A simple question but one as difficult to answer as any question asking you to identify a favourite when likes, influence and admiration have to be taken into consideration. Favourite artist, singer, band, album, novel, or writer! All are difficult enough to reduce to a top ten let alone a singular favourite.
Despite this I regularly ask this question of students looking to begin an education in photography, to gauge their knowledge of and engagement with the medium. This is the answer I most often receive “I don’t know many so I don’t have a favourite!”
Variations on this response include “I don’t have one!”, “I don’t know any!” or “I forget names, I don’t have a very good memory!” My response is always the same. If you were about to start studying music do you think it would be reasonable not to have heard of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Beyonce, David Bowie, The Sex Pistols, The Rolling Stones, Ed Sheeran, Stevie Wonder, Mozart, Bach, Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Lady GaGa? They always reply that no, that would not make sense. They see the point I am making.
Everything I am about to write is based on my personal experience of interviewing students within the UK and I am sure that there are teachers, colleges and schools that are providing an alternative approach to the teaching of photography to the one I am about to outline. However, I fear that these may be the exceptions that prove the rule.
Recently I have started to think more about this situation. Why do these young photographers who have often spent at least two years studying photography at college or school have no knowledge of the history of the medium and the photographers who helped make that history let alone those working today? The answer is simple but dispiriting.
These young photographers are mostly given the names of photographers by their teachers whose work is based on techniques that fit into a syllabus created by non-photographers. These techniques and photographers seem to exist primarily on Instagram and Pintrest. Platforms that show work out of any context other than the platforms themselves.
These students are not being introduced to light, form and composition as explored by Penn, Eugene Smith, Cartier-Bresson, Eggleston, Arbus or Frank. They are not being introduced to narrative through the work of Shore, Soth or Evans. They are not discussing ethics through the work of McCullin, Weegee, Gilden or Parr. They are not being taught photography as a pure medium.
Instead they are being taught a photography of manipulation and concept. A photography reliant on idea over vision, of construction over observation. An approach to photography more suited to the members of a camera club than an expression of their young age and lives. Work that can be easily compared and graded.
It is therefore not the fault of the students that they are unaware of how photography is seen, engaged with and practiced by photographers working within the professional photographic community, by those working within commissioned and self-initiated practice. However, they are at fault in not independently looking at photo books, photographer monographs or exhibitions. They are not looking at photographers websites, YouTube films about photographers or listening to photography podcasts. I know this because I ask them if they are and they say they are not!
So where does that leave us? Well, as a teacher of photography at a Higher Education institution it indicates the importance of introducing these students to the history of photography and contemporary practice as soon as possible.
It also presents an uncomfortable reality that students who believe that they have a qualification that has built the foundations for further study may have a shock coming their way. Their understanding of what photography is and what it will demand of them may have been set up upon a false premise. If we return to a music metaphor it would be impossible to write a song if you have never heard one, or play a guitar to a set standard if you have never picked one up and yet that is exactly what we are doing with students entering higher education with photography. We are assuming and expecting a certain level of engagement and proficiency, the alternative is to dismiss what has been learnt and to start again at the beginning.
The solution? Well, why are those colleges and schools teaching photography not connecting with those teaching at Higher Education and working together to ensure that they begin teaching the medium in a way that connects with how it will be reached at the academic institutions their students will be moving on to?
The answer of course is that those teachers are overworked and shackled to a grade based system upon which their employment relies. They are doing what they are expected to do to ensure that their students pass the exams they are set. The problem therefore is not with the teachers or the students but with those setting the exam tasks.
This article is therefore a call out to those exam boards to get in touch with the photographic community. Those actually doing the stuff that they are supposedly judging people on. Just as they would do in any other subject. This is a call for dialogue, to ensure that the history of our medium is not lost, that our young photographers are being given a robust, rigorous and appropriate education in the subject they have chosen to study and so that teachers within Higher Education can progress those students from a foundation of understanding.
© Grant Scott 2020
Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019.
This is a very good article. I had a similar discussion with a friend of mine who’s a professional photographer. It may seem a bit smug but my answer is that I am my favourite photographer. THat’s not me saying my pictures are better than anyone else’s but they mean more to me.
To respond to your question in the way you meant it, there are several factors. Who had the greatest influence on me? Who’s pictures do I like the most? Who is the nicest person?
I have to admit that until I watched the series “The Genius of Photography” on BBC Four way back in I think 2006 I knew of hardly any ‘photographers’. Everyone and their dogs had an Ansell Adams poster on their walls but that was it.
However there was one whom I’d always cite as being my favourite as he was the only one I knew of who had any impact on me. Donald McCullin. When I was getting into photography in the late 70’s he was the hot property I suppose hence I saw a lot of his work in magazine articles in the various photography magazines of the time. I didn’t analyse his pictures but they had a definite impact.
Landscape pictures seem to dominate the world of photography but that is as I see it because a lot of photographers are somewhat reclusive. As such they have no appeal to me. While it may be aesthetically pleasing, a landscape says nothing else. A picture of a mundane scene from whatever decade says a lot. I remember when cars were like that or when women wore pinnies etc etc.
Most of the iconic photographs ever taken were far from perfect technically, they were a moment captured which involved people. That is why I come back to Sir Don. not only is he a great photographer but he’s a lovely person with immense empathy and humility. I’ve read his autobiography and seen a couple of documentaries about him in the last few years and he is an absolute giant.
I cannot envisage a photographic curriculum that didn’t include a healthy dollop or two of historical context… Seriously, is Beaumont Newhall’s “History of Photography” no longer required reading?
Personal favourites?… Well, that’s a very difficult question to answer [so many!], but today I’ll go with Newman and Erwitt.
Well. There it is.
No it is not and never mentioned.
Philistines.
My husband. Ex-Picture Post, Granada TV, BBC ‘Tonight’ programme. Yorkshire TV investigative journalism (International Emmy) ‘Maker of Photographic History’ seminar member. Obviously (unfortunately) unknown to you. Pity, he remembers quite a lot about the subject. I like Kurt Hutton, Bert Hardy and Godfrey Hopkins, too.
He sounds interesting but I am not sure of the point you are making here.
Have you any real knowledge of camera clubs? A rather sweeping statement if I may say so about the aims of clubs. Yes, we have competitions but many clubs also seek to educate members more widely by discussing photographers of all genres and visiting exhibitions etc.
I do agree with you though with the general content of syllabi. If there is a graded system of success with marks how can the system be other than it is.
Yes I have having attended one for a year, and been responsible for their annual awards. The comment was made in reference to the age of the average club member and the work produced appropriate to that age, alongside in my experience a specific interest in post-production and image manipulation. Thanks for the question Grant
As always a lot of good, relative, reflective and alas sad but true points. I agree with most and almost all. In terms of my “favourite photographer”…my answer is simple. I know many photographers and so don’t have a favourite.