Photography: Literary?

Photography seems to be the most literary of the graphic arts.

- Walker Evans

'Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits'

I started reading this biography on a trip this past winter:

I saved a few quotes from it. Here are 2 from the introduction that I particularly like:

Most of Lange's photography was optimistic, even utopian, not despite but precisely through its frequent depictions of sadness and deprivation. By showing her subjects as worthier than their conditions, she called attention to the incompleteness of American democracy. And by showing her subjects as worthier than their conditions, she simultaneously asserted that greater democracy was possible.

And here's a bit about "documetary" photography and representation:

The camera's capacity to replicate what the eye can see made it appear, originally, to be the ultimate documentary tool. It seemed to be a machine for exact replication, its products machine-made, until the myriad means of constructing photographs were widely understood. Invented just as art steered toward expressing a subjective vision, an individual inner consciousness, the camera seemed limited to representing that which is visible to the naked eye. Honoré Daumier said that "photography described everything and explained nothing." Photographers engaged in some self-delusion along these lines; Walker Evans called documentary "a stark record ... [of] actuality untouched." Lange did not fuss about exact representation in her photography. Her experience as a portrait photographer left her at ease in retouching an errant hand or shadow, in asking her subjects to move to a different spot or position. Like an historian, she wanted her photographs to emphasize what she saw as the main point and to prevent her viewers from being distracted by details. In her portrait studio she wanted to reveal the inner, not the outer, life and character of her subjects, and she continued the search for hidden truths in her documentary work.

Insta-Worthy Medium Format Shots

I explained what was happening in my last blog post in a recent social media post:

Last month, I did a medium format film / camera demo in my Photo II / Advanced Photo class. I sighed and mentioned a “trend” of not actually shooting with the camera, but instead pointing the camera at your subject and then getting a photo of the ground glass with your phone. After the demo, many students made photos of themselves in that manner using my cameras. 🙄🤷🏼‍♂️

This morning, I stepped outside and tried it myself for the first time (with an old Mamiya twin lens reflex), and made photos of our flowering tree and a pair of tulips in our garden. My students would be proud… I think…

Here were my 2 attempts:

[click each image to enlarge]

See my students doing this in our classroom in my last post.

Playing with Medium Format

I brought in a couple of medium format cameras to my Photo II / Advanced Photography class last month: a few twin lens reflex cameras along with my Mamiya RB 67.

After class, a few students stuck around to check them out in more detail. And they started taking "cutesy" Instagram-worthy pics with their phones looking down onto the ground glass. Here's a pic of the student on the left posing with a camera while the student in the middle makes a photo of her on the ground glass of another camera:

Click image to enlarge.

Oh, and note my drawing on the board of an unrolled roll of medium format film, showing the paper backing. I destroyed an old roll of expired film during class to show them how it works, but I had that drawing up on the board before class to discuss it before we got real "hands on."

Student Juried Exhibition at Concordia Gallery

I posted last month about my Photo II / Advanced Photo students printing larger images for the upcoming student juried exhibition. The opening for that show was 2 weeks ago, and here are some photos of the exhibition:

[click each image to enlarge]

Some printmaking, collage, and photography work.


Design and photography work.






Design and clay work on those pedestals.




A panoramic image from the back corner of the gallery.

The majority of the photography work that got accepted into the exhibition were my current students! And I believe 100% of the rest of the photography work was from former students of mine! Congrats Concordia art students!

Again, see my previous post about making some larger prints for the exhibition last month.

Making Big Prints in Class

Earlier this week, we fired up the 44" HP printer in the design department at Concordia so my Photo II / Advanced Photo class could make some prints for the upcoming Student Juried Exhibition. (Here are related posts where I shared a quick pic in 2023, and more details during the Student Juried Exhibition along with more prints being printed in 2024.)

Four photos just after printing.


Two big images coming through!

The HP software is great for "nesting" images on this bigger paper. As an exmaple, when I uploaded the first 4 images, it looks like this in the software:

Four images on the left, and an example of what the
selected print will look like on the 44" paper at the bottom.

Then when you click on the printer at the top, it opens up more options:

More options, with an arrow pointing to "nesting."

If you click on "nesting," it will nest all of the images that you loaded. So in this example, the printer will use the same amount of paper, but it nested in the other 3 images to the side of the bigger print:

Good luck students! The work will be juried shortly, so we'll see who's pieces get accepted! The opening is Thursday, April 10th 2025 from 5-7 pm at the Concordia Gallery (1301 Marshall Ave, Saint Paul, MN).

The Isolation of Edward Hopper

When I was 19, I drove to Chicago and slept in my car for 2 nights so I could see "Nighthawks."

Direct link: youtube.com/shorts/tMOYpA__hf0?si=xFxv61EUQsTxosa1

PhotoFlow and Busted Film

Last week, half of my Photo II / Advanced Photo class processed film. One of my students was doing it for the first time. And everyone's film turned out!

I mixed a fresh batch of PhotoFlo, and I love/hate how it's so "soapy" that the printing has been rubbing off the bottle:

Sorry for the quick and out-of-focus pic... trying to get it before my students came back in.


Text smearing off the bottle.


Rinsed tanks and reels after successful processing!

Oh, and I had a "first" in the Concordia darkroom - this has happened before, but the last I recall it happening was back in my CVA days over a decade ago.

A student used a fully manual 35mm camera for the first time (Canon AE-1), whereas in the past, she had a newer / more automatic 35mm camera (like a Canon Rebel 2000). She was unsure how to start rewinding it, so we did it together. Only I IMMEDIATELY felt no resistance while rewinding - there was no film being rewound. Usually, that means the film was never fully loaded and it just "sat there" not being fed through the camera. But I didn't believe that happened in this situation, because we loaded the film together the week before, and we noted that the rewind knob was turning as we advanced the film, so the film appeared to be loaded properly and moving through the camera.

I asked if she really tried to force the advance lever when she was near the end of the film, and she wasn't sure. I HOPED that she just tore the film off the spool as she finished shooting the roll. So we waited to open the camera until the lights were off and everyone else was loading their film onto reels. SURE ENOUGH, she had just muscled her film right off her film spool! I cut it clean and handed her the film in the dark and had her load it up for processing. When we turned the lights back on, we saw how it tore off a few inches from the spool:

Quite the way it tore! (Scissors just holding the film flat.)

I figured it would have pulled off from where it was mechanically attached to the spool, and not just randomly near the end. But irregardless, her film ended up turning out, and she was super happy that I predicted what had happened before she just opened the back of her camera in the light and ruined her film. It was a good day in the darkroom!