Foto8 is no longer at Honduras St, but Jon Levy continues to pose interesting questions about photography on the web, and his blog post The World in 2012-According to Me he makes some interesting and challenging comments about photography, most of which I happen to agree with (though I have a few caveats, particularly on self-publishing, where I think he fails to consider the potential of publishing on demand, which has removed some of the pitfalls.)
His 2012 list of 10 19 things they didn’t want you to know about photography but are actually true will he says “empower you and blow the boring, self indulged, narcissistic fauxtojournalist documentary squatters off the face of this earth for good.” I do hope so; go and read them now!
Some have already caused a little controversy, and doubtless that was their intent. Writing “You cannot learn photography at university...” is bound to upset those who make a living out of teaching it, though I think it is at least largely true. Universities may help a few photographers to bloom, but mostly they seem to have the opposite effect, and constrain their students to a particular narrow view. Of course there are good photographers who come out of universities, but then there are probably rather more good photographers who go into them – like the students who used to come back to visit the college where I taught and tell the staff “thank God you taught us photography, because nobody does where we are now.”
Of course there are exaggerations and part-truths, but much that really makes sense. There are photographers who make a living selling prints in galleries (though your best career move for selling work is certainly death) but they are few, and most photographers with work in galleries make relatively low sales – galleries may survive on it because they sell the work of many photographers. And frankly, some of those who do make a living don’t make really good pictures and some have made a career out of taking the same pictures over and over again, stuck in a profitable rut they found many years ago.
Of course as he says, “EARNING A LIVING is not a god-given right in photography“, and he writes “You are however entitled in this day and age to get a job doing something else and STILL take pictures about what matters to you. You can still publish and tell your stories, maybe even more effectively.” I’m often heartened by remembering that many of the photographers whose work I admire most never really made a living from photography. And on the theme of money, was his “visa versa” in point 16 some kind of Freudian slip by him or the spell-checker or a deliberate pun?
You can also hear Levy talking about photography and in particular about the book Poppy – Trails of Afghan Heroin which he reviewed on Foto8 a couple of weeks ago and picked as his book of the year. This conversation between Jon Levy and Jonathan Worth was the final lecture of the year for the #Phonar course at Coventry University (does Levy think the students on this course learn photography I wonder?) It starts very badly, but improves as Jon gets into his spiel. Halfway through it loses video and is much improved for it – sometimes a picture is not worth even a single word, and this would have been better simply as audio. Of course you can just not watch the picture; it’s long – 37 minutes – but worth listening to.
You can also read Joerg Colberg’s review of Poppy on Conscientious in which ends “this book is setting a new benchmark for the photojournalistic photobook. Highly recommended.” It links to a video presentation as well as showing some page spreads and gives a good idea of the book.
Peter Marshall 7 Dec 2012