School?

The world has been deteriorating since its inception. Entering the PJ world earlier than you ought to wont stop that, nor will it make the slightest dent, but it will definitely cheat you of many things you need in order to work well and conceive mature ideas. Nothing is so urgent in this life as your own self development at this point. If you want to contribute something meaningful to photojournalism then nurture your mind for now. Read history, literature, politics, economics, philosophy, and study languages (you already made a good start there, as we know). Study the history of art, while you are at it. The real world is right where you are, to dive into it doesnt require a trip to the third world. surely there are journalism classes you can take — take them and work on some student projects in the meantime. Go on ride alongs with the police. Enter the world of juvenile delinquency, crime, jails. Visit the immigrant nabes — lots of dominicans in Providence. Broken families, poverty — it is all right there. Eugene Richards’ groundbreaking book, Dorchester Days, was shot not too far from where you are, the next state over, in a lower class or working class nabe that looks much like certain areas of Providence. His first book was shot in the delta, in Arkansas — he began work on that when he was a Vista volunteer. Do what comes to hand. Stories are everywhere you look for them.

But if you must travel, ask Kitra Cahana about her MO. She also is in college but she shot an award winning story on the pullout from Gaza and also got some funding to do a story on Ethiopian jews moving to Israel. Bear in mind however that what guides her story choices is an interest in Israel and Judaism, and that gives her a focus so that she doesnt dissipate her energies chasing down just any old story. Focus and dedication to the themes that really move you are what count.

There are lots of opportunities for students to pursue indepth work and cut their teeth on some good stories so that when they graduate they can hit the ground running. It doesnt have to involve an either/or choice between school and the world. that is a misconception.

Eunice, in photojournalism a good portfolio of your work is your B.A. But if i were you i would finish your college education, not for the B.A. but to better prepare you for the real world out there. You may think you’re wasting your time now but believe me a lot of things you learn in school will be useful in the long run. Photojournalism is not just about taking pictures but about being a journalist with your camera. Many succesful photojournalists came from different academic backgrounds and those background will somehow contribute to your career as a photojournalist. A grand example is the legendary photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado whom i had the rare opportunity to assist for one month in Jakarta during his migration project. During my conversation with him it was obvious that his bacground in economics contributed a lot to his way of thinking as a photojournalist. I used to think like you and feel that I’m wasting my time in school up to a point that i left. Sure, i managed to somehow turn quite succesful as a photojournalist but i learned it the hard way in the real world :)

KJ

Jon has hit it right on the head. I have students, younger than you (14 to 18), and we travel as a school extensively to the third world and wilderness areas. You know what ? I spent a month in Guatemala with these PJ studnets in May, and some of them despite being surrounded by a stunning place with endless stories, easy to get stories (or easier) I might add and alot of them came back with junk. Its not the location, its your background (IE classes in all sorts of subjects, particularly of a social science and liberal arts bent), maturity, passion, and personal work ethic that will make it or break it. As a college student, you should be able to take summers off- go traveling, do personal projects, do a study abroad. But stay in school, immersing yourself in the “real world” around you. You need background to better understand all the shit – and the good stuff- you will see in the third world, as well as in the States. I didnt start traveling till right after I graduated college, same with serious photography. Thats not necessarily the right answer for you, but I can say that 7 years of classes in everything from anthropology to history to geopolitcs to poetry and Asian humanities and world religions defintely helped prepare me to not only better understand what I have seen and continue to see, but to utilize it and channel my passion for PJ and doc photography. Jeez, just reading as much as possible will help!

Do as Jon wisely suggests, pursue personal photographic storytelling in your area. Forget about selling shots right away and working; yes it can lead to good contacts and is good experience but Id say, for PJ and doc photo, overall experience in academics and in life will serve you better at this point. (That being said, if you can get a gallery show up, sell some stock, whatever, dont say no to the money!) Get a website up as well, and network. If you dont love people and the world in general, youll not succeed in PJ- just my opinion here.

Its interesting, alot of famous photogs studied photography formally- but alot didnt. Check out Steve McCurry and James Nachtwey- one studied filmmaking, one studied art history. For me, Im more interested in doing a photo seminar like VII’s or a class at ICP in NYC than getting a full on masters in photography (which is where I am at, personally). Again maybe not the answer for you, but I think building up personal knowledge, a strong portfolio, some travel experience, and – and I think college alone is awesome for this- CONTACTS and opportunities ad internships- this will prepare you to hit it running, as Jon said, in a few years. Now is the time to make mistakes, learn without having to derive a paycheck from it, and pursue your own interests photographically without the pressures of succeeding in a supercompetitive, super experience saturated market.

