the pathetic end to a great school

[matthias_bruggmann]

One (out of two) class of the Formation Professionnelle Superieure, the advanced program

of the Vevey School of Photography went on strike in early October to protest the lowering

of the quality of the education, consecutive to a political decision.

 

The faculty, who included, amongst many others, Sarah Moon, Duane Michals, Don

McCullin, Susan Meiselas, Antonin Kratochvil, Martin Parr and A.D Coleman, have voted

with their feet and will not come back.

 

Naturally, the students are upset.

 

The students who graduated from the program before it went down the drain are

petitionning to both support the current students and prevent the school from associating

their "names, work, or reputations", in any way, with the new program.

 

The grad's position is also supported, amongs others, by A.D Coleman (who's one of, if

not the, foremost photography critic in the US today...), Arno Minkkinnen (who runs the

photography program at Umass Lowell when he's not doing shows or books or lecturing

around the world), Robert Blake (think ICP...), as well as Arnaud Claas (who teaches at

Arles, the foremost french photography school).

 

Short version : If you were considering a photography school, look elsewhere than Vevey,

which is the oldest active photography school in europe.

 

there's intel, and work from the graduates which should allow measuring the quality of the

results, up at http://www.ou-t.ch

[peter_evans4]

<p><a href="http://www.ou-t.ch">www.ou-t.ch</a> doesn't seem to exist.</p>

[matthias_bruggmann]

i've had problems checking my ou-t email last night, and since 'twas pretty windy over

here, i'd guess there may have been a downtime. checked a few minutes ago, and

everything was up...

[chris_waller]

The decline in standards is spreading everywhere. To think that it has reached such as Vevey is deplorable. What a tragedy.

[matthias_bruggmann]

here's Arno Minkkinnen and Jacqueline Hassink's open letter on the question :

 

 

To the Administration, Photography Students and Photography Alumni of CEPV:

 

A business that does not listen to its clients cannot long serve the needs of its clients.

Subsitute "school" for "business" and "clients" for "students" and we have a good sense of

the sad, futile situation in Vevey. With the stated intention of strengthening the program

with new technical applications, the administration ignores the creative achievements of

the students and alumni as well as the long-standing efforts of the visiting faculty that

have made the Vevey school one of Europe's finest in photographic education today. I

strongly support the commencement of an open, equally balanced summit discussion

between the administration of the school and its dissenting students and visiting and

permanent faculty to reconsider the merits of the former program and how those tenets

might yet be formulated to advance both the technical and creative platforms of the

school's new teaching philosophy. Only through such soul searching give-and-take on all

sides can the Vevey school hope to look forward with pride once again to its revered

position as a world class institution. The current students have had the benefit of seeing

both programs in action and have voted with their feet. I cannot step foot inside Vevey

again until their voices are heard.

 

 

Arno Rafael Minkkinen

Professor of Art University of Massachusetts Lowell Docent, University of Art & Design

Helsinki, Former Visiting Professor École d'Arts Appliqués, Vevey

 

 

Jacqueline Hassink

Visiting lecturer at Harvard University Faculty VES, visiting Professor at Kyoto University for

Art and Design and Former Visiting Professor École d'Arts Appliqués, Vevey

[matthias_bruggmann]

And the latest and greatest, with a quick translated transcript to go with it :

 

 

http://www.ou-t.ch/fin/TSR_TJ_25_04-450k_vevey.rm

 

http://www.tsr.ch/tsr/index.html?siteSect=500001&bcid=0338711&vid=5428869

 

 

 

Back in Switzerland, the famous Vevey school of Photography is on the verge of crisis. Part of the students are on strike, they dissavow the orientation taken by the administration, that they see as too technical and not artistic enough. The students have been ordered to shut up, but today, they decide to speak.

 

[danae panchaud] The school indeed has a reputation that attracts people, but one you've been in it for two years, you become aware wether or not that reputation is justified or not. It used to be, it isn't anymore.

 

[voice-over] Here, the students came from the whole world to follow a unique program, where every other week, on top of ordinary professors, celebrities such as Duane Michals, a sacred monster of American photography, showed up to encourage students to find their own way. But in late 2003, the orientation of the school suddenly changed.

 

[anne-catherine lyon ] In reality, what was wanted from the start was for the Vevey school to continue on it's tradition of high quality on the technical front, and for it to be, again, specialised on this dimension, which is extremely strong there, and, when it comes to the purely artistic realm, but there's never one without the other, should be done at the Cantonal Arts school in Lausanne.

 

[voice-over] but this new orientation has been taken pretty badly. Out of 40 international teachers, only two came back, which is why a whole class has been on strike since last october.

 

[vlado alonso] We came to this school to multiply the experiences, to see people from all horizons, and it isn't the case anymore.

 

[luc chessex] For swiss photography, it's certainly an issue.

