The five-week course I ran in February/March seems to have been well received. Of the 64% of attendees who gave formal feedback 74% thought it was excellent and 26% good against a range of criteria, giving an overall approval rating of 100%. 56% felt it exceeded expectations, 44% felt it met expectations. Class attendance was 90%.
Comments included: learned a great deal; excellent, well planned course; [would have liked] an extra week or two; very well organised, interesting and well-chosen illustrations; and class discussion was always interesting. One more extended comment: ‘Wonderful. Like any art appreciation it’s always in the eye of the beholder. Photography has the luxury of many-shots and I suspect a masterpiece is often surrounded by near-misses. However you still have to see the moment – no mean feat. Liked the final session [class-led discussion of selected images]’.
One person said, ‘the Tutor did not give enough emphasis for photography as an art.’ That’s a fair comment and it’s a critical area that should have been given more consideration. By coincidence I was thinking about offering a course, ‘Photography and/as Art’, in 2023-24, but decided against it as I didn’t want to get bogged down in a debate about the legitimacy of photography as an art form. Seminal moments like the Mayer and Pierson case in 1861-62 and the publication of Camera Work 48-50 in 1916-17 surely settled that.