Nearby Café Home > Art & Photography > Photocritic International

Get new posts by email:
Follow me on Mastodon: @adcoleman@hcommons.social     Mastodon logo

PRC Founder’s Talk (1)

Long, long ago (1976), in a galaxy far, far away (the New England region of the United States, specifically Boston), I helped to found an organization that, amazingly, still exists: the Photographic Resource Center. This year the PRC celebrated its 40th anniversary. In 1996 the PRC celebrated its 20th anniversary with a series of events, one of which involved my giving a talk. As usual in such situations, I used the opportunity provided by the occasion to make some trouble, as you’ll see. … […]

Charles Gatewood (1942-2016): A Farewell (2)

[Photographer Charles Gatewood died on Thursday, April 28, 2016 in San Francisco. According to his KQED obituary, the hospital attributed his death to “injuries after he fell off his third-story balcony several weeks before.” The New York Times obituary quotes his sister, Betty Gatewood, as saying, “There is no doubt that his death was the […]

Charles Gatewood (1942-2016): A Farewell (1)

[Photographer Charles Gatewood died on Thursday, April 28, 2016 in San Francisco. According to his KQED obituary, the hospital attributed his death to “injuries after he fell off his third-story balcony several weeks before.” The New York Times obituary quotes his sister, Betty Gatewood, as saying, “There is no doubt that his death was the […]

Photo Ed: Awaiting the Millennium, 3 (1989)

More and more, teaching artists and art teachers (these are not synonyms) work under short-term contracts of two years or less, moving continuously from job to job. Their tenuous hold on stability is further undermined by the evolution of an underclass of freelance pieceworkers: part-time teachers willing to work for next to nothing, with no protection or benefits. […]

Photo Ed: Awaiting the Millennium, 2 (1989)

Facing up to the challenge of interdisciplinary studies in photography will require much painstaking reassessment of our educational assumptions, priorities, and methodologies. It will also require drastic, even brutal, upgrading of the typically minimal and mediocre standards of research, preparation, thinking and articulation to which students of photography are presently held. No part of that process will make anyone involved in it happy. But there is no way of avoiding that challenge without becoming irrelevant to the medium’s future. […]