The Joy of Teaching


There was an ominously long message on my answering machine Friday evening from the Chairman of the department, telling me a student is offended by remarks I made in class...something to the effect that she took the class, "to learn about photography," not to hear somebody talk about President Bush, the environment, racism, the invasion of Panama, pornography and, in particular, the Civil War. The Chairman is "very, very upset" because this particular student is threatening, in addition to dropping the class "to take this complaint to the president of the college and then all hell is going to break loose." Needless to say, he wants to find out "what is going on" in my class.

"Art has its very roots in real life," as Ben Shahn said to the students and faculty at Harvard some years ago. Indeed, art may affirm its life-giving soil, or repudiate it...it may mock bitterly as did Goya, be partisan as Daumier, discover beauty within the sordid as Lautrec, luxuriate in life as Renoir or turn to abstraction like Picasso, delve into the pathos of our unconscious as Munch or celebrate a great man (like the early Napoleon) and then turn around and renounce him as did Beethoven (with his Eroica symphony). Art cannot be separated from reality. As a teacher of art I cannot and will not try to separate these things.

I am offended that a student who has missed the last several lectures has the impertinence to give complaint to my teaching, to jeopardize my career by this capricious slander. Who is this student and what are her credentials to perpetrate such calumny? I am mistaken in talking about such things if this is not an art academy but a craft school, because, as far as I am concerned, art must embrace, always has embraced and always will embrace our passionate concerns with politics, morality, villains, inequality, war, homelessness, prejudice, mediocrity, the environment, indecency and treason.

I am being pilloried by some strange historical perversion. So this woman wants to learn to take pictures. Fine, that is presumably the case with all of my students at the beginning. And if they stay with me they damn well do learn to take pictures, but more than just "pictures" because I teach photography as a passion, an art... not a craft, hobby, profession or anything else, and so if they stick around they in fact, do learn the real essence of photography, which is that anybody can make a nice photographic picture -- one does not need to go to school for that nowadays with auto-everything cameras -- but that real, artistic, meaningful photographs come only from deep within the heart, from a place where there is ardor and urgency (which has more than likely been almost snuffed out for ten, twenty or forty years by parents, siblings and society).

I come from a long line of teachers and artists. For my entire teaching career I have always assumed the highest goals for my students. Early in my career, just out of graduate school, I taught on the secondary level and coached several sports as well. I assumed from the first day of practice that we all wanted to win the state championship; I do not want people on my team who do not want to win. I assumed from the first day of history class that everybody wanted to go on to Harvard and major in history. I assume that in my photography classes now everybody wants to make exciting new photographs ("Non-conformity is the precondition for all art" -- Ben Shahn) I would be delinquent in my job if I did not aspire to yank my students out of the easy rut provided by Kodak and American society in general -- that mediocrity and the commonplace are acceptable, that mere snapshots are good enough, that just coming to class is good enough, that just playing the game is all right. I am not teaching macrame. I am not interested in letting my students go any further in life with insouciant behavior. Can you imagine teaching a student Prokofief's Seventh Piano Sonata and not discussing the Battle of Stalingrad? Can I talk about Goya and not discuss the horrors of war?

I have been charged with the most serious crime imaginable for a teacher -- taking advantage of the academic platform for personal proselytizing. I have some friends who teach photography and they make the following prohibition the first day of class... "no pictures of pets, babies, barn doors and sunsets... period." I am tempted to do the same thing but out of a strong democratic impulse I eschew such didactic totalitarianism. And maybe this woman might not have objected to such an approach. But is that any different really from what I do, trying to inculcate a sense of emotion, commitment and enthusiasm for one's work. It was Ruth Orkin who said, "Photograph only what you feel passionately about." How am I to explain anything to this photographic Brunehilde student of mine without offending her? She is like the woman in Stieglitz's gallery one afternoon who had the cheek to ask Stieglitz to explain the meaning of the paintings on the wall (they were Picassos). Am I prohibited from finishing this anecdote about the most influential of all photographers because someone in my class might be offended by Stieglitz's reply? (Stieglitz replied to her that it would be as difficult to explain the paintings to her as it would be for him to have an erection when he looked at her). You don't want me to talk about Danny Lyon living with the drug addicts in Tulsa or Mary Ellen Mark living with the prostitutes in India? Robert Capa sacrificing his life to expose the horrors of war? What war? World War II? Korea? Viet Nam? Why, do you mean to suggest that those were not noble causes fought for U.S "national security?" What about Arnold Newman and his famous portrait of Krupp? I cannot talk about the military-industrial complex which put Hitler in the Reichstag? What about the amazing portrait of Goebels by Eisenstedt? You don't want me to discuss racism and the slaughter of six million Jews? You want me to talk about nice landscapes perhaps? Like Ansel Adams maybe? Well, what about Ansel? Am I to talk only about the "detail in the shadows" and the beautiful spectrum of greys going to the rich patina in the whites, the Zone System and reciprocity and development curves? Am I forbidden to discuss his adamant hatred of Ronald Reagan and how even after spending half an hour with Reagan, Ansel said, "I still hate him." ? And what about Ansel's life-long battle to save the wilderness from the same scoundrels who will plow every ridgeline, dam every river and pour every imaginable scum into the air... and the responsibilities he took and personal money he spent in that noblest of causes? You want me to show William Henry Jackson's famous picture of "Old Faithful" and not mention that he too, almost single-handedly saved Yellowstone from the ravages of developers nearly a hundred years ago? You want me to talk about Nadar, that most illustrious of mid-nineteenth century French photographers and not mention that Napoleon III asked him to use his balloon (besides being a great photographer, Nadar was one of the most celebrated balloonists of his time) to photograph the Russian troop implacements in the Crimea and Nadar refused because the Crimean War was just as stupid and villainous as our own horrible misadventure in Viet Nam? What do you want me to do, talk about great photographs as though they were made by automatons? Great art is made by great men and women and is inextricably tied to every aspect of their being.

This is partly why my first assignments are self-portraits, so that students can come to grips with this essential fact of art. Moby Dick is partly Melville's struggle to come to grips with his own search. For Whom the Bell Tolls is as much autobiography as fantasy. The macabre pariahs in Diane Arbus's photographs detail her own journey into her unconscious as anything else she did. My own self-portrait petting Mary is a statement of religious contempt born of many deceits in childhood. Cheri Heiser's self-portrait with a young girl suggests another personal journey you may or may not like.

Art is a difficult journey with many hazards. I like the story of Vitto Aconci sitting out there in the dark night at the end of the pier waiting for our arrival; and if and when we get there he tells us something repugnant about himself. It is a wonderful metaphor for what we must do as artists and art lovers. We cannot be afraid of the dark night, the holes in the pier, the ominous shadows, strange things lurking and disagreeable knowledge. All of film and art cannot be one Sound of Music after another, one luscious Renoir after another, one placid Moonrise Over Hernandez after another. Sometimes there must be a Sophie's Choice, a Guernica, a Goebels.

I cannot teach with numbers, graphs and formulas alone. My teaching comes from my heart, the work I have done, the things I have read, the places I have visited, the things I have seen, the people I have known and the things I aspire to for myself and the society I live in. As Plato said, education must be for the purpose of creating better citizens. And, as Brecht said, "Art is not meant to be a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it!" Of course I hate George Bush. I am a teacher, aren't I ? I am an artist, aren't I? Would you expect a Jew to like Hitler? Would you expect a homosexual to like Pat Buchanan? Art and education are under siege now no less than socialism was in the fifties with Eisenhower and Macarthy. The recent NEA brouhaha and Maplethorp flap surely make this clear. Mr. Bush is the "education president" like Herbert Hoover was the equal opportunity employer. Am I to pretend that we are not in a recession? Am I to pretend that our educational system is not one of the worst among the technologically advanced nations? Am I to feel sorry for an automobile industry which, for years was guided by a policy of planned obsolescence? Am I to ignore that fact that last year 11, 573 people were murdered by handguns here in America and there were seventeen such deaths in Japan? Drive through Oakland lately? Are these unrelated to art? What is that woman screaming about in Munch's painting? Am I forbidden to tell my students what happened in Guernica in April, 1937, to inspire one of the most incredible paintings in the history of art? What is the point of that magnificent, black, heart-rending wall in Washington? What is the point of another beautiful Ansel Adams landscape if we are not to understand that it is a plea to save our precious wilderness? WHAT IS THE POINT ANYWAY?

Epilogue: (Turns out, this woman is from Alabama and was piqued at some unflattering things I said about General Robert E. Lee, -- in the context of showing a few Mathew Brady photographs -- during a lecture on portraiture.)

Yes, I was fired.