If you are looking for programs, try the Duke Doc Arts program and the SALT institute in Maine. If you want volunteer opps, you can PM me and Ill see who/what I can direct you to, in the Third World as well, for the summer. Good luck !

College studies must be proper, whatever you learn in school will be all the things you could fall back on in life.

ditto everything above – i’m a big believer in staying in school for the chance to “develop and learn without the pressure to earn.” don’t worry – the world will still be deteriorating when you finish school. school can also afford you the opportunity of researching and preparing a story during the semester and then shooting that story every summer/winter break (should that story be outside your immediate location). you’ll have lots of opportunities, and lots of time.

Eunice,
Stay in school and soak it all up. Trust me. It might be really really hard and you may not like it and your brain might melt and ooze out of your ears but its still worth it. You think school is tough now? Try it at 32.

be poor and take photography? have u checked the prices of the gear? the costs photography requires?
who will pay for you?

I think you can have the most expensive camera and spend four years studying but i dont know if it will make someone a better photographer. A course does give you the background to develop your own style and improve your skills without pressure but to be honest you would probably get the same if you could use the same amount of time taking photos and learning yourself and fit it round doing a basic job. It is a common statement, i dont know how correct it is but from experience i would say it is close to the truth, that a lot of the biggest photographers never really set foot in a photography class, they picked up a camera and just started taking pictures. Your portfolio not a piece of paper is the key to any employment so it depends on the balance you want. Personally i have found that i gained a lot more at university and after through just taking photos on my own personal projects and my intiative than following any set projects and training.

I’m kinda in the same boat and have just started a 3 year BA in Documentary Photography today! The course that im on in Newport, Wales, UK is really flexible and will allow me to follow projects that im interested in but within the safe structure of uni life instead of being out in the ‘real’ world having to worry about how im gonna pay the morgage if no one likes the pictures i make. Im saving all that for 3 years time! I hope you stay in uni and it all works out for you. The one thing i am worried about though is cost. They expect us to have shot 200 rolls of film by Christmas, which at the moment seems like quite alot. Im sure most people on LS like me are used to shotting digi now and it will be quite a shock to the system to shoot all that film again. Good luck!

You will find that 200 rolls by Christmas is not really that much, about 2 rolls a week, good to get into the practice of regular shooting, (assume you will be asked to bracket which will use up the film), especially for documentary work. You can get big amounts of film in bulk cheaply over internet and your not going to be having to print them all up, just getting negatives mostly and i assume through self-processing at the university. I am assuming uni’s havent changed when it comes to photography in the last 3 years in terms of facilities and approach.

Let me make it quite clear that when I speak of education, i am referring to a traditional liberal arts education and emphatically not a degree in photography or training at a photo school. As far as I am concerned the latter is mere vocational training. It doesnt take much to master the technical side of photography, and while courses like A Roll A Day, Finding Your Vision, Documentary 101, and so on may well be helpful in giving you direction or inspiring you, I think you are better off, financially as well as vocationally, simply going to the source, interning at an agency, stringing for papers or the wires, etc, which are the traditional means whereby young photographers gained knowledge and experience. Ideas are best found outside of the vocational sphere. Salgado definitely got his survival skills, his marketing aptitude and his themes from the courses he studied. If you limit yourself to growth within the context of a vocational school you are cutting yourself off from the ideas that will sustain you, broaden your imagination, and ultimately distinguish you as an original thinker. At the very least if you attend a legitimate college, be sure to take courses outside the sphere of the photo department. Otherwise, frankly I dont think there is any better training than on the job training.

Y’all are amazing. Thank you so much for all of your replies. It’s given me a lot more to think about; I’m always being told that I need to think with my head and not just go with momentary impulses (like letting a possibly insane homeless woman stay the night in my dorm room).

Jon – entiendo perfectamente lo que ud. dice. Yo me arrepentí de haber implicado que no puedo encontrar el mundo real aquí donde estoy; claro que hay tantas oportunides de cuentos increíbles y tocantes. Es solamente que yo me siento tan apática aquí y realmente estoy feliz sólo con la fotografía. Pero hay que esperar y estar paciente, una habilidad que me falto. Estoy de acuerdo que uno debe tomar clases de intereses más generales y tal vez más útiles que la fotografía como destreza práctica, y por eso tomo tantas lenguas y clases como la historia y la economía y las sciencias políticas. Quisiera decir ‘joder, las clases, ¿qué más da?’ pero entiendo que eso sería mala idea.

