Last week, BJP's editor Simon Bainbridge published the following comment on photography education:
Personally, I've got no axe to grind about the thousands of young people studying photography each year, despite the fact they have virtually no prospect of making a living from it when they graduate. After all, for most students university is primarily an educational signpost; a piece of paper that says they've attained the same level of academic achievement as nearly 50% of other recent school leavers in the UK. So why not go study something you enjoy, and therefore might actually learn some transferable skills from in the process?
But most final year photography students I meet are hopelessly naive about their prospects, and the failure of colleges to spell out the facts is, at the very least, a moral failure. There are simply too many photographers - good ones, with real skills and experience, and with at least half-baked business models - to survive the current climate. So please, spare me another student telling me they plan to do a bit of art, a bit of editorial and - begrudgingly - a bit of advertising when they get out there and begin their God-given career.
Here's the verdict of a photographer who's the role model for students who think they can do a bit of everything in service of their own art. 'My advice? Get re-skilled,' says Simon Norfolk (writing for World Press Photo, not long after losing his savings to a collapsed Icelandic bank). 'Keep your photographic aspirations but try to get a trade like film editing, web-design or accounting. Soon we'll all be amateur photographers with real money-making jobs on the side that we don't tell our colleagues about. We need to get over the snobbery attached to that.'
As you can imagine, the letters started pouring in. Jon Lee of Edinburgh, for example, argued that the comment was 'offensive - a personal attack on educators and students alike'. He wrote:
I am sick and tired of so-called professionals moaning about too many students coming into the industry. Of course they are idealistic, full of energy and hope – rather that than bitter and cynical. I am a lecturer in professional photography [at Stevenson College Edinburgh] and proud to be so. I spent 11 years working in advertising in London and am aware of how hard the industry is to make a living, but this does not stop me inspiring others
Maybe you should look at the bigger picture and consider how many colleges and universities there are teaching photography, spending money on equipping their studios with digital imaging products, cameras, lighting and so on – propping up the photography industry during hard times. How many students buy digital cameras from Nikon and Canon, etc? I'm sure you would have printed the obituary for Ilford long ago if it were not for educational establishments still buying traditional materials.
Why are you trying to alienate your readership? What job do you suggest they go in to – banking? Can you stop criticising education as some entity far removed from reality. We are integral to the industry, financially and creatively.
Another reader, Adam Elder, also from Edinburgh, agreed:
Given that photographers – whether professional, amateur or students – provide your magazine with the life-blood of income, I feel that your article Time to Recalibrate is ill-judged and slightly offensive to many talented and ambitious potential professional photographers.
Does BJP really think there should be less working photographers? Does BJP really think that exclusion from education and discouragement from ambition is the way forward? Teaching photography provides me with a valuable income and a great deal of enjoyment. I welcome as many students as possible to enrol on photography courses. And I'll help as many as possible to pursue their dream of a professional career, or to simply increase their knowledge of the craft.
Others, such as David Nobel from Stafforshire University defended his university's programme by explaining that the institution never 'shy away from making clear the difficulties that face students ahead of them.' He wrote:
We have practitioners from all fields of the media in every week of every semester to talk and to give appropriate advice and guidance to students, such as Eamonn McCabe, Brian Griffith and David Hurn.
Which is why the current deputy picture editor of Wallpaper magazine, Matt Beaman, is one of our graduates from us four years ago. We make it clear that the visual awareness we teach is not just about becoming a photographer. For once could someone give higher education some credit?
We know how tough it is as all of us have been and still are involved in the industry, and I never sit in some academic complacent atmosphere that does not address things as they are.
The debate continues with this week's comment (which will be published tomorrow, but which you can exclusively read here today) by Simon Bainbridge:
Last week’s Comment on photo education and student’s woeful lack of awareness about their career opportunities provoked a predictable response. College lecturers accused me of launching a personal attack upon them, while I was congratulated by many in the industry for sticking it to colleges, who in their eyes are robbing students blind.
Both miss the point. But what particularly worried me were the responses from college lecturers that said BJP shouldn’t be talking about this issue at all, given that fact that students and universities buy and read the magazine. Perhaps our equipment tests should also ignore any defects if the company in question has advertised with us…
Likewise, as I stated last week, the purpose of colleges is not necessarily vocational. As Roger Blackwell writes on the BJP-Online.com professional forum, ‘Some people find it difficult to grasp the concept of education and think that it should simply be “training” for a job’.
Between these two polarised (and often knee-jerk) opinions, lies a real issue. What are photography students’ expectations, and how are they informed and managed? I know that many colleges make real efforts on this front, but if you meet graduates on a regular basis – as I do – you quickly realise that most don’t.
It’s difficult to get a proper picture how many photography graduates are coming into the market, and just how many full-time photographers are working in the UK, so I turned to Skillset, who have produced the most recent and extensive research (visit skillset.org/photo/industry/).
If you count retail, labs, post-production, picture libraries and agencies, manufacturers and support services, the photo industry employed approximately 44,000 people in 2007 – of which less than half are actual photographers.
It’s harder to get figures for students because photography isn’t calculated as its own subset (such as creative arts and design), but a rough estimate is that nearly 5000 graduates each year. That’s based on the Association for Photography in Higher Education’s assumption that each of the 164 BA courses in photography has around 30 students per year. At last count, there were a further 45 Foundation Degrees, and a total of 270 higher education courses directly related to photo imaging.
From that basis I’d like to have a reasoned discussion about the purpose and value of photo education.
Reactions?
