A reader has posted a question on one of my earlier blog posts,

TJ Swafford Says:
Question: I’m currently involved in a speeeeeeeeeendy photography degree at SCAD, Do I even NEED this degree to be successful? Or would I be better served by hooking up with an established photographer and glean what I can from him/her?

TJ,

Do you stay in school and get a degree or leave art school to learn from a photographer?

University of Pennsylvania graduation.

There is no easy answer to your question. I am a big believer in education. Yet a Bachelor’s degree in Art is no guarantee of anything. For that matter, a Bachelor’s degree in many fields is no guarantee of anything.

Yes, education is expensive. Developing your mind and expanding your thinking is very valuable.

Everyone’s path is different. If you want to be a commercial or fine artist there is no straight path for your career. Unlike becoming a lawyer or doctor there is not a prescribed way to become an artist. The most successful artists have always blazed their own unique paths.

I know a corporate lawyer who told me that when he was in high school, his father said to him, “You can be a lawyer or a doctor. You choose.” He has ultimately pursued one of the two options dictated by his father.

You do have the power to choose your own path, wherever it may lead. Just by choosing to go to art school you have picked a path off the main stream.

To be an artist, you will need to have a passion and perseverance. You will need to figure out how to pay your bills.

Clients have never asked to see my diploma when they were considering hiring me. Instead they want to see my photographs. But my degree in History of Art and an education in the liberal arts have given me a conceptual framework to see and understand the world. I can discuss architecture with architects. I know what a cap rate is when I talk with a commercial realtor.

It is important to learn how to learn. I do feel that my liberal arts education boosted my ability to learn things on my own, which is an important skill in our dynamic changing world.

I did not take a digital photograph until 2001. Since then I have taught myself many things about digital photography, software and computers.

In the beginning of the digital photography revolution, I imagined I was climbing a mountain of knowledge, learning new technology. Yet as I hiked upward towards the acquisition of more knowledge, the mountain has kept growing and changing. The goal of reaching the top and completely mastering digital photo technology feels perpetually out of reach because the mountain of knowledge is always growing and morphing.

I also feel this way with using and understanding the internet and social media. There will be more changes in the future. So learning how to learn is important.

You will have to make your own decision as far as whether to continue and finish your degree. I don’t know your financial circumstances. If you are piling up student loan debt and school is a huge financial burden, it could make sense to take time off to work in your field and get the perspective of working with a real world photographer.

There are limited opportunities for paid work with photographers. Many commercial photographers are operating with fewer paid staff than before. The freelance model of hiring people is common. And unpaid internships are common, too.

If you leave school and enter the marketplace to find work with a photographer, you will be competing with people who do have degrees in your field. That’s not to say you won’t succeed, it’s just that if fifty people apply for a job, having a degree and experience could move your resume higher up the stack.

Good luck. Whether or not you ultimately finish school–keep learning and keep taking photos.

Keep in mind, one upside to getting a degree, especially a graduate degree, is that you get to wear a crazy hat.

Princeton University graduation.

Princeton Theological Seminary graduation.

Princeton Theological Seminary graduation.

Princeton graduation ceremony.

Penn graduation.

Paul Stankard examines one of his creations.

Paul Stankard is one of the preeminent American glass paperweight artists. With fire and a patient hand, he breathes life into detailed botanical and ethereal forms that are eventually encapsulated inside crystal.

We were fortunate to visit him at his home and studio to shoot images for a feature story in American Style magazine.

Paul delicately adds fine detail to a glass leaf.

During the shoot Paul, his daughter Katherine, and master assistant David Groeber demonstrated aspects of the glass-working process. Glass is very sensitive to timing and temperature. Greg documented the action while staying clear of flames and annealing ovens.

Paul and master assistant Dave Grober encapsulating a botanical in clear glass.

Throughout the day Greg shot several different environmental portraits of Paul, so that the editor at American Style would have options in laying out the story. Paul’s beautiful home and studio provided many opportunities for photographs.

Paul in his home, which is on the same property as his studio.

There is currently a retrospective celebrating Paul’s fifty years of work showing at the Wheaton Arts center in Millville, NJ. The show runs until May 8, 2011.

Two of Paul’s finished glass botanicals that are in his own collection.

This weekend I am attending ASMP’s Strictly Business 3 series of talks and seminars for professional photographers. In this time of immense change in technology and in the economics of the photography industry, these events have been a positive catalyst for me. It is clear that the world needs images.  While there are forces at work that are reducing prices at the low end of the photography market (think micro stock and cell phone news photos), there is still a need for experienced commercial image makers.

Greg Benson, tagged.

This weekend I have met many other photographers, both younger and older. I’m 52. While it has been fun to engage in nostalgic reminiscences with photographers my age, I am energized by the enthusiasm of many of the younger photographers. It is encouraging to see people in their twenties starting their photo businesses. It has always been a leap of faith to start a photography business–I started my full time business in 1982.

