This just in…from The Guardian over in the UK comes this great photography masterclass that is yours for the taking. It’s free, easy to navigate, and provides a wonderful introduction to contemporary photography.
One of the great trends in education recently has been the spread of online style classes similar to this one. These things are absolutely fantastic. They provide a much-needed service, allowing folks from far away to take advantage of educational opportunities, allowing somebody like me to brush up on the best British photography has to offer. (The Brits have *always* been very good photographers and it’s constantly been a challenge for us here in the ‘States to try to keep up in some ways, with the gallery circuit being a bit fragmented and press coverage of a lot of the contemporary work spotty at best. I don’t know why but, for a country with literally hundreds of tabloid-style papers, contemporary photography, and art in general, tends to get a sort of bum wrap. Now, Kate Middleton, on the other hand….) Jumping out of the bushes at Kate aside, this really is a great Internet find and I look forward to picking out and sharing with you additional photography-related websites as I find them.
There really is no longer any reason for the study of photography to be relegated to back rooms, stinky darkrooms, or small gallery hovels. Millions of people the world over literally have access to cameras now and it’s high time we provide access to some of these sorts of educational materials as well. No, I’d have to say, this is not a time to keep things like this under wraps. Share it, show it off, bring it around and we can all benefit from this sort of educational material. It doesn’t even have to follow a traditional format for education materials either-as photography morphs into a new media format, I’m sure too that the education materials soon will follow.
If you happen to come across any photography-related links and want to share them with me (so I can then, in turn, share them with the rest of my readers here) please do feel free to drop me a note and I will pass along the links as I get them. At some point, I might even gather up the web links and create a rambling post, to collect them all up in one place. Come to think of it, I’d really like to have that too. I’d really hate to see the study of contemporary photography die off or be reserved for the exclusive few, so I’d be more than happy to share something like this if at all possible.
Until next time…
