6 Ways a Formal Education Can Benefit Your Photography

by Todd Vorenkamp (MFA, Academy of Art University, 2011)

Only in the arts is the term “self-taught” worn like a badge of honor. You can’t swing a dead cat around the Internet without hitting a photographer who broadcasts “self-taught” on the biography page of his or her website. I found a website titled: “Top 25 Self-Taught Photographers.” Really?

Professions outside the arts do not promote “self-taught.” Self-taught doctor? No thanks; I’ll go somewhere else. Self-taught airline pilot? I’ll take the next flight. Self-taught lawyer? I’d rather skip the jail time.

Photo lessons from Dad, magazines, and books aside, it is cool to wear the self-taught badge, especially if people tell you that you are a good photographer. So, when the opportunity to go to art school arrived on my doorstep, I hesitated about the fact that I would have to strip myself of this badge.

I was a “self-taught photographer” right up until the moment I became a “formally trained photographic artist” and started working toward my Masters of Fine Arts degree.

With “self-taught” so celebrated, what are the benefits of a formal art education?

1. Time

Many artists bemoan that they do not make enough time for their art. Life often gets in the way. Work, friends, family, taxes, television, etc.; the list goes on.

Entering an art school forces you to make time for your art. And, unlike your other schooling experiences, if you are “forced” to do something you love, you will likely do it energetically and enthusiastically.

Art school takes time. But, by investing in your art, this is time you are investing in yourself.

2. Practice

You will practice your art in art school. Like almost everything, practice makes almost perfect. That you have to continuously produce new art leads you to unconsciously improve your craft. You are not just taking photographs every week; you are driven to compile a solid body of work for every class, every semester.

If you feel you are at the top of your game photographically, you might consider going to art school. You will learn to apply a critical eye to your work, all while receiving feedback from others. It is one thing to get praise from friends and family, but subjecting your work to virtual strangers who are also immersed in the field will certainly give you new perspective.

You might be surprised to find that there is always room for improvement.

3. Immersion

If you enjoy photography, imagine the pleasure of immersing yourself in the art for weeks, months, or years. For me, the best part of a photo workshop is the immersion in the world of photography. It is a natural high for me. Art school is like attending a continuous photography workshop.

During the school year, I was out making photographs three to five times per week. On the nights that I was not creating photographs, I was reading about photography, editing photos, reviewing classmates’ images, or engaged in class discussions about the art.

If you are passionate about taking photographs, you will love the fact that art school not only drives you to create art, but you also will study and learn about the history of the genre, other arts, and the way people view and think about art.

4. Meaning

I used to just be a guy who took good pictures. People liked my photos. Many asked for emailed copies, prints, or my website address. I felt good about my photography.

Week One in grad school: “Nice photograph. What does it mean?”

Art school will force you to articulate the meaning behind your imagery. If you don’t think that your images have meaning, art school will drive a lot of personal introspection, so you can then discover why you take some photographs, but not others. Moving forward, you can be conscious of why you create the art you create. Self-discovery.

5. Passion

There is a true gift in being able to study something you are intensely passionate about. The practicality of an art school degree can be debated. Making a living as an artist is difficult — regardless of the genre.

Remember dreading schoolwork and grumbling about homework? If you are passionate about art, or whatever you chose to study in life, you will — I kid you not — love going to school and love getting assignments. Summer school will no longer be a burden.

For me, graduation was bittersweet. If there were more credits to be had, I would still be in art school. Ph.D. program for photography, anyone?

6. Friendships

Art school also surrounds you with others who are passionate about the same things in which you are invested. You are exposed to their work and they get exposed to yours. You learn about each classmate and how they feel and think. Art education is an intimate learning experience that can create lifelong friendships, professional contacts, and photographic growth and challenges. Your friends will push you to improve your art and you will push them to improve theirs.

So long, self-taught badge. It was nice to wear you for a while, but fashions change, and I have no regrets about removing you.

This article was originally published on March 13, 2016, by B&H Photo on Medium.com.

Fairmont Gallery of Art Opens with AAU Students

In December, San Francisco's historic Fairmont Hotel debuted their Gallery of Art. To kick-off the opening, the hotel hosted a contest for AAU student work featuring iconic San Francisco scenes. Selected artists were honored during a December ceremony, and the exhibit will be installed for the remainder of 2016.

The exhibition features Sail, the first-place winner by Kushal Kapoor, second-place image Full of Grace, by Analia (Ana) Gutierrez, and third-place recipient, Wonderland, by Qianwen (Candi) Jiang.

