Fine Art Photography 101: Making A Pinhole Camera.
One of the first assignments given to fine art photography students is to construct a pinhole camera, a simple instrument used to take blurry photographs. Some cameras are very simple; others quite elabourate. Popular art class pinhole subjects include:
- nudes outside in some field, industrial site or abandoned colliery
- cemeteries (usually angel statues)
- dead plants
- buildings (usually old ones)
- junkyards (usually rusted trucks)
Photos taken with pinhole cameras earn instant street cred with pretentious professors. Pinhole pictures are then heavily fussed over in the student galleries for being “daringly analogue” and described as “a throwback to the 19th century golden era of photography.”
Fine art photography students smugly speak of their pinhole endeavours in their classes; basking in pride for their “innovative” discoveries, and crowing about how much more “involved in the photographic process” they are.
Digital photography drones are now able to soullessly re-create this “magical” effect with a $100 Lensbaby attachment. Beware of these imposters! It only counts if it’s on film.
FIELD GUIDE TO ART STUDENTS: THE DARK ANGEL.
The Dark Angel is a devoted fan of Tim Burton and Edward Gorey. She is well-read, cultured, and extremely intelligent. She has talent in illustration, design, writing, painting and photography. She is usually either miserable in Painting, or miserable in Graphic Design, or miserable in Drawing. Some professors don’t appreciate her, but others wish more students were like her.
The Dark Angel can be identified by the following:
- neo-Victorian mourning attire
- handmade arm warmers
- frills
- gigantic cameos
- long Dr. Marten boots with torn fishnets
- skull barrettes
- Joy Division and Bauhaus posters in studio
- obsession with 19th century postmortem photography
- utilizing blood in her paintings (usually her own, sometimes an animal’s)
- Identifies as INFP on her Myers-Briggs chart
- pieces often include doll heads, knife slices, skeletons, adorable monsters
- writes sexy True Blood fanfic to relax
- morose yet dogged work ethic
- 4.0 GPA
Identifying line: “I HAVE to get out of this program!”
“Experimental” Photographers
A relatively persistent phenomenon of photography is the “re-discovery” of plastic lens film cameras. Once relegated by previous generations as “crappy,” Generation Y has adopted them as their belligerent statements that beauty comes in all formats. Most have also grown up not knowing the joy of chemical processing; the rich tang of vinegar as toxic fixer goes down the drain, so that’s a novelty, too.
Hipster photographers can only do things like “appreciate” the delicious contrast of an Ilford Black and White roll of medium format, but they do not know (or want to know) how to make a correctly-toned print. Laziness is praised as “experimentation.” In today’s meritocracy-oriented lives, quality of film photographic output has been replaced with rewarding those who successfully made something at all, no matter what the fuck it is.
The above pictures are actual student photos handed in for an assignment in an intermediate photo class.
When bad printing happens, the mistakes are justified as happy accidents. Very rarely is anything actually produced. Good professors will cut through this ruse and teach students how to make a decent print the old-fashioned way:
- chemistry
- math
- marketability
- tell you your print sucks because it’s true
Bad professors will:
- take your bullshit at face value
- “see where you were going with this approach”
- insist beginners use the most expensive chemistry and paper so when frustrated students quit halfway through the semester they can use the abandoned supplies for themselves
Now that film is not the normal choice for photographers anymore, there now exists an air of romance of some dying glory. Most of these kids have never even set foot inside an airless, stinky, claustrophobic darkroom. Many will never know the joys of eye strain and headaches; of chapped hands and dropped film cartridges.
Now, to make things even more interesting, Gen Y hipsters have adopted formerly crappy cameras and film as their new pastiche, which usually is expressed in the following self-righteous sentences:
- “I really do appreciate the vintage aesthetics of Polaroids.”
- “I kinda see myself as a crusader for a dying art form.”
- “If only we could turn back the clocks.”
- “No one understands why film is soooo amazing.”
- “There’s nothing like seeing an image appear before your eyes like magic. Soooo much better than soulless digital photography.”
The fact of the matter is, these people wouldn’t know what the fuck a Diana or Holga was if it weren’t for the aggressive marketing from the Lomography company and their ubiquitous presence at Urban Outfitters* chains everywhere across the country.
* Hipsters are also unaware that proceeds from their UO camera purchases go to support Republican candidates like Rick Santorum. This is due mostly to the fact that they have their heads up their fucking asses trying to figure out how to unwrap a 120 roll of film.
Correct Artist-Adverb Usage When Describing Something You Don’t Understand.
Picassoesque
Pollockesque
Calderesque
DeKooninglike
Saarlike
Krasneresque
Jeff Wall-ish
Beuysian
Kandinskian
Gottlieb-y
Foucaultian
Greenburgian
Mondrianian
A FIELD GUIDE TO ART STUDENTS: THE UNDERESTIMATED GREEK
The Underestimated Greek looks like the stereotypical frat boy/sorority girl. They come with all the trappings:
- vacant-sounding diction
- UGG boots
- sideways ballcaps
- popped collars
- fraternity hoodies
- nacho cheese-colored skin
Because art students are usually snobby hipsters, many (including professors) jump to the conclusions that they are not good artists because they don’t have the correct look and pledged something.
