What It Takes
This is the time when photographers are getting their materials ready to apply for a spot in an MFA program. Having spoken with a large number of photographers who are or were thinking about applying or accepted into a program, one of the most important questions typically remains unattended to. It's my first question when someone approaches me to get some tips about the whole procedure: what exactly do you want to go to school for?
I am actually completely serious: you want to spend two (or three) years of your life dealing with photography in a very intensive and concentrated manner, spending a lot of money along the way (money that you possibly don't even have, thus accruing massive debt), so you really want to know what your goals are.
Realistically speaking, if you think about getting in MFA in photography, you already know quite a bit about the medium and your practice (if you don't, do yourself a favour and catch up first before applying). The question then becomes even more pressing: what do you need two additional years of school for? What should this do for you? What are your goals? What exactly do you feel you need to learn?
Being able to answer these questions will not only make your path forward a lot easier, it will also help you when it comes to where to apply (and where not). If, for example, you're interested in expanding your practice beyond photography, you want to look for a program that's not merely photography-centric. If you want to dive more deeply into the theory of the medium, you need to focus on schools that actually offer such an approach etc.
In interviews, knowing what you are interested in will help you have a more meaningful conversation with the people you'll be meeting.
But there still is another aspect. That aspect also applies to all those photographers who don't want to get an MFA.
One of the things that struck me the most when I was still teaching in an MFA program was that new students very often had no idea what they actually wanted to work on. They would show up with competent or half-way competent work, only to then be completely stumped when told they now needed to start something new, and what would that be?
As far as I can tell, this is a common problem in the world of photography. A lot of people think of themselves as photographers (or even artists), yet they don't have any ideas what they actually want to take pictures of.
In part, this is a problem of inspiration. Unlike the mail, inspiration does not arrive at a regular basis. You'll be deeply inspired some of the time. But most of the time, that's not going to be the case. There actually will be lulls that feel like they last forever, where you're out of ideas and where things feel like a real drag. That's completely normal and nothing to worry about.
What I'm talking about here is a lack of inspiration (or ideas) over a longer period of time. I'm also talking about people who have a lot of ideas, but when pressed they're not really excited about any of them. I mean, if you're doing something and you find out that you're actually not that inspired by it (if even that), then maybe that's the wrong thing to pursue? After all, you need to be inspired some of the time to go about something. Otherwise, it's just a chore.
Unfortunately, the words and discussions used in the world of photography to talk about this complex aren't very helpful at all. Inspiration is a decent word to use, even if I have met a lot of people who wouldn't describe themselves using it. Inspiration is like a little ember that flashes inside you at some stage and that then lights more and more up in you, allowing you to see something through all the way until the end.
It gets more problematic once the word "passion" is evoked. There's something vaguely religious about the word that has people like me suspicious about its use. That problem aside, it's also completely useless: you're either passionate about something, or you're not. If you're not then you can't will it into action. It's simply not going to happen.
I've heard teachers complain about students who supposedly had no passion. Helloooooo? If you're a teacher, it's your job to create some of that passion. If you can't (or don't want to) do that, maybe you shouldn't be teaching.
The next problematic word is "talent". It's the most overrated word. Talent is not completely meaningless. But it mostly is. If you have a talent for something that's great. But that's not going to get you anywhere. Only a lot of hard work will. In fact, it's only the huge amount of hard work that will then show why someone talented has an advantage over someone who lacks the talent.
On its own, talent is mostly an anchor. The moment people find you have talent for something, they will tell you, which almost inevitably leads to you becoming complacent: why do all the hard work when you have talent?
In the best case, you have a talent for something. But you only find out by chance, having put a lot of work in.
The worst word is -- you guessed it -- "genius". For all the wrong reasons, the world of art loves the idea of genius: that godlike creature who magically creates great art out of nowhere. That person is not only exceedingly rare, the overall idea also mostly doesn't work that way. Art typically doesn't arise out of a vacuum.
Thus, we're left with very little. Or rather: what really matters when you want to become a better photographer (and possibly even an artist) is none of the "sexy" stuff (talent, genius, ...).
The only thing that matters is that you pay close attention to when inspiration strikes you, and you make sure to make a note. In other words, you start paying attention to yourself (as opposed to "knowing" every book on every shortlist, say).
If you get started on something once inspiration strikes you, the next thing that matters is that you see it through. I can't stress that enough. You'll have to be able to ignore all the other ideas you might have, ideas that often seem so much more interesting than what you're working on right now.
The ability to see things through in a serious fashion is what distinguishes successful photographers from all the others.
By "serious fashion" I here mean: you really have to bite into it. You have to push through even when you hit the wall that you will inevitably hit (if you're not hitting a wall, it's very likely that you're picking a very low hanging fruit). Don't give up. You have to see things through and take an idea from its very inspired beginning all the way to its final conclusion.
And I just used the s-word: success. That's another terrible, terrible word in a world of photography that has thoroughly embraced neoliberal thinking. This brings me all the way back to where I started: you want to know what you're in it for. How else would you define success if you don't know what you're after?
Please note that I wrote that you define success, your success. That's another aspect of going into an MFA program: if you know what you're in it for, you also know how to see your success. In fact, if it's a good program, it will expand your thinking along the way and enrich your idea of what success might be.
But artistic success is not the same as neoliberal success: selling a lot of pictures, having a book on one of the gazillion shortlists, or whatever else there might be. I'm sure the latter is nice (I'm not the person to ask). But that can't be the success that you use to define yourself as the maker of photographs.
Don't tether your own artistic self worth to other people's ideas of what success might be.
For example, you could define your success as a combination of having seen a complex idea through, having learned a lot of things along the way, and now realizing that you've reached a new level where, alas, looking back you see how what you just did could have been better. But the latter is what you want: always aim for goals that are hard to reach, goals that aim higher than the ones before.
Leave the low-hanging fruit to other people.
Regardless of what some people in photoland will want you to believe -- there's the very self-defeating belief that photographers' first projects are always the best and most successful, do not let other people define your artistic life.
If you apply to the right MFA program, you have an opportunity to get some of that advice right there. But you can also easily find it elsewhere, if you immerse yourself in a community of like-minded people who are generous with each other. If that community doesn't