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Why K-12 Photography Now?

Given the increasing prevalence of digital technologies, and the resulting convergence of still photography, video, film, animation, and multimedia, how do we rationalize our belief in the continuing relevance of the teaching of still photography — especially with an emphasis on analog/chemical forms of the medium?

• Historically as well as technologically, still photography remains the building block on which all the lens-based media depend. Thus, in teaching it, one addresses the central component of all contemporary communication, as well as a key stage in the evolution of visual communication.
• The "magic" of still photography — that experience of finding an image on film after development, or of watching it come up in the developer — remains enchanting, and has no equivalent in digital forms.
• At the same time, it's easier to demystify still photography, to decode its "black box" aspect, using analog methods than it is with digital.
• Teaching that uses analog forms — pinhole cameras, cameras obscurae, sun prints, etc. — offers the combined benefits of hands-on physicality and insight into the medium's origins and history, including its function as a vernacular form of documentation.
• This in turn prepares the students for their encounters with the wide variety of physical objects that constitute the medium's material history, as well as the diversity of works produced by contemporary photographers. In the current generation of practitioners we have working daguerreotypists, tintypists, ambrotypists, cyanotypists, platinum printers, and wet-plate collodion workers, along with silver-gelatin and C-print makers and, of course, digital photographers as well.
• Paradoxically, then, the ascendancy of digital photography appears to have sparked a surge in the popularity of so-called "alternative processes." Thus an understanding of those forms of photography and the ability to work competently in them may provide employable skills in the future.
• The teaching of still photography in analog formats as a form of creative expression, communication, and media competency remains comparatively inexpensive and unproblematic compared to digital photography. Also, it does not rely on the availability of scanners, computers, software, internet access, and other related technologies.
• Analog equipment in general — especially equipment suitable for use in the lower grades — remains more durable and easier to maintain than their digital equivalents. One can teach analog photography effectively on equipment that's 30 years old.
• Via scanning, or the use of inexpensive film-development outlets that provide CD-ROMs with image scans along with (or instead of ) prints, one can convert analog images to digital ones with relative ease and little expense. Thus analog activity does not prohibit or interfere with subsequent digital use of student work, but can work with it hand in glove.
• The K-12 photography education movement began with analog tools and materials. Thus it has its roots in those forms. Without proposing a sentimental attachment to that idea, and with full awareness that any media-savvy young person needs to have a grasp of digital technologies also, we argue — as do many photo educators, professional photographers, and others in the field — that an understanding of analog photography based on the experience of craft always enhances the skills and capacities of any photographer, even when working digitally.
• With that said, The New Eyes Project does not reject digital photography as a K-12 teaching too. To the contrary, we embrace it and support it enthusiastically. In either analog/chemical or digital form, still photography remains the most fundamental introduction to media competency and media literacy.
• The "media literacy" movement of the 21st century has its roots in the "visual literacy" movement of the late 20th century. And the visual literacy movement has its roots in the K-12 photo-education movement that began in the mid-20th century. There is thus a historical continuum to the pedagogy that this website seeks to consolidate, annotate, and expand upon.
• There are websites galore devoted to the use of film, video, multimedia, and others digital forms in K-12 education. Any website attempting to address all of those inevitably sprawls and loses focus. While not rigidly refusing to engage with those other forms, especially when lesson plans, projects, and other matters overlap, we feel that students and teachers of still photography will benefit from a narrowcast site like The New Eyes Project, which concentrates on one particular slice of that pie.
• We believe that still photography — especially in its analog/chemical forms — remains a neglected component of the "media literacy" movement in K-12 visual education, a situation we anticipate will only increase over time. As a methodology, then, it requires a forum for its advocates, which we commit ourselves to providing here.

— A. D. Coleman, Executive Director, and John Alley, Project Coordinator/Webmaster

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