John Tagg
[Writer, theorist, and photohistorian, b. 1949, North Shields, England, lives in Ithica, New York.]
... it's impossible to teach the history of photography as a canon, as a discrete and coherent field or discipline. I mean, how could one teach the history of photography without talking about family photography, without talking about the photographic industry, advertising, pornography, surveillance, documentary records, documentation, instrumental photography—whole areas of production in which there is no common denominator? There is no such thing as photography as such, a common medium.
George Rodger
[Photojournalist, b. 1908, Hale, Cheshire, England, d. 1995, Smarden, Kent, England.]
I had no contact with my contemporaries in the photographic field, nor even knowledge of their work. So I was influenced by no-one and there were no short cuts for me. I was self-taught the hard way, by trial and error...
André Kertész
[Photographer, b. 1894, Budapest, Hungary, d. 1985, New York.]
I gave him [Brassaï] a crash course on night photography: what to do, how to do it, and how long the exposures had to be. Later he started to copy my style in night photography and that, more or less, was the type of work he did for the rest of his life.
Edward Weston
[Photographer, b. 1886, Highland Park, Illinois, d. 1958, Wildcat Hill, California.]
As great a picture can be made as one’s mental capacity—no greater. Art cannot be taught; it must be self-inspiration, though the imagination may be fired and the ambition and work directed by the advice and example of others.
William Carlos Williams
[Writer and poet, b. 1883, Rutherford, New Jersey, d. 1963, Rutherford.]
First we have to see. Or first we have to be taught to see. We have to be taught to see here, because here is everywhere, related to everywhere else, and if we don’t see, hear, taste, smell and feel in this place—not only will we never know anything but the world of sense will be by that much diminished everywhere.
Abigail Solomon-Godeau
[Writer and theorist, b. 1947, New York, lives in Santa Barbara, California.]
The teaching of photography tends to be cordoned off from what goes on in the rest of the art department. So while young painters are reading art magazines and often as not following to some degree developments in film, performance or video, photography students are reading photography magazines, disputing the merits of documentary mode over self expression, or resurrecting onto the fourth generation an exhausted formalism that can no longer generate either heat or light.
Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
First of all, I tell [students] that art can’t be taught, but that it can be stimulated and a few barriers can be kicked down by a talented teacher, and an atmosphere can be created which is an opening into artistic action. But the thing itself is such a secret and so unapproachable.
Harry Callahan
[Photographer, b. 1912, Detroit, Michigan, d. 1999, Atlanta, Georgia.]
Everything was Bauhaus this and Bauhaus that. I wanted to break it... I got tired of experimentation. I got sick of the solarization and reticulation and walked-on negatives. What I was interested in was the technique of seeing... I introduced problems like “evidence of man,” and talking to people—making portraits on the street... I thought [the students] should enter into dealings with human beings and leave abstract photography. I felt that social photography would be the next concern.
