Hibernation at an end

-
Walking Winter

Long walks in winter break the malaise and settle the soul. With my son the other week, sub-freezing, sun low, we talked about the coming year.

Classes begin this week. I'm looking forward to starting up again.



As you know (I think), education is my passion. Next to actually making pictures, it's what I think about the most.

Ken Robinson:

Children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise,...what the world will look like in five years time, and yet we're meant to be educating them for it.


What I find moving and of most immediacy is this conversation about how we learn what we learn. And the purpose of learning itself.

Working with you this spring I hope we'll scratch the surface on this topic. When we talk about photography — apertures, ISO, shutter speeds, cameras, papers, computers — I think, at root, we're also talking about paying attention to ourselves and to others, and exploring the way we learn. That's the context in which I want to begin this new year.

For me, the most interesting question isn't about which button to push, or which ink profile to use. Rather, it's about what learning is, and about how making pictures together charts our future.

To get started, I've compiled a short list of learning resources on the Courses page of my website. It's not meant to be exhaustive, but it's a place to begin.


Bobst Library

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

-
Image
The process of bringing a project to completion is the hardest part. It's tough to let go. When I'm inside the work I feel alive, activated, engaged. The end stage is a separate death. When is enough, enough? These pictures are page-spreads from my book,"Swimming at the Center of the World," which is about my experiences working in China during 2005 and 2006. It's been a very long process thus far and I'm thrilled, actually, to say that the first draft is done, or almost done. So you see, at this point I'm not even close to finally finished. Right now I'm having trouble walking away from the end of the beginning. One of the conversations we have in class is about the moment when your work no longer belongs to you. After all the sweat and anguish - about subject, style, intention, edit, color, contrast, paper, print size, and ending finally with presentation - there comes a time when I have to step back and let it go. At that moment it belongs to the
Read more

Wild Callahan

-
Image
Walking in the winter with Diana and Brendan; I'm not going to not see the Callahan trees surrounding me. Automatic. Can't help it. I know it's cliche. Sorry about that. But there's history here too. The contrast, the sequence, the rhythm, the simplicity. Those Callahan pictures from the 1950s resonate for me; they come to back to me from my earliest thoughts of pictures and photography. Do an image google if you're not sure what I'm talking about. And do you remember the conversation that's in the background, especially of the series of weeds in snow? The story as I recall it is around Callahan's introduction to photography at a workshop in Detroit by Ansel Adams. Apparently there was a long discussion about how to expose properly for snow — how to keep the detail in the negative but not underexpose, how to compensate in the developing, how to print it just down enough to make it feel bright but not too bright. Even if you've never done
Read more

surface

-
Image
i'm thinking about surfaces. is that a picture? the nothing below the something above the flat of it. a question lifts above and hovers. is that a picture? if i walk up to you and breathe will you recoil, sink beneath, or respond. i see a surface and touch nothing, lines. skin. i want to make a picture so i need to surface.
Read more