From left to right: Qianwen (Candi) Jiang with Dr. Elisa Stephens (Academy of Art University President), Analia (Ana) Gutierrez, Kushal Kapoor, Jim Wood (Executive Director), Will Mosgrove (former Director of Graduate Photography).

All exhibition works are for sale. For more information, please contact Mary Casserly at Mcasserly@academyart.edu.

We congratulate selected students!

Portfolio Flash: Associate Director Adrienne Pao with Robin Lasser

This spring, School of Photography welcomes Faculty member Adrienne Pao into the position of Graduate Associate Director. Here, we look at the collaborative project of Pao and artist-teacher Robin Lasser. For more than a decade, Pao and Lasser have been producing Dress Tents, tent-like forms that are worn and photographed as part of a series of performances. The interior of the tents house video and sound that reference the original landscape for which each dress was designed. Pieces from Dress Tents have been exhibited in the U.S., China, Argentina, and Russia.

Say Pao and Lasser:

We are interested in the land and the body as sites of seduction . . .

By referencing modes of female representation such as “bare foot and in the kitchen” in the Picnic Dress Tent, or “mother nature” in the Greenhouse Dress Tent, the dress tents simultaneously utilize and address a history of fantasy associated with women. Through pop-culture humor, the Picnic Dress Tent examines our recreational activities in the landscape though playfully familiar scenarios that leave us to question and reexamine our flow of routine and our relationship to the body as site of cultural desire. A play on green house gasses and what it takes to be “green” in contemporary culture, the Greenhouse Dress Tent becomes a commentary on the current fashion of being “green.”

More Dress Tents can be seen at www.adriennepao.com and www.robinlasser.com. We wish Adrienne continued success with Dress Tents and in her new position!

"Silver Spillers" Featured in AAU Galleries

It's the spring semester, and we're back in the swing of things.

While we were out, MFA students Gabe Riddle, Anette Marweld, Lucky (Ying Jung) Lu, Nan Lu, and Rachel Liu -- the self-proclaimed "Silver Spillers" -- occupied the Cannery Gallery for the month of December. In January, the show, Silver Spillers: Contemporary Interpretations of Historic Photographic Processes, moved to 625 Sutter Gallery.

The exhibition was conceived in Connie Begg's Alternative Practices class of Spring 2015. It featured Joan of Arc, a 56-piece installation of 8x10 inch, wet plate collodion on metal plates, by Rachel Liu.

AAU graduating students and alumni can apply for an exhibition at AAU Galleries by submitting a petition here.

A Birth of Collaboration

By DeAnn Desilets

Inspiration and ideas for projects can come forward at the most unlikely times. I have learned to be open to it, look for it, and run with it when it comes into my world through conversation, vision or experience. Then I try and throw it into the folds of my life and see what happens.

For example, a few months ago at my husband’s birthday party, I started talking to a friend of ours. Carly is a composer, a damn good one, and a humble one, who has won a Primetime Emmy Award for a piece she wrote.

We got to talking about how we both find it difficult to continue to create our own work for ourselves, when we use our creative juices all day for other people. We commiserated that it is harder and harder to find people to talk to about our prospective projects. Mostly though, we found that the toughest thing is to hold ourselves accountable for creating new work. Yes, you can set deadlines for yourself all day. Sticking to them however, is another beast entirely.

This inspired me to ask Carly, “Hey, would you be interested in sharing work every week to get feedback?” That question led to a very positive discussion, which eventually led to a decision to work on a project together. Neither of us has worked with the other’s art form--performance and visual arts. So we decided to approach this differently than most artistic partnerships. We would have no constraints and we would keep our imagination and creations open to interpretation on both sides. While the end goal is still to create something together, we are really making something for each other, with each new collaboration.

Every week, instead of creating an image and musical piece together, we independently construct our own ideas on a subject or mood, surprising each other. I send Carly an image I have created and she composes music that partners and accompanies the image. Then she sends me a musical score, and I create an image from how the music moves me. By trading off back and forth, we each get to see how we each interprets each other’s work in our own expressive way. In turn, this makes us both think and create in new and exciting ways. It is the most amazing and inspiring process, and I get chills every time I hear a new composition from Carly. Not just because she is really good, but also because when I listen I can see my images come to life.

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In response to the photograph by DeAnn Desilets, above, composer Carly Comando created the musical piece, Aurora.

