Through a chain of what seem to be unconnected circumstances and separate but reasonable decisions, what was once process-oriented became product-oriented, what was once relatively private or en famille became public, and what was once concentrated in the final semester of the senior year expanded in the only direction it could — backward — to infuse the entirety of the students’ experience within the program. If this could happen in a BFA photo program, at a post-secondary level wherein final thesis projects in the arts are not universally considered mandatory, it’s easy to envision the importance they acquire at the MFA level, where they are in fact generally required. […]
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I got stuck indoors in the air-conditioning during the heat wave that began shortly after I returned from China (but is definitely not caused by global warming, as the Angel Moroni recently told Mitt Romney in a dream, according to the latest rumor out of Salt Lake City). Adrift in the doldrums until […] When I speak of the well-made photograph, I use that phrase to describe a recurrent type of photograph produced according to strict if unstated guidelines — and, beyond that, a recurrent type of photography project built around such pictures. I use trope similarly, in its meaning as “a common or overused theme or device: cliché.” These pictures and projects resemble each other to such an extent that, with minor adjustments, the images, their accompanying texts, often even the project statements, are hot-swappable and interchangeable. In short, they all look basically the same. […] Conceptually (I use the word advisedly, and charitably), the vast majority of photography projects I encounter nowadays seem to represent some welling-up of archetypes from the collective unconscious of the academically indoctrinated. Something’s in the academy-filtered air they’ve breathed, or the academy-blend Kool-Aid they’ve imbibed. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |