The ubiquity of the image

I entirely agree with Joan. Including our responsibilities, which I absolutely accept, in our failure, after thirty years, to manage to establish a pedagogy of the image from the first years of schooling on. I ought to add that while I love teaching, and my -privileged- students are stimulating, exceptional, dynamic, I sometimes have doubts: what is the underlying significance of an education that trains photographers at a time when there are too many professional photographers and where everyone is producing and circulating images? Certainly to give them access to tools for understanding the history of the image and help them understand the need for critical thought in the process of developing their projects. And it works not too badly, even if they are a very small minority.

It’s quite clear that at a time when the funds allocated to culture and education are everywhere in significant decline, when financial flows -which direct the flow of images- are concentrating more and more on communication, consumption and entertainment the answer is not simple and guerrilla warfare is difficult to structure.

The earlier proposal regarding the public space might be an element, but it needs to be more complex, enriched by a genuinely educational action.

This is not really entryism -sorry, Radu- but I think we should be trying to enhance our ability to use the tool, the tools of ‘the enemy’. As someone who has tried for years to convince television channels of the editorial uses of photography, and has put on programmes (very minority: ARTE) that dealt with the image, I am well aware that we -definitely a minority- are marked by the Sisyphus syndrome…

Even so -and this proves that I’m still optimistic- I wonder if we couldn’t manage to invent, on the Internet, a site dedicated to the teaching of the image, with links to other sites we think are interesting, as a tool for teachers, a place of knowledge -however superficial- for the young. I think it can be conceived as something both serious and fun. One way of treating the Web as a counter-power…

Perhaps it’s because the light is coming back with the promise of spring.

‘The People have the power’ -  Patti Smith

Etiquetes: education, Internet, minority, pedagogy

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