New Site: Teaching Photography

I’ve taken a few weeks off from writing posts for this blog in order to develop and launch a new website, Teaching Photography, at teachingphoto.com. This site will serve as a resource for teachers in BFA, MFA, PhD, and continuing-education photography programs and departments of related subjects ― photo history, criticism, and theory; media studies; visual culture; etc. ― on the post-secondary level.

Premiered in 2004 by author, photographer, and educator Henry Horenstein, this site in its first incarnation ran under the name Teachingphoto.com, offering some substantial commentary by a number of contributors (including Horenstein). In 2009 it stopped publishing new pieces. After some discussion with its original publisher this past fall, we agreed that I’d take it over, so as to move it forward.

I’ve renamed the site Teaching Photography and, with the help of my steadfast webmaster John Alley, we’ve renovated the site’s layout and transformed its infrastructure, in order to enhance its functionality and expand its content substantially. If you subscribed to or visited the pilot version of the site, you’ll see that we’ve moved to the open-source blogware WordPress, which enables easier posting of new content from our end and easier commenting from your end as a reader.

We’ve timed the debut of this reconfigured site to coincide with the Society for Photographic Education‘s 2011 National Conference, taking place March 10-13 in Atlanta, GA. Both John and I will attend that event, as will our first sponsor, Sprint Systems of Photography, whose guiding light, Marlaine Noel, has elected to help support all four of the sites I publish as photo-education resources. (See below.) You can find us at the Sprint table in the SPE Exhibits Fair. Feel free to buttonhole us for discussion of our plans for the site.

Marlaine Noel

We’ll retain the site’s original content (except for a few product reviews that have become outdated). We’ve already imported into our new format about fifty percent of the site’s existing articles. Over the next month, we’ll complete that process, adding the portfolios of images that accompanied a number of those essays. Meanwhile, we’ll start posting new material.

You’re welcome to comment on those earlier posts, as well as on those to come. We envision this site as a forum for discussion of any and all issues relevant to post-secondary photo ed, and we invite your input. You’ll find the protocols for commenting here.

We’re also open to proposals for new posts pertinent to the site’s theme, whether from photo teachers, current and former photo students, program administrators, or others with something cogent to say on the subject. Submissions can include unpublished essays as well as essays that have appeared in print but are not available online. You’ll find our submission guidelines here.

In becoming the publisher and editorial director of Teaching Photography, I bring this site into a consortium of websites relevant to photography education. The other components of this consortium include:

• the New Eyes Project, a comparable resource for those who teach photography at the K-12 levels;
• the Photography Criticism CyberArchive, a subscription-based repository of historic and recent/current texts on photography; and
• Photocritic International, this blog on photography and new digital technologies.

Henry Horenstein

Taken ensemble, these sites provide some of the most extensive support available online for the photo-education community worldwide. We invite the involvement of advertisers and sponsors who want to reach the members of that community. Opportunities exist for sponsorship and advertising at all four sites together or any combination thereof. For details, please contact the publisher.

I thank Henry Horenstein for initiating this project and sustaining it until now, and for encouraging me to assume the role of publisher/editor thereof. I look forward to steering Teaching Photography into a new phase of its online life. If you teach or study photography or play some other role in the field of photo education, or know people who do, please pass the word along.