Searching for some reading for my students, I was combing over Alec Soth’s (now unfortunately defunct) beautiful, sometimes weird, and pretty much always insightful blog, and found this gem. I think I might have read it in grad school, but I’m pretty sure I ignored at least 80% of it if I did. Worth a read -and a grain of salt of course.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Graduate Studies: Maxims from the Chair
from the book The Education of a Photographer
by Charles H Traub, Chair of photography at SVA
The Do’s
- Do something old in a new way
- Do something new in an old way
- Do something new in a new way, Whatever works … works
- Do it sharp, if you can’t, call it art
- Do it in the computer—if it can be done there
- Do fifty of them—you will definitely get a show
- Do it big, if you cant do it big, do it red
- If all else fails turn it upside down, if it looks good it might work
- Do Bend your knees
- If you don’t know what to do, look up or down—but continue looking
- Do celebrities—if you do a lot of them, you’ll get a book
- Connect with others—network
- Edit it yourself
- Design it yourself
- Publish it yourself
- Edit, When in doubt shoot more
- Edit again
- Read Darwin, Marx, Joyce, Freud, Einstein, Benjamin, McLuhan, and Barth
- See Citizen Kane ten times
- Look at everything—stare
- Construct your images from the edge inward
- If it’s the “real world,” do it in color
- If it can be done digitally—do it
- Be self centered, self involved, and generally entitled and always pushing—and damned to hell for doing it
- Break all rules, except the chairman’s
by Charles H. Traub from ‘Indecent Exposure’ (1980′s)
The Don’ts
- Don’t do it about yourself—or your friend—or your family
- Don’t dare photograph yourself nude
- Don’t look at old family albums
- Don’t hand color it
- Don’t write on it
- Don’t use alternative process—if it ain’t straight do it in the computer
- Don’t gild the lily—AKA less is more
- Don’t go to video when you don’t know what else to do
- Don’t photograph indigent people, particularly in foreign lands
- Don’t whine, just produce
by Charles H. Traub from ‘About’ (2003-2006)
The Truisms
- Good work sooner or later gets recognized
- There are a lot of good photographers who need it
- before they are dead
- If you walk the walk, sooner or later you’ll learn to talk the talk
- If you talk the talk too much, sooner or later you are probably not
- walking the walk (don’t bullshit)
- Photographers are the only creative people that don’t pay attention to their predecessors work—if you imitate something good, you are more likely to succeed
- Whoever originated the idea will surely be forgotten until he or she’s dead—corollary: steal someone else’s idea before they die
- If you have to imitate, at least imitate something good
- Know the difference
- Critics never know what they really like
- Critics are the first to recognize the importance of that which is already known in the community at large
- The best critics are the ones who like your work
- Theoreticians don’t like to look—they’re generally too busy writing about themselves
- Given enough time, theoreticians will contradict and reverse themselves
- Practice does not follow theory
- Theory follows practice
- All artists think they’re self taught
- All artists lie, particularly about their dates and who taught them
- No artist has ever seen the work of another artist (the exception being the post-modernists who’ve adapted appropriation as another means of reinventing the history)
- The curator or the director is the one in black
- The artist is the messy one in black
- The owner is the one with the Prada bag
- The gallery director is the one who recently uncovered the work of a forgotten person from his or her widower
- Every galleriest has to discover someone
- Every curator has to re-discover someone
- The best of them is the one who shows your work
- Every generation re-discovers the art of photography
- Photography history gets reinvented every ten years
- New galleries discover old photographers
- Galleries need to fill their walls—corollary: thus new talents will always be found
- Galleriests say hanging pictures is an art
- There are no collectors, only people with money
- Anyone who buys your work is a collector—your parents don’t count
- All photographers are voyeurs
- Admit it and get on with looking
- Everyone, is narcissistic, anyone can be photographed
- Photography is about looking
- Learning how to look takes practice
- All photography, in the right context at the right time is valuable
- It is always a historical document
- Sooner or later someone will say it is art
- Any photographer can call himself an artist,
- But not every artist can call himself a photographer
- Compulsivness Helps
- Neatness helps too
- Hard work helps the most
- The style is felt—fashion is fad
- Remember, its usually about who, what, where, when, why, and how
- It is who you know
- Many a good idea is found in a garbage can
- But darkrooms are dark… and dank, forgidaboudit
- The best exposure is the one that works
- Expose for the shadows, and develop for the highlights
- Or better yet, shoot digitally.
- Cameras don’t think, they don’t have memories
- But digital cameras have something called memory
- Learn to see as the camera sees, don’t try to make it see as the human eye sees
- Remember digital point and shoots are faster than Leicas
- Though the computer can correct anything, a bad image is a bad image
- If all else fails, you can remember, again, to either do it large or red
- Or, tear it up and tape it together
- It always looks better on the wall framed
- If they don’t sell, raise your price
- Self-importance rises with the prices of your images on the wall
- The work of a dead artist is always more valuable than the work of a live one
- You can always pretend to kill yourself and start all over.