Before we started creating together just a month or so ago, I was making imagery, but not consistently. Now, we are each creating a new piece almost every week! Sometimes life takes over and sometimes the brain needs more time to bring something to life, but the creative juices have been primed. I honestly have not been this productive since before graduation!

Eventually, if we create enough, we are going to show it somewhere. Perhaps we will plan a live performance and large projections. Or perhaps we will plan a more intimate setting with people walking around with personal headsets, looking through spy glass holes to see the vignette to experience it on a more intimate level. This may be a while into the future, but it is exciting to think about.

This cross-pollination of visual and performance art, is something so entirely new to me, and such a different way of thinking of things. I am pushing my directed realities and montage work, and she is working with more electronic sounds, which she has not done before. What better way to explore together in a bubble of trust and adventure, with no expectations other than to have fun and be open? How great it is to push yourself and be accountable, not just to yourself, but also to someone else. I highly recommend it. It is quite exhilarating. I’m not saying everyone needs to go out and find a composer. However, one should find someone who thinks differently and creates differently. It may be another photographer, a painter, an illustrator, a writer, a printmaker, or a sculptor.

In the end if you can’t push yourself, you can’t keep growing. Find someone you admire and really challenge yourself with them. Either in a collaborative project or just as someone you know will check in on you. You will give each other the energy needed to grow. Don’t just talk about it either. I have learned that you can’t just say you will do something. Put your words into actions no matter what you are planning creatively. Imagination is real, so bring it to life.

Truth, Lies, and the Picture Plane: Photomontage - The Next Great Art Movement?

Images and text by Clint Saunders

Photography is not art. It requires no skill or talent. Photographers are not artists. They merely capture what is in front of the camera by pushing a button. The art world hurled these criticisms at photographers for decades after photography was invented.

While photography was being criticized for its mimetic nature and lack of creative ability, some artists saw the creative potential of photography and sought to use it as a tool the way one would use a pencil or a brush. That is to say, they attempted to construct art pieces using photography as a medium. Artists such as Oscar Rejlander in his piece, Two Ways of Life (1857) combined photographic images to create art pieces, and the art of photomontage was born.[1]

This would surely put many arguments to rest. As anyone could plainly see, this proved that photography could be used to construct images and not merely copy what was in front of the camera. It showed a tremendous amount of technical skill, creativity, patience, and knowledge. Combine these facts with the realism this new technique offered and it was easy to see how this would surely become the next great art movement, right? Wrong!

Rejlander and other photomonteurs were criticized for trying to “fool” the public. For nearly a century, photomontage was treated as the unwanted bastard child of photography. Photomonteurs received more distain from the art world than straight photographers. In addition to trying to fool the public, photomonteurs were criticized for doing nothing more than mimicking classical painting.

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The Explorer

Photographers have long defended and struggled to validate their craft. Fortunately, after years of debate, that argument has been put to rest. While there are still a handful of critics who are unable to understand the true nature of photography as an art form, photography itself has been accepted by most of the fine art world.

Meanwhile, photography’s bastard child, photomontage, has resurfaced several times throughout history and been used as a medium in many art movements including Dadaism, Cubism, and Surrealism.[2] However, it was never used as much or accepted as widely as photo collage, photomontage’s more attractive sister. Why? Perhaps its historical use in amusement art, propaganda, and advertising kept it from being taken seriously. Now, thanks to new digital technologies, we are once again seeing photomontage make headlines and fighting for its right to be recognized as fine art. However, photomontage is still battling the life long label of being a lower form of art.

Truth and Lies

“For some reason, photography has always been looked on as though it's recording a kind of truth. I realized this is very naïve; it wasn't doing that at all." —David Hockney[3]

One thing that has always attracted me to photomontage is the perception of truth in photographs. With the birth of photography came the notion that photographs captured reality; thus, photographs must have an element of truth. “It must be real because it’s a photograph.” Right?

Photographs have been used as evidence in court cases as far back as 1839 when a husband photographed his wife in a tryst and used the photo to help win a divorce case. In 1861 William Howard Mumler used an accidental double exposure (a type of photomontage) to show proof of the existence of ghosts while beginning the spirit photography movement.[iv] Today people attempt to capture photographs of the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot in order to prove the existence of these mythological creatures.

I became a photomonteur both because photomontage gives me the creative freedom to construct the images in my mind and because I am fascinated by the prospect of creating impossible truths. I can create images that must be real because they are photographs, yet can’t be real because of the subject matter and juxtapositions within the image. Some would consider these artworks to be lies.