Dana – good point about the cost of photography; it´s pretty ridiculous. I didn’t quite mean it like that, though; my thinking was more along the lines of sacrifice the 100k a year life that my parents want for me as a doctor or a lawyer (which I’m really not interested in anyway) and any sort of stable life in favor of whatever photojournalism may bring me, hardships be damned. Does that make more sense? (Maybe not.)

Chris – I’m so jealous! I was accepted to several unis in the UK but my parents point blank refused. And as I’m still a minor, I didn’t have much of a choice. 200 rolls of film! That sounds like so much fun. Switching to digital for me was awesome but I really miss the b&w film mindset; I take way too many useless pictures on my memory card just because I can so I’m trying to get rid of that awful habit. I finally found a darkroom here so I’ll be doing film a lot more. Good luck to you too; I’d love to see some of your stuff once Christmas rolls around!

Seriously, though, thanks everyone. That’s a really good point about Salgado, and I guess that’s why while I am in school I’m taking pretty much everything but photography (although I do want to take an art history course and some general visual arts courses; I know nothing about composition or lighting or any of that good stuff) and trying to educate myself in things like politics and econ and everything I ignored in high school because I just didn’t care enough. I mean I’m still impatient and stir-crazy and want to be anywhere but here, but logically it’s clearly the best place for me to be and I’m glad you all kind of knocked sense into me. Of course when I invent teleportation I’ll be able to pop into Cambodia for the weekend and be back in time for Monday class, but until then I guess I’ll have to listen to all of you and be sensible. :)

School is perhaps the only time in your life where you will have the space and time to explore things you otherwise wouldn’t. Would I know the Zone system if I hadn’t gone to school, probably not. At the same time it can feel limiting and boring but the more you have a solid foundation in the craft of photography the better a photojournalist you willl be. I for one worked my way through school including doing international assignments so it is really up to to decide how much you get captured by university life. Learn as much as you can about as many things as you can while you can because being a good photojournalist is more about knowing about the world around you and effectively comuniating that than it is about simply being a good photographer, those are a dime a dozen, you hve to be able to put it all in context…

International assignments…that would be so cool. I think I might have to go grant-hunting.

“how necessary is it for me to complete university in order to get a job as a photographer”

Necessary? Not at all. Desirable? Indeed. At the very least college is the place to go through all of your “phases” (the Cartier-Bresson phase, the Ansel Adams phase, the Larry Fink phase and the Larry Storch phase) without annoying anyone but yourself and your teachers before you setle down and deside what it is that YOU want to do…

Good one James!.

Eunice, letting an insane homeless person into your house has nothing to do with being a good photographer or expressing your concern for the people you see suffering. It does no good and it may do harm. I was once shooting in a very poor batey, people hungry, we had a jeep full of supplies. Did that make me think twice about my ethics? Yes, but in reality you cannot do your work if you take on the same conditions as the people whose lives you are documenting or convert yourself into their savior. You cannot shoot on an empty stomach, so what good are you then? Honestly, if you have any reason for being there, it is to do your best job shooting the story and getting that story out there. Therein lies your ethical responsibility. The rest is just looney altruism. You have to make a choice: are you an aid worker, a counselor, an advocate, or a photographer? Each role is distinct, comes with its special requirements, and can only be done with a full time commitment, so you cannot really mix them.

now if you really are just listless and apathetic in school, maybe you just need a break. I still think the best thing to do is write to Kitra, talk to her about her ability to mix the two, and then decide if there might be something in that MO for you. If not, you can always take a break and return to school afterwards. People assume that college is automatically the right thing to do, but i fyou are ready for it, or attuned to it, you pretty much end up wasting time and money forcing yourself to do something this isnt going to stick.

I think you misunderstood me – I was using the homeless woman as an example of something I should not do and a bad decision that I made on impulse. Sorry if that was unclear. But I do agree with you that each role is distinct; I’ve been thinking a lot about the line between aid workers and photojournalists and journalists and where the ethics lie. Personally I think it’s very difficult to say ’there’s the line, don’t cross it’ in very black and white terms, but I do understand that it’s an important distinction to try and make.

“At the very least college is the place to go through all of your “phases” (the Cartier-Bresson phase, the Ansel Adams phase, the Larry Fink phase and the Larry Storch phase) without annoying anyone but yourself and your teachers before you setle down and deside what it is that YOU want to do…”

Haha yesss. Awesome reply.

No I understood you just fine. I was simply using that as a springboard to make a larger point.

I pretty much agree with all of the baove, but would like to add that a career in photojournalism can be quite a challenege. It is an extremely competitive profession.

