Where the Ideas Are
Where do ideas come from? This is the question that takes a lifetime. You know how to use the camera; you're learning the computer; and printing just takes time and practice (lots of practice). The hard stuff is more diffuse than that, more difficult to touch: where do you point your camera? what do you want me to see? what are you learning? Here's where we fight with each other. Some of my best friends and most valued colleagues believe it's impossible to teach artists to be artists, that you can't teach curiosity. I don't want to agree: if that's true, then what have I been doing all this time? The model I've proposed in the classroom is pretty simple: pay attention and respond. That's the core, I think. The essays and the photo prompts are all directed at it. So are the emails back-and-forth and the walking tours and the invitations to post on flickr. Then we close the loop with conversations about the pictures and about the process itself. At root is...