 

[voice-over] Why is it an issue ?

 

[luc chessex] because, once again, it's a window on the world, on the outside, on excellence, that has been closed.

 

[voice-over] When they got out of vevey, 3 out of 4 students found work. Like Matthias Bruggmann. It is a foreign teacher, a Czech, who allowed him to cover the war in Iraq.

 

[matthias bruggmann] the opportunity to learn with someone who knows how to build a story, who knows how to translate the suffering of individuals into pictures is indispensible.

 

[voice-over] an interpellation has just been made at the state level. According to it's author, Vevey is in risk of dying, because it doesn't correspond to the market anymore.

 

[laurent baillif] it's the teaching of the eye, it's that kind of teaching that is necessary in higher learning.

 

[voice over] After the second-year students, it's now the turn of the first year to threaten to leave the school.

 

(the highlighted text reads :"lack of program" "complete incoherence" and "the level is really too low")

 

The head of the school has refused to answer us, and forbids the students any contact with the press. On his side, the dean of students adresses himself to the state, we must, he says, "decontaminate this school of the bad subjects it still houses, ready to do anything to harm."

[matthias_bruggmann]

It is the end of January. This is your first year teacher, the tall skinny guy who used to read

you bedtime stories--at the stone-cold train station hostel at Mendrisio that took your

breath away and two nights to warm up, with everyone jumping into their sleeping bags to

listen by the roaring fire, or at that cozy snowbound bungalow in the Jura where flash

froze the flakes and the cheese was as plentiful as the chess, or deep in the icy Finnish

darkness of Hattula, where the sauna was the only place to really sweat or pass out, or at

the summit of Les Pleiades, the farthest we could get away that winter from school, or at

the convent on the windswept heights of Shanklin where Julia Margaret and old Lord Alfred

still lingered in the Freshwater mist, or at the Palazzo San Marco waiting for the last

vaparetto at midnight with the rain slowly turning to snow on the gondolas bobbing in the

waves, or at that rock climbing wall farmhouse in L'Abbaye not far from the haunted house

where the ghosts actually did come back, well, from time to time anyway, you remember

the bedtime stories, don't you? Einstein's Dreams. A big favorite of mine was the one

about the peach that pinkened and the old woman who got her rosy cheeks back again,

just in time, for her husband to join her as he was hauled back into the house in his pine

box in their life going backwards. Einstein's Dreams. Where is Mr. Lightman now? Well, I

can tell you; he's in Cambodia building a schoolhouse for twelve year olds at the moment.

Where is your teacher? Certainly not with his students on this dark, dark January night in

spite of two feet of glorious snow. Not in that saddle this winter, not reading to them from

his books, not listening to their dreams for their art and photography, not waking up to

their coffee and cereal bowls.

 

What happened is this. This morning your tall skinny professeur had opened an email from

Mr. Fellay, a student from his last class at Vevey. It was written in French and it made the

old professor blush in shame. Not that he couldn't read every word of it, no, it was not

that. Mais non. He blushed because he had not been in touch with his beloved students for

over half a year. Why had he abandoned them? Was he over-worked? Yes, there was the

big project ahead, a book and retrospective exhibition about his work called SAGA with an

introduction by Mr. Alan "Einstein" Lightman himself, and their teacher A. D. Coleman, and

Peter Gabriel, and Arthur Danto. Yes, that is why he had not written, he told himself. Too

busy getting the show planned, the book prepared; just too much to do was the reason

why. But he knew that wasn't true. His writing stopped because something profound had

been ripped from his soul.And it was the pain of that separation that had caused him to

slip underground, to let the clock tick through the fall, and to strike January off his

calendar for good. It was the pain of that separation that made him see the Swiss flag as a

flawed icon now, not the reasoned cross on a field of passion he always believed it to be,

but a flag all too transparent, just like the tattered American flag that Robert Frank, that

Swiss guy, had snapped at a picnic on the Fourth of July. On a red Mini Cooper, he

reasoned, a Swiss flag would no longer look too cool.

 

 

Well, fortunately, as luck and life would have it, Mr. Fellay's email brought him back to his

senses. There was a website address that was mentioned in the email. The old professor

opened it up and began to surf through the works of his students, works they had

accomplished after his tenure with them, yes, but works that nevertheless had all the feel

and touch and sense of who they were at heart, what they treasured, and what they

dreamed of and longed to accomplish one day. His eyes filled with happiness and pride for

them. One portfolio after the next took his breath away. Again, as he had always

considered them, he saw his students as his teachers.

 

 

The professor poured himself glass of red wine and began to cry. The educational crime of

the century had been committed. It was the end of January.

[matthias_bruggmann]

The school was "decontaminated" yesterday. Striking students kicked out, and the repulsive language the staff uses was justified as being a response to the student's claims that they were incompetent.