Teaching Pre-College at MIAD

I have been consumed by the 3 week intensive course that I am currently teaching. The high school students have been stepping to the charge and producing a lot of work in both analog and digital media. Check out the class blog and their "photo a day" posts here...

Sonya Kozlova

 Liz Folkman

 

Sarah Nasgowitz

  

Emily Tierney

the gaze... lecture 7

Thinking about portraiture and the gaze this week in Historical Perspectives...

5 of 10

The Historical Perspectives lecture this week considers the ephemeral. It is the fifth lecture in the series of 10 (maybe 11... still thinking) that encourages students to think thematically while making connections between historical and contemporary works in photography...

kertesz....

I am working on this week's lecture and I am loving revisting Kertesz's SX-70 polaroids from 1979.

off the road and on to intimacy

Sorry its been a full week - didn't post the ROAD lecture... I imagine you can guess who we covered... I was pleased to have Anthony Lane's New Yorker article on Frank for the students to read...

this week ... considers intimacy - take a peek...






(yes, I realize that all of these themes could/should be a class in themselves... )

historical perspectives -lecture week two...

the body, the nude, the naked...

back to teaching - full speed

I had the privilege (and a bit of pain) of thinking about landscape photography all weekend as I finalized the first in a series of lectures for the "Historical Perspectives" course. Its a new course with many bugs to be worked out but I am going to have a fun but FULL semester.

This class will consider historical and contemporary perceptions and representations of: landscape, the gaze, family, the road, loss, the body, war and play. Students are encouraged to look at the history of the medium in circular rather than linear trajectory by studying work thematically rather than chronologically.

slide view of lecture- LANDscaped

Back to School

Teaching has begun at MIAD.
Students are back and syllabi are finished...
I really enjoyed my summer and feel that I was able to take advantage of the time off and PRODUCE. Hopefully I will be able to maintain the momentum into the new school year.

I am teaching an Intro to Photography course to bright eyed Freshman (with View Cameras)
and a Digital Photography class to returning Sophomores and declared majors. Excited to get the conversations going again! (check in with me at Midterms...)

My teachers.... Lonnie Graham

Man with Food for Cow, Maguga, Kenya, 1998

Back to teaching at MIAD for me. In preparation for a new semester I always like to think about those teachers of mine that made an impression. What was it about them? What made me connect? I will try and post about some of them throughout September.

Lonnie Graham was a visiting professor for a graduate seminar at SFAI. He was traveling cross country for the class as he was also teaching in Pennsylvania. It was an incredible and insane seminar. We didn't meet with him every week and so those times that we did meet were intense. Lonnie Graham pushed me to consider the artist's role in community, the spiritual in art, and most importantly I think, he challenged our passion for our own work.

another semester ends

Summer is offically here for those of us who teach at MIAD. I always find the end of the semester a bit disappointing. Some of the best work students create all semester is for a final assignment and there is no way to showcase that work to thier peers & the school outside of critique. In the past, I have organized a public exhibition of their work whether its in a coffee shop or city hall- this semester I was unable to find the time to make that happen. The following images are pieces from a "principles of photography" class. The students work with 4 x 5 cameras throughout the semester and their last assignment was exploring portraiture...

Matthew Kuehl

Jon Ralph (after Lee Friedlander)

Bennett Counsell

Dalia Kyle

Milwaukee talks...

Three wonderful blogs by three photographers working in my home town that I really admire. Each navigating cyberspace to share their thoughts and opinions of contemporary photography and the artistic process.

Mel Trittin
Kevin Miyazaki
JW Lawson

(Not to mention that they are good bloggers and post regularly... sorry about the slow moving posts. Now that teaching has slowed down I hope to add to the conversation a bit more.)

12 hour day

Thursday's are brutal lately. Teaching three 3 hour classes with a hour prep between them... a non stop day and today was a long one. I enjoy teaching and really learn a lot from my students but I feel abused at the end of days like today. Thankfully fellow professor Mike Rebholz has a beautiful collection of photographs hanging on campus that can transport one from the chaos of the present to the stillness of beauty. Thanks Mike.