Dominick Tyer - Banana Camera
Simon Bainbridge of the British Journal of Photography has kicked up a little storm by asking "Are photography courses useful?". Thousands of new photography graduates join the workforce every year and it's not as if there's that much work for established photographers; so common sense might suggest that the chances of success for the newcomers are slim and getting slimmer. Bainbridge also asks why those running and teaching the courses don't make their students more aware of the odds.
I'm often asked where I studied photography (I didn't) and where I'd recommend studying, so this question is one I've often considered. There have even been times when I've felt my work could do with a more rigorous academic foundation (usually after a long work drought) and I've thought about enrolling for an M.A. or something. Then I was asked to do a guest talk for some students at the London College of Communications and it seemed ridiculous to accept and then to apply to be a student.
I've done a few talks at LCC now and aside from the fact that I've learned a lot about my own work from the experience I'm always surprised by the expectations of the students. While they often seem naive about the business of being a photographer, I don't get the sense that they expect it to be an easy life. I often find myself explaining simple, boring, fundamental procedures like getting proposals out and invoicing effectively and it seems to me that not teaching this stuff is a far greater omission than not teaching that photography is an oversubscribed occupation.
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