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SHOWCA SE
Open College o the ArtsSpring 2009
Michael Freemanon the changing worldo photography 
 
2 & 3
Meet OCA tutor José Navarro
 
4 & 5
Photography students
 
on why they love theircourses
 
Inside
6 & 7
 Take the leap with the OCA 
Welcome to this special edition o the OCA student newsletter, Showcase. We are dedicating this issueto photography as the Open College o the Arts islaunching its new photography degree programmeat Focus 2009.With the addition o a new course,
People and Place
,students are now able to study or a ull
BA Honoursdegree in Creative Arts
by choosing rom photography modules.We are pleased to have an interview with courseauthor Michael Freeman. Michael has been associatedwith the OCA or nearly 20 years and his book
‘ThePhotographer’s Eye’ 
is the best selling art book on Amazon.
 
2
People and Place
is a new course. Howdo you eel it builds on existing level 1courses?I think there’s a serious danger that when people come to photography, they get embroiled in the technical aspects.So much goes on inside a digital camera,the menu choices or the user seemendless, and this continues onto thecomputer and the processing o pictures. The net result is that it’s all too easy,right rom the beginning, to lose sight o the act that photography is really about taking images o what is in the world inront o us. We have a course on SocialDocumentary in Photography 2, but weelt strongly that earlier than that weshould be pushing students to engagewith lie in ront o the camera. Among all the many elds into whichphotography has evolved, documentary reportage remains central to thisspirit o engagement with the world.Photography can do many things, but I would argue that what it does best isto take moments rom the living worldthat we pass through. No other art ormcomes close to achieving that.Why did you to replace the existingdigital course?Digital has not only changed thepractice and procedures o using acamera — it continues to change, andwe need to keep pace with that. I alsowanted to tie things together at the start by introducing the idea o workfow.Gone are the days when you simply loaded a roll o lm in the camera,shot the pictures then unloaded it angave it to the lab. There are now many possible steps and sequences, and they will vary or every person accordingto how they shoot and what they eelcomortable with. In addition, I want toencourage students to think early about the alterations to imagery that digitalmakes possible — real or ake, in otherwords. In act, there’s a sliding scale o what we call in the course ‘reality andintervention’, and it’s important to ormyour own opinions about this.In the 70s Susan Sontag spoke o the
In the ace o feeting reality 
Showcase
talks to Michael Freeman authoro the new
People and Place
and
Digital Photographic Practice
courseson the changing world o photography 
Michael Freeman
 photo© Fred Kranich*“To take photographs is to hold one’sbreath when all aculties converge inthe ace o feeting reality” 
Henri Cartier-Bresson
 
 3
‘democratisation o photography’. Shewas talking about cheap lm cameras,but digital and services like fickr havetaken this to a new level. Where do youthink this leaves aspiring photographersseeking to make a start today?Now photography is truly democraticin a way that Sontag could never haveenvisioned. Digital has made some obviouscontributions to this in its instant resultsand instant eedback, but perhaps evenmore infuential is broadband. Millions nowshare their photographs and their opinionsabout photography. The old hierarchy withproessionals at the top o a sort o notionalpyramid, with snap shooters at the base,is gone, to the benet o most. I see that Getty are now cherry picking images andphotographers rom fickr. The barriers todoing serious photography have largely come down, but so also has the protectionor ull-time proessionals. Unlike many o my co-proessionals, however, I still believethat excellence o work ultimately counts.By excellence I mean images that standout, that cause you to pause and refect. And that is what we are aiming or in thesecourses.In the
Digital Photographic Practicecourse,
you write about truth inphotography and ‘the real’. Do you have aclear sense o what constitutes the real inyour reportage work? The philosophical depths are bottomless,but as reportage photography is robustly practical, I have my own pragmatic ideasabout this. One o my guiding principlesis what a normally perceptive viewerwould expect rom a photograph. Digitally altering the content is not expected andso is out o the question. More o an issueor reportage photographers is staging, orstage management. I you ask someoneto look up and pose or you, that’s usually obvious rom the image, and understood.But arranging or something to take placethat would not normally, or giving stagedirections according to your idea o howsomething should happen — that really belongs in advertising, where it’s accepted,and not in documentary work.Finally, what are you working on at present? The project that’s engaging me the most isa book — large and mainly photographic —on one o the ancient Asian trade routes,called the ‘Tea Horse Route’. A network o trails developed, beginning in the 7th cen-tury, along which pack trains carried tearom the ar southwest o China to Tibet. Inthe opposite direction, China imported warhorses to protect their northern rontier. It’sa piece o history that every Chinese school-child learns, and or me it combines a story in depth with adventure. I’ll probably taketwo years over it. The slight urgency now isto photograph and interview the old trailmasters beore they’re gone.Oh, and in the realm o books about photography, I’m starting to plan a sequelto
The Photographer’s Eye
. This is largely under pressure rom my publishers becauseo this one’s success, but also, rom my own point o view there were issues in
ThePhotographer’s Eye
that I very much want to explore urther.
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joaquintauste

Hermosas imágenes, suerte con las próximas

reply12 / 03 / 2010
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