monographs by key practitioners with little writing. There are some big go-tos. If you can dig out a copy of Jonathan Miller’s Nowhere in Particular, you’ll get what I mean. Every page is a project.You’ll have your own maybe. Likewise exhibition catalogues. It also saves them endlessly googling “Cool Photographs for projects”. How depressing that is. I don’t use Pinterest, that’s a personal choice, and Colossal is a lot of Photoshop gumpf by the looks of things, no disrespect. I need them to have reference points they can assimilate.
17. No written feedback
They don't read it anyway. All our projects are presented on Google Slides which has a very useful feature allowing you to record audio feedback (and video, should you wish), up to 30 minutes long. That saves time and fingertips, let me tell you. Use your shutdown marking and feedback weeks to (what, you don’t get them?!…ask your senior leadership team, you NEED those!) blast through them, with time afterwards for them to develop, improve and modify their work.
18. Resources
I have a box of shiny objects, lightpads, natural forms on windfowsils, a stack of perspex shapes, an overhead projector (remember those, brilliant they were). For those seemingly lacking any visual sensibility (yes, they enrol on the course), I’m amazed at how some string and wire arranged pretty randomly on a lightpad and photographed from directly above in and in high contrast black and white can somehow become attractive to the most hardened ‘non-artist’. “Now go do some more,” I say, “and find me in 20 minutes…I’ve got a nice book that I really think you’ll enjoy looking at” (The Shape of Light Tate exhibition catalogue!)...
19. Leave work at work
Try this, arrive no sooner than 15 minutes before your first lesson of the day (to use the loo and put the kettle on), and leave as soon as possible after your last lesson. Then get home, walk the dog, go to the gym, watch a film, read the paper, do a crossword. You need your energy when you get back tomorrow. Our job is utterly relentless, we don’t really need reminding. You need to arrive with your best 100%, creativity on demand, your A game, and demand the same of them. They get their pound of flesh.
Then at the end of the day, I stop. There’s always more you can do, better, differently. It doesn’t end. You know that. Stop it. Just an idea.
20. No Powerpoints
Give them the deadlines, give them the assessment criteria, then do photography. The first term I go through Stephen Shore’s The Nature of Photographs. No need for any other images, it’s all in there, high quality printing in their sweaty hands. Plenty of everything, to inspire, conspire, to confound you and them. I have 25 copies. One heavily annotated by me over the decade. Even before you open the book the front cover suggests what’s going to happen; we’re going to hold photography up to scrutiny. We’re going to realise the photograph is not the photographed. It’ll be odd but strangely fun.
I have a box of shiny objects, lightpads, natural forms on windfowsils, a stack of perspex shapes, an overhead projector (remember those, brilliant they were). For those seemingly lacking any visual sensibility (yes, they enrol on the course), I’m amazed at how some string and wire arranged pretty randomly on a lightpad and photographed from directly above in and in high contrast black and white can somehow become attractive to the most hardened ‘non-artist’. “Now go do some more,” I say, “and find me in 20 minutes…I’ve got a nice book that I really think you’ll enjoy looking at” (The Shape of Light Tate exhibition catalogue!)...
19. Leave work at work
Try this, arrive no sooner than 15 minutes before your first lesson of the day (to use the loo and put the kettle on), and leave as soon as possible after your last lesson. Then get home, walk the dog, go to the gym, watch a film, read the paper, do a crossword. You need your energy when you get back tomorrow. Our job is utterly relentless, we don’t really need reminding. You need to arrive with your best 100%, creativity on demand, your A game, and demand the same of them. They get their pound of flesh.
Then at the end of the day, I stop. There’s always more you can do, better, differently. It doesn’t end. You know that. Stop it. Just an idea.
20. No Powerpoints
Give them the deadlines, give them the assessment criteria, then do photography. The first term I go through Stephen Shore’s The Nature of Photographs. No need for any other images, it’s all in there, high quality printing in their sweaty hands. Plenty of everything, to inspire, conspire, to confound you and them. I have 25 copies. One heavily annotated by me over the decade. Even before you open the book the front cover suggests what’s going to happen; we’re going to hold photography up to scrutiny. We’re going to realise the photograph is not the photographed. It’ll be odd but strangely fun.
21. Displays
Print off work, put it up, look at it, write on it, move it around, put it up around the site, change it around, then do it all again. Life’s better with interesting things to look at. I’m sure the students can help. #blutack
22. Trips
Mmm…they all want one, 80% take the letter home, 60% of them bring it back signed, 40% get their risk assessments done, 20% turn up on the day, and you’ve got half your team out and have prepared cover. Mmm…but for those 5 students it can change their world forever. Mmm…are you near a good gallery or a train station on a direct line to a big city…? Mmm…
23. Accurate, sensitive and comprehensive
I still believe that the most beautiful thing in the world might be a thing seen on its own terms. Observed as if for the first time, with respect and innocence. I think things get more interesting the more you look at them, anything that is. Our job might just be to slow them down enough to realise that their job is simply to notice things, and notice them properly, carefully and honestly.
Print off work, put it up, look at it, write on it, move it around, put it up around the site, change it around, then do it all again. Life’s better with interesting things to look at. I’m sure the students can help. #blutack
22. Trips
Mmm…they all want one, 80% take the letter home, 60% of them bring it back signed, 40% get their risk assessments done, 20% turn up on the day, and you’ve got half your team out and have prepared cover. Mmm…but for those 5 students it can change their world forever. Mmm…are you near a good gallery or a train station on a direct line to a big city…? Mmm…
23. Accurate, sensitive and comprehensive
I still believe that the most beautiful thing in the world might be a thing seen on its own terms. Observed as if for the first time, with respect and innocence. I think things get more interesting the more you look at them, anything that is. Our job might just be to slow them down enough to realise that their job is simply to notice things, and notice them properly, carefully and honestly.
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24. The most important subject in the world When it comes to open evening, or taster days or welcome days lets all be reminded that the world is the internet (cooking, shopping, holidays, dating…) and the internet is pictures (not etchings either, but photographs), so knowing how and why they behave, or misbehave, and could be made to behave and misbehave is a great skill to have. It’ll help you have fun, know right from wrong, never be bored, and maybe even earn you some money. Off ya’ pop then. I’ll be thinking about you. [email protected] |
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