Teaching Philosophy

I practice teaching in a spirit of openness as a guiding principle, in the sense of being open to the inputs, needs and especially the talents of the students. I have taught basic black and white photography, digital imaging, basic graphic design, and digital video courses at the University of Washington, College for Creative Studies, and as a full time assistant professor at Zayed University in The United Arab Emirates. Zayed University is revolutionizing the educational system and society of the UAE by offering for the first time in the nation’s history a government funded baccalaureate program to national women. This experience represents a diverse range of courses, skills, materials, technologies, and approaches. The institutions, in which I have been fortunate to teach, represent an even more diverse range of students, educational goals and outcomes. Out of this diversity of contexts, including a fine arts department in a large research university, the photography department in a competitive employment-driven private art college, and now a small innovative liberal arts university for women in the Arabian Peninsula, I have identified several common elements that contribute to the effective teaching and learning of photography. I have developed an approach to teaching the medium that attempts to address and balances each of these important areas; discovering and nurturing students’ individual strengths, developing technique, building strong concepts and the ability to articulate them, getting involved with the history of the medium, and inspiring students to use these skills and knowledge to develop and express their own original ideas through photography.

In my classroom I first present to the students a rather open ended introductory assignment, the results of which allow me to begin a process of careful looking at where the talents and predilections of each student lie. This discovery process may be the most difficult aspect to define, and yet for me, the foundation of the art teaching art. I have found that by helping each student find his own strengths, a teacher can also help the student become a self motivated learner, greatly accelerating the learning process, and making the entire enterprise enjoyable, meaningful and successful for both student and teacher. As a teacher, I do not want to force my own tendencies and preferences upon my students. This is the work of Ego, but not of good teaching. I see the teacher as a facilitator of students’ learning, rather than a purveyor of a particular dogma. I would rather expose students to as many different styles, methods, and techniques of photography as possible, allowing them the freedom to make up their own minds about what will work to solve a given visual problem.

In order for the student to find her own way, I believe that a primary responsibility of a good photography teacher is to help her build and practice the essential skills and techniques of the medium. This task demands of the teacher clarity, accuracy, and a firm command of the craft of photography, as well as the inspirational ability, and sometimes, even, force of will necessary to instill this discipline in the students. While encouraging students to experiment as much as possible with the media and with their ideas, I expect an exacting attention to the technique and craft employed to achieve their creative aims. Happy accidents do play an important role in photography, but only an informed, prepared and technically savvy photographer is in the position to take advantage of such “luck”.  Real, consistent artistic expression is only possible with control and command of one’s media.  It is my goal as a teacher of photography to prepare students to express their own ideas with a thorough grounding in skill and technique. My own training comes from a combination of practice in the commercial, industrial, fine art, and academic worlds.  By building a synergy of these sometimes disparate fields, I utilize the strategies that have worked for photographers in many situations, finding no incompatibilities with this variety of approaches. As a photographer I believe it is important to find an area of specialization in which to excel, but as a teacher, I believe it is important to cultivate a broad range of approaches so that students can make informed decisions about their own creative strategies.

In conjunction with a rigorous grounding in technique, I believe that photographers need at the basic level, a real concentration on the principles and elements of design that are the foundational language of all the visual arts. Rather than isolate this study to a single assignment, class, or exercise, I imbue every class, assignment, critique, and slide presentation with a discussion of the formal elements and strategies employed in that given context. I also demand this approach of my students when they talk about photography. My own work is much more postmodern and narrative than formalist, but it is inescapable that visual design is the basic alphabet of photography. Our formal apprehension of an image precedes our grasp of its content. I believe that great photographers never take the visual language of their craft for granted, but use it consciously to create the maximum visual impact and expressiveness in their work. Students of photography often have a striking instinctive understanding of design principles, but I find it can only help the development of these innate capacities to become conscious of them and learn to talk and write about them, in order to better use them in a conscious manner to further their creative and artistic goals.

Images with impressive technique and dazzling composition, unfortunately, can have little staying power if there is no real idea behind the work. I believe that great pictures are about something. My course assignments demand that the students create and articulate their own conceptual framework. I encourage students to photograph what they know well, and to research as much as possible about the subjects that they choose to photograph. These projects encourage active reflection on the part of the students into the meaning and intention of their work. Nearly equal in importance to the development of strong visual ideas is the ability to speak and write coherently about them. The brilliant but inarticulate artist, who’s images talk for him, has long been a stereotype of visual artists and photographers in particular, but this character in actuality has become a critically endangered species in today’s hyper-textualized contemporary art world. Success these days belongs to the photographer who can explain and promote her ideas.  I stress this building of meaning and concept in journal writing exercises, investigations into the creative intentions of other photographers, as well as requirements to create artists’ statements and oral presentations of intentions during the final critique of projects. Rather than isolate the creation and explication of concept to particular assignments or exercises, this multi faceted approach diffuses the development of a concern for the conceptual basis of the work throughout the curriculum and the learning process, so that it becomes intrinsic to the creation of the work and the students’ creative process.

Of course an ability to speak intelligently about one’s work, and to understand one’s place in the context of the history of the medium and its contemporary practice requires a deep knowledge of the work that others in the field have done and are doing. A formal education in photography will not alone produce this deep engagement with the medium and its history, but it can and should certainly begin this lifelong process. I include this element in every photography course I teach by introducing and discussing the work of past and current masters in the art of photography to illustrate the conceptual, technical, and formal ideas that we are discussing in class. This integrated approach builds a conversational and visual familiarity with the great works in photographic history without contributing to the sort of “memorization anxiety” that can sap the enthusiasm from students’ learning. This low stress exposure to the material reinforce students’ interest in the medium’s history, as well as serves an illustrative purpose that enlivens lectures and inspires students towards the development of concepts and visual ideas for their own work.

I have been discussing specific strategies and elements that I believe are indispensable to a photographic education. It is more difficult to quantify the effects of a teacher’s passion for the subject on his teaching effectiveness, yet I believe that this is the most important quality that an educator can bring to the classroom or studio. I have never lost that first blush of fascination with photography that I experienced when building my first darkroom in my parents’ basement, and watching those first prints emerge from the developer. The constant technical and aesthetic advances and changes in photography that for some has provoked anxiety, have only invigorated my fascination with the medium. Rather than diminish over the years, my engagement with this medium has actually accelerated, especially as the new digital tools have finally allowed me the control I have always desired over the photographic image. I constantly explore the boundaries of the medium, both technically and conceptually, seeking ways to stretch my own boundaries as an artist and photographer. I bring this sense of discovery and passion into the classroom, where I find my energy regenerated by the creative confidence, knowledge and expressive power that I see growing in my students.