Yesterday one of the four workshops I ended up in was called the Artist Lost and Found taught by Sean Kernan. I entered the wrong hotel meeting room and ended up in Sean’s session by accident. The previous sessions during the day on licensing, web sites and marketing were helpful and informative, but by after lunch my brain was filled to the top with prescriptive things I should start doing. Sean focused  on having working commercial photographers re-connect with the wonder and thrill with photography that animated them when they were new photographers.

Sean had the group of about sixteen people do group exercises to open up perception and let go of inhibition. I felt like I was in a theater class.

We stood in a circle and Sean tossed an imaginary potato to someone across the circle. That person mimed tossing to another person and then the imaginary potato became a basketball and then an orange. While doing a child like game the brain had to move into another sphere of imagining and reacting instead of rational thinking. We played another circle game with changing music. One person would move across the circle to touch the next player. Each person had to move to the type of music being played. A formal minuet, hip hop, monks chanting, tribal drum music followed in quick succession as each person improvised movement to that music.

What’s the connection with photography? Every creative endeavor needs to tap into intuition and gut decision making. Being open to the new is a crucial part of being creative.

ASMP members getting *their* photo taken by Sean Henry.

photo by Vivian Maier

Fame and recognition can depend on dumb luck. When John Maloof purchased the contents of an abandoned storage locker he never expected to find a treasure trove of photographs by a completely unknown artist. In spite of her talent, during her own lifetime, Vivian Maier’s work was likely unknown to anyone but the people closest to her.

Her work from the 1950s anticipates work by Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander. There is an affinity to Robert Frank’s work.  Similar to Arbus, Maier used a square format camera and captured photos of real people on the street. I have always been a sucker for good street photography. It’s a delight to look through her images.

photo by Vivian Maier

This shot reminds me of Robert Frank’s work. There is an air of glamour and mystery immersed in an ordinary night. Who is this woman with a while stole and puffy dress walking towards a 1957 Chevy? Why is she alone?

photo by Vivian Maier

I love how the balloon blocks the face of the man sitting with the baby. Just as the baby yearns to touch the balloon, I yearn to see his face, yet I know I never will.

photo by Vivian Maier

Maier shot many details of hands and textures. They are visually intriguing and tell a story of a person without showing the person’s face. The geometry of the triangular blanket and the itsy bitsy circle of the watch face play against the circles and rectangles on the woman’s dress.

photo by Vivian Maier

Maier’s shot of the Sphinx and pyramid interrupted by a horse’s ass is hilarious and ahead of its time. It shows the messiness and absurdity of the real world at a big tourist site. I speculate that she was a nanny on a family trip to Egypt.

She was an on-the-street spy who created surreal images with a camera. Given that the world almost missed Maier’s work, I wonder how many other artistic treasures sit undiscovered amidst the tons of work created by unsung artists.

Jeanne-Claude, the wife and collaborator of Christo died recently and yesterday a memorial service was held at the Met in New York City. I learned that the two of them were born on the same day, June 13, 1935. They first met in 1958.

Jeanne-Claude & Christo, "The Gates", February 2005

I remember seeing Christo talk at the Carnegie Art Museum in Pittsburgh in about 1977 or 1978 at a screening of films about his work Running Fence and Valley Curtain. I was impressed by the energy, scale and sheer chutzpah of designing and producing a work that was 24 miles long. Running Fence was a fabric fence that started at the Pacific coastline in California and ran inland for 24 miles.

I have always admired that fact that Christo and Jeanne-Claude raised the money to produce their expensive and temporary projects on their own. In college I even contemplated doing my own Christo-like installation, dreaming of roping off the Arts Quad at Cornell. I made some tentative plans and even took photos of the area, but scheming is easier and cheaper than doing.

Jeanne-Claude was the silent partner, the wife behind the scenes. An article in the NY Times mentions that even though she generated ideas and worked on many projects with Christo, they only started to credit her name in 1994. It is curious that a woman who was an avant garde artist lived as a nameless collaborator in the quiet shadow of her more famous husband.

Since they were partners in their work it is difficult to assess what each of their contributions were. And since their work was as much the logistics and political maneuvering of gaining permission to take over large areas of public space, as it was the aesthetics of the final installation, it is difficult to judge their work in the same terms of say judging a painting or a photograph.

In February of 2005 I traveled to New York to visit their Central Park winter project, The Gates. The bright large scaled orange gates jumped out of the dreary gray winter landscape of Central Park, a magnet for visitors. One friend at the time commented that The Gates was a 1970s idea that was finally realized in 2005. While the sheer scale and number of gates was impressive along with their ability to draw people, at some level the piece had an emptiness.

The funniest and most telling commentary on The Gates was done by Stephen Colbert, then on the Daily Show and billed as their Senior Conceptual Art Correspondent.

“I used to think 21 million dollars could be used to achieve something noble, like building a hospital wing, but The Gates has forced me to reconceptualize what what 21 million dollars can be used for. In this case, like, redecorating a bike path,” deadpans Colbert.