The Do’s and Don’ts of Graduate Studies: Maxims from the Chair

from the book The Education of a Photographer
by Charles H Traub, Chair of photography at SVA

The Do’s

• Do something old in a new way
• Do something new in an old way
• Do something new in a new way, Whatever works . . . works
• Do it sharp, if you can’t, call it art
• Do it in the computer—if it can be done there
• Do fifty of them—you will definitely get a show
• Do it big, if you cant do it big, do it red
• If all else fails turn it upside down, if it looks good it might work
• Do Bend your knees
• If you don’t know what to do, look up or down—but continue looking
• Do celebrities—if you do a lot of them, you’ll get a book
• Connect with others—network
• Edit it yourself
• Design it yourself
• Publish it yourself
• Edit, When in doubt shoot more
• Edit again
• Read Darwin, Marx, Joyce, Freud, Einstein, Benjamin, McLuhan, and Barth
• See Citizen Kane ten times
• Look at everything—stare
• Construct your images from the edge inward
• If it’s the “real world,” do it in color
• If it can be done digitally—do it
• Be self centered, self involved, and generally entitled and always pushing—and damned to hell for doing it
• Break all rules, except the chairman’s

The Don’ts

• Don’t do it about yourself—or your friend—or your family
• Don’t dare photograph yourself nude
• Don’t look at old family albums
• Don’t hand color it
• Don’t write on it
• Don’t use alternative process—if it ain’t straight do it in the computer
• Don’t gild the lily—AKA less is more
• Don’t go to video when you don’t know what else to do
• Don’t photograph indigent people, particularly in foreign lands
• Don’t whine, just produce