What other professions are there where all of your competition, collegues, customers, and subjects can see your work nearly every day. It would be like being a plumber where everytime you fixed a drain every other plumber, previous or potential customer, and well, anyone also interested in plumbing, would come over and check out the job you did.

Not having that degree years down the road when you may decide to give up the cameras (not saying you will!!) will certainly hurt you in finding something new to do.

Get that degree! Spend the time while you are in school developing your personal style, your artistic vision, and figuring out if you really want to be a pj.

-m

if you are in college for a “career” you are, Eunice, indeed wasting your time, and we have so precious little to waste. However, there will almost never be a time in your life when you, as a privledge western, have the opportunity to spend four glorious, stupor-filled years reading anything you want, talking to anyone you wish, spending your doing doing as much as you can (spiritually, materially, philosophically, educationally, developmentally, and, o, yea, photographically) or as little as you desire. Read, write, talk, drink, fuck, sleep, emancipate your days with the depth of freedom than those fucking beautiful 4 (5, 6, 7) years of your life will grant you: friends and teachers and books and images and bars and streets and dreams and wishes and losses and hopes and fears and reconiliations and ephipanies and, well, you name it. You do not have to go to college to achieve any of this (not as a human nor as a photographer) but you have a privilege of an opportunity to encorcell yourself and your life with the drunken idiotic and ultimately profound moments that those years grant you. Most of the world never has this opportunity, and nearly from the gate of their moma’s womb, spend the majority of their time enslaved to work and stuggle and poverty and hopelessness. If you aim, at your age, is to categorize/materialize/careerize your future, I would say this: stay the hell in, start reading, talking to people, be open to what the world grants you. I look back at my my 19yr old self (as all old fucks do) with rivulets of tributary reglet: how fast those mangificent, joy-horror-laughter-stress-worry-mindless-biting-stimulating-scary-ephiphanous years were. I dont wish them back, but in those spoiled years of freedom lay the dragon seeds which became my life…….
does staying in school mean anything other than ‘staying in school’, of course not, and your life will be just as significant if you leave, but it, for me, if you toss away the dross of much of what the {academic} experience suggests, you’ll find a wonderous and luxuriously free years….the western world, their doubt filled by time ;)))….

believe in any decision you make, for it will be your life’s navigation.
cheers :)
bob

It seems to me that “training” and “education” are two completely different things. Staying in college will get you involved in the world of ideas which will ultimately power your photography.It will get you educated. Nobody will teach you how to “see”, but you do need to know the history of the medium not just the mechanics of it and have a fairly clear understanding of the world. You can learn all the technical side of photography and have all the best gear but you need to have a coherent point of view. Passion alone doesn’t move the ball, there has to be a map, a plan.
A college degree also proves that you can finish things all the way to their end. Hoping on a plane and visiting a hotspot a photojournalist does not make.It makes a fool high on glamour. Hoping on a plane with a clear idea of the history and context of what one is going to cover does. Answering one’s calling is the basis for becoming a PJ but having been exposed to literature,history,science,art,etc will enrich your way of viewing the world. If one thing is absolutely true is this: You cannot cut corners in life. Read,shoot AND Finish your degree and then “Quitate los frenos.”

The years spent in school will make you both a better photographer and person. Time spent shooting projects that you conceive, on your schedule, is a luxury – and will most likely produce wonderful, passionate work for your portfolio. And the best photojournalists are smart people, with an understanding of the larger world – and an ability to relate to and empathize with a wide variety of people. This can never be replaced by simple skill.

Also, college will allow you the possibility to work as an intern at an agency and/or newspaper, providing invaluable experience into how the whole system works. Also, if I had it to do all over again, I’d certainly have taken at least one business class, so as to have a starting point in running a freelance business.

Good luck!

We are so so privileged to be able to be educated- why minimize that or lose out on that wonderful gift? I really think that being a responsible shooter is about being mature enough to see stories on multiple levels and imbuing our images with those layers. and don’t think that school means giving up photography. I’ve been using my summer breaks to do stories and also take advantage of student funding. (photo competitions, scholarships etc.)
kitra

this might be worth checking out:

http://www.lightstalkers.org/suave-scholarship

Thanks for that link, Teru! I’ll definitely be checking those out.

And thanks for the beautiful/insightful/blunt posts, all. It’s true that you can’t cut corners and that education really is a gift. And Bob, your entire post was just beautiful. I do hope I can make the decisions that become my life’s (hopefully not too muddled) navigation. Sensibility, logic, awareness, all of that good stuff.

Pero ay, ¡si pudiera quitarme los frenos! Then again, there will always be some kind of restraint; I guess the lesson lies in not letting that be a restraint and rather some other sort of opportunity and frame.