Fun Fact: The Underestimated Greeks are the most mocked art student at major university art schools!
However, nothing is logical at art school, so naturally these people often are some of the best artists in the program and often have the best attitudes. They also usually leave the Greek system around their junior year out of disgust and become either hipsters and/or pre-med majors.
Identifying line (female): “Sorry I’m like, late, I was tanning?”
Identifying line (male): “Dude. I’m so hung over.”
Art School As Religion.
Although most art students traditionally identify themselves as “Buddhist,” “agnostic” or “atheist,” most fail to observe the similarities between art school and places of worship. In reality, the religious “world” and the art “world” are quite similar. As Roman Catholics have CCD class and Jewish scholars study the Torah and Islamic pupils pour over the Koran, art students devote their lives toward a perfection that may not exist except in the work of their chosen “idol.” Usually it’s someone in the Saatchi collection.
Art students live similar lives to those of monks and nuns: ritual fasting, public declarations of devotion, the creation of icons, pouring over books about the disciplines that capture their hearts and minds, eschewing the cheapening of their belief systems by ‘selling out’ (Jesus in the Temples; Andy Warhol?)
Art students aspire to live the cliché perfected centuries ago by the Cistercian order of monks: the endurance of constant suffering to remind them of their devotion, which in turn rewards them with a place in heaven/article in ArtNews. For both, this will involve fasts, clothing made out of hair (both to wear in suffering and to display in a gallery), and self-inflicted bodily mutilation.
In art school, the equivalent to religious sects are your chosen discipline:
Painting/Drawing = Roman Catholicism
Ceramics = Buddhist
Photography = Judaism
Graphic Design = Mormon
Printmaking = Quaker
Metalworker = Hindu
Sculpture = People’s Temple of Jonestown
How To Be Taken Seriously As A Photo BFA.
Carry around an enormous box of equipment wherever you go. By doing so, you can be counted on to have all of the necessary equipment on hand for those “spontaneous moments.” Carry around a garbage bag to change your 4x5 magazines. Keep a detailed journal of everything you photograph, including small test prints, quotes from your favorite photographers, and mindless doodles. Obsess over your prints and make constant adjustments to your contrast. Complain incessantly about your lack of sleep. Make sure any open sores you might have on your skin are exacerbated by photographic chemicals.
Film Equipment Hierarchy (In order of status symbols)
- Leica
- Hasselblad
- View Camera (8x10 a bonus…a Deardorff 8x10 double bonus!)
- 2&1/4 Twin Lens (Rolleiflex a bonus!)
- Diana camera (must be vintage – Holgas and Lomos do not have the proper pastiche!)
- Nikon F (double points for one that’s black with brassing!)
- Polaroid Land Camera/600 Series: beloved but dead, a sacrificial lamb for hipsters.
Which Art School Should You Attend?
There are assloads of art schools out there, and each one considers itself the most important art school. It’s not clear what the reasoning is behind this assertion, but it largely has to do with:
superstar faculty (Tim Gunn - Parsons: The New School),
superstar status (Art Institute of Chicago)
superstar alumni (The Talking Heads - RISD; John Flansburgh - Pratt).
Would you rather go to a state university with a token art program, but a more well-rounded education overall? Or would you rather pay through the nose to attend a prestigious art school because it makes you feel more important about yourself? It’s up to you - there’s no real answer. There are pros and cons to both. In the former, you’ll still have to do math, but happily, you can take dunderhead math classes with the football players. And you can also take philosophy classes, English classes, literature classes, science classes. All of those things can enrich your approach. Personally, I went with the state education, because I’m cheap (in-state tuition was great), because I was more interested in the well-rounded education. Strictly speaking about art schools, our arts and architecture department was pretty craptastic. To our credit, however, we did have some rather distinguished alumni from our college. One was a guy who shot a famous National Geographic cover. Another was the world’s most famous book jacket designer. The third will be me.
In reality, the only REAL difference between most art schools is
- branding
- how much your parents or you are willing to shell out
- whether or not you feel like taking math
The biggest advantage to going to a more prestigious art school is the right to brag about it. Do not underestimate this power. If you can get into these schools, with their rigorous portfolio reviews and snotty attitudes, you’ve really earned the right to say things like this:
“I just want to make it clear RIGHT now that there is a HUGE between the San Francisco Art Institute, where I go, and the Art Institute of San Francisco, which is a chain of schools across the country.”
Geez! What IS the difference? Hell if I know. Both take a lot of money from people who want to make things, and make contacts. Some have more superstar alumni than others. However, artists with considerable artistic talent, Norman Rockwell for instance, attended that correspondence school advertised in the backs of magazines asking you to draw a pirate. “Serious” art students eschew Rockwell, calling him a racist creep (which he was), but he certainly wasn’t untalented. Personally, I think they’re jealous that they can’t paint like him. To his credit, Thomas Kinkade is a talented painter, too, if you want a house full of glowing English cottage plates put out by the Franklin Mint.
The bottom line is, art school doesn’t make untalented people talented, nor does it make talented people superstars. It’s there to make you think. It’s there to make you wokr, It’s also there to help you find direction, pussy, and drugs.
