4 responses to “PODCAST: A Photographic Life, Episode 318: Avoiding Clichés, Robert Adams and The End of the Photo School!”

1. 

   Rob Campbell

   April 12, 2025 at 7:18 pm

   Photographic education is a funny animal, depending much on who happens to be thinking about it.

   I was an autodidact – up to a point – starting my so-called photographic education on the basis of the discovery of my aunt’s collection of Vogue magazines back in ‘53 of ‘54. Later, I discovered Amateur Photographer, where I studied the camera ads and wondered what was inexpensive enough for me to buy. The search for that first ‘adjustable’ camera ended up with the purchase of a new Voigtlander Vito B, largely funded through the help of my girlfriend, who six years later became my wife. A.P. continued to aid me by its articles on various developers etc. all stuff that was totally new to me.

   After that initial seduction by old Vogues, I discovered the two annuals that Popular Photography used to publish, one specialising in colour. Each year saw me haunting the big kiosk at Glasgow’s Central Station for the next editions of both, where I also discovered series of small photo books by/on Peter Gowland, Peter Basch, Don Ornitz and several others, all of whom seemed to market images through Globe Photos. The 1959 Annual showed me, for the very first time, Saul Leiter’s pictures of models in horse-drawn carriages in New York; one I never forgot was of a girl looking out through a little oval window…

   During those years, Britain suffered from a blight called National Service, where kids devoid of academic hope were flung into the army or some other of the fighting forces, for two years. Your out was further education or things such as apprenticeships in engineering. Not interested in becoming pointless target practice for Mau Mau warriors, Cypriot or Irish separists, I managed to get into engineering – which I loathed – and to retain the affections of the aforementioned long-suffering girlfriend. Then, that military threat was ended, and I became free of Big Brother and could choose whichever life I really wanted for myself. By chance – and a word in my ear from a friend – I discovered that the photographic unit of the company where I was working needed another staff member. Thus, in my fourth year as an engineering apprentice, I managed to get transferred to a new career within the same company. (That this was allowed probably indicated that the engineering people wanted me out of the way.)

   By that time I had managed to make a pretty crude darkroom in the loft of the family home, and thought I’d learned quite a lot about how to make things work in there. However, once I got into the professional space, I realised very quickly just how very little I knew about printing. Five or six years later I knew – and could do – enough to make it work if I went solo.

   Which brings me back to education. During my initial time in that company unit, I was obliged to go to night school to study photography. Anyway, during a conversation in night school, I brought up the work of David Bailey, and was stunned to hear the lecturer tell anyone who was listening that, if his work looked like Bailey’s he’d change career. I never went back. My employers could not have cared less; I expect they thought I was useful enough to them doing what I was doing.

   However, there was a downside to this colour experience: when I did go out on my own, I knew perfectly well that I certainly did not have, nor expect to have, the throughput to make doing my own colour processing viable. Of course, whenever I farmed stuff out, I saw that had the lab done one more colour balancing run, the print would have been as perfect as it could be; those few words “commercially acceptable” rang out bitterly whenever I tried to complain. Much later on, I was able to do almost no colour photography other than on Kodachrome. What a release that was!

   All this said, we still have more deeply to consider the thorny topic of education. In my opinion, unless a person is already obsessed, possessed by photography, they should not even think of going into such an educational system. The probable outcomes for photographic careers, perhaps even more today than in my era, appear bleak. There is no career to be had if your photography is going to be just a couple of gigs a year. That could bring more terminal pain that occupational delight! You need the existing determination first.

   From what I have discovered, since going out on my own in ‘66, is that anyone wanting to do it today should first learn all there is to learn about Photoshop as it applies to photography. Further, getting experience in motion would seem essential. It’s a very different world out there today.

   As an aside: if digital had been all that I had been exposed to, I very much doubt that I would have been charmed by the idea of a career in photography. There is just so much truth behind the cliché about seeing your first print appearing in a dish. Compared with that, creating an image via a monitor is sterile, akin to painting by numbers. That’s all I do these days: amuse myself with whatever version of an original I feel inclined to produce. As I no longer print, an iPhone seems to be pretty much all I need. What a huge leap from those years where, getting my first Nikon F and Hasselblad 500C, felt like I’d hit the jackpot, arrived where I wanted to be. Life: funny old thing.

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   1. 

      gscott2012

      April 15, 2025 at 8:34 am

      Education in photography is learning to see and listen never the mastery of a software package.

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2. 

   Paul Morgan

   June 12, 2024 at 5:02 pm

   Hi Grant – great episode and musings as ever. You ask us to support higher education photographic courses and I can see how some may be considered ‘rip-off courses’ if you are so inclined to think that way. It is hard when you’re at a stage in your life where the training/education you want/need for your non-photographic career has been completed and you’re well on with things and thinking about what’s next to keep you stimulated. I have a degree and masters that have set me up for a life that is not creative but my creative love (photography) makes me yearn to learn more in an academic environment.

   My wife’s cousin is Principal of City Lit College in London – the UK’s largest adult education college and they run loads of fantastic courses (not always suited to someone working full time though). That’s in London – when you don’t live near the capital your options are more limited. Colleges doing adult ed classes round my way were all victims of COVID and have never re-opened. I can’t afford the time certainly to dive into a x-year photographic degree or diploma at a university but would do shorter courses. With universities under pressure in many ways what are they doing/what are they allowed to do to tap into a market of keen and eager later lifers who want to scratch that itch? I look at degree curricula and see modules I’d love to do (including on ‘your’ undergrad tog course) but not necessarily the whole year – can these be adapted as short(er) courses?

   I could be miles off track but there is probably/possibly an untapped market of maturer people who’d pay to dip in and dip out. I could be miles off beam and this be b*llocks but to be taught about documentary photography by someone who knows about it in a face to face open way would be great – better than YouTube.

   Paul

   ps – your conversation with Bill on teaching was great. At university I was ‘taught’ by some of the best experts in geology and geochemistry. Did I always learn? No as being an expert geochemist doesn’t always make you an engaging teacher. Many a lecture was spent counting ‘erms’ rather than understanding the impacts of industrial pollutants on the environment.

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   1. 

      gscott2012

      June 12, 2024 at 5:25 pm

      Please email me at gscott@brookes.ac.uk and I will respond to some of the points raised. Thanks for the kind words. Grant

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