Teaching photography - ISSP 2016: interview with Federico Clavarino

It’s one year we started our partnership with the International Summer School of Photography (ISSP), a week long "informal education program" that takes place every year since 2006 in the beautiful Latvian countryside. ISSP offers advanced workshops by renowned international tutors in combination with an exciting evening programme of talks, presentations and portfolio reviews. 
This year ISSP hosted 72 photographers in 6 workshops leaded by Anouk Kruithof, Paolo Woods, Federico Clavarino, Jason Evans, Alejandro Chaskielberg and Taiyo Onorato. 

I was there for the whole duration of the program, in a relaxed and informal environment, where students and teachers (or masters as they are called at ISSP) work side by side in this intense learning/teaching experience. Teaching photography is a topic a lot discussed especially during the last year, this has brought an important attention on the educational system, made by institutions and alternative photography programs. 
I wanted to know more about the perception people and professionals have of the meaning of studying (and teaching) photography today, so I went to Latvia to spend some time with the ISSP 2016’s masters talking about their personal experience both as teachers and students.


What is  your main focus and interest when you teach photography? 

First of all, it depends on the course and on the students' expectations. Part of being a teacher is about giving people tools they can use to solve their own problems, and to help them figure out what it is they want to do with photography. On the other hand you try to awaken curiosity about different ways of relating to the medium and to get people to explore all the possibilities, so they can find out what they like doing. You also try to get them to exit their comfort zone all the time, to provoke them into finding new solutions. You want to get them hooked, to make them feel they can do stuff with photography, I really like it when students finish the course and they keep on making work. My first question to everyone, at the start of every course, is: “why are you here?” “What do you expect from this?” This is fundamental, for me: what they want, and what I want, and where our expectations meet will be our starting point. 

I don't know. I often have regrets, because I didn't finish my studies at university. Actually, I only attended one year and then dropped out to do something I liked. So on one hand that got me going pretty soon, when I moved to Spain at 22 I was already working for a living as an English teacher and as a bartender, and that meant I felt free and I didn't have to satisfy other people's expectations. I just had to do what I wanted and survive. I started studying at BlankPaper in Madrid, those were the first years of the school, so the courses were not very structured, there was something really random about the approach to teaching, which was frustrating and liberating at the same time, as it forced you to find many answers. The collective energy there was great and I feel I benefited a lot from that. On the other hand, I feel that if I had a degree now I could access realities I otherwise cannot get into. I have always studied alone, picking my own books, jumping from one book to another, asking friends and mentors for advice, and I love that but sometimes I feel my knowledge lacks some structure.

First of all, teaching photography is now a widespread trend and also a business. I think that in many European countries we had a crisis in the job market which lead a lot of professional photographers to get into teaching. In Spain BlankPaper was one of the first schools to offer an alternative education, but then a lot of similar schools popped out and now it's a lot more difficult to survive. This is also a good thing, as it makes certain content more accessible to people. For the generation of my teachers, like Fosi Vegue or Ricardo Cases, it was a lot more difficult to access photobooks, and in general all of that photography which was not mainstream. That has changed a little bit, also thanks to schools, and it's a very positive thing. On the other hand I feel that not everyone can teach. I think there are great photographers and artists that are just bad at teaching, even great intellectuals, people who know how to write about photography aren't necessarily good with people. It is also something you really need to love doing, because it's enormously tiring and often frustrating, and mostly underpaid, so or you love it or I don't think you're going to be a good teacher. If you don't love it you're probably not going to do much good to any student.

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