“Still photographs are the most powerful weapons in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.” ― Eddie Adams[v]

I believe this, above all else, is the reason photomontage has never been widely accepted and why photo collage has been treated with more forgiveness. People are afraid of being duped. No one wants to be made a fool, so they perceive photomontages as an attack on their intelligence. The viewer feels the artist is trying to trick them into believing something is real, when it can’t be. After all, photographs are real, they are truths, they offer proof, hence, the very act of putting multiple photographs together in a manner that disguises the edges is considered deceitful regardless of the artist’s intent.

The average viewer, and a large percentage of the photographic world, assumes that a photograph is real and a photomontage is a lie. They do not recognize that both are lies, or at very best, partial truths. In fact, in some cases, it could be argued that there is more truth in the montage than in the straight photograph.

In reality there is no truth, there is only perception of truth. Artists share their concepts, ideas, and perceptions of truth through their created and constructed artwork. The creative process is very similar regardless of medium. In truth, a good straight photograph is every bit as constructed and created and lacking truth as a painting, drawing, or even a photomontage.

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Geometric Dance #6

The Picture Plane

There isn’t really a “look” or common style amongst photomonteurs. Many (such as David Hockney, the Dadaists, and the Cubists) preferred the look of collage for its fragmentation and its embrace of the two dimensional surface. While other photomonteurs such as Maggie Taylor and her husband Jerry Uelsmann prefer the seamless look of the photomontage and engage the picture plane through plasticity and three-dimensionality.

Digital methods, as used by Maggie Taylor, are being used to create both styles with or without the presence of the edge. Overlapping and blending create a fragmented, flat, cubist aesthetic while fully cutting out, assembling and unifying are being used to create more plastic effects.

The Next Great Art Movement?

Photomontage has been my passion since 1987 when I first began printing in a darkroom. I switched to digital montage around 2004, and while I still own my darkroom, I continue to work using digital techniques.

The techniques used in both the darkroom and digital montage are very methodical, tedious, and time consuming. While most would argue that automatism is impossible with a medium like photomontage, I still consider myself a surrealist. I keep notebooks everywhere--by my bed, in my car, in my suitcase, and on my desk. When a new image or idea pops into my head, I instantly write it down and make sketches. This is the automatism and creating from the subconscious part of the process. The rest is technical application.

While I’ve had success as a documentary and commercial photographer since 1999, my montage work has only recently been published and exhibited nationally and internationally. I have also noticed a significant increase in the number of artists creating in this wonderful medium in recent years.

I would like to think that this is the beginning of a new era in photographic arts-- an era during which photomonteurs are respected and admired for their brilliant artwork, technical skills, and creativity. I would also like to think that I, and my fellow monteurs, are on the front lines of this new movement and will go down in history as leaders in this new age. But of course, photomontage is not new. It has been evolving and growing for over 150 years.[vi] The tools have changed, but the principles are the same. So, if photomontage has a strong future in fine art photography, and I believe it does, then it could very well become the longest art movement in modern history.

1If you would like to learn more about Rejlander and other early photomonteurs, I recommend visiting photo historian Michael Pritchard’s website @ http://www.mpritchard.com. 

2 For more on the Dadaists, Cubists, and Surrealists’ use of photomontage, I recommend visiting the National Gallery of Art (in person, naturally) or @ https://www.nga.gov as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (again, in person if possible) or @ http://www.metmuseum.org.  

[3] David Hockney, On Photography, Andre Emmerich Gallery, 1983.

[4]For more on these and other early examples of photographs uses as evidence in court cases, I recommend you visit the Evidence Photographers International Council website @ http://www.evidencephotographers.com/.  You might also find The American Museum of Photography’s website interesting.  Please see http://www.photographymuseum.com/index.html

[5]  Eddie Adams, “Quotations,” Good Reads <<http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/photography?page=1>>. Accessed 14 November 2015. 

[6] The University of Birmingham’s School of Theoretical and Historical Studies has compiled a fascinating database on photomontage and “fantastic” photography.  If you find this topic of interest, you might wish to check out its website @ http://www.d-log.info/timeline/index.html.

Portfolio Flash: Marc Ullom

Enter AAU Faculty Marc Ullom. As a way to challenge our sense of time and place, Ullom braved a series of self-portraits in abandoned spaces. Ullom says of this project, called Transcience of Self:

My physical presence intrudes upon these places, and interjects an energy of temporality that contrasts with the environment. This interaction between living flesh and decaying environment provides the viewer with a strong desire to identify the relationship between the figure and environment and at the same time causes them to ask questions that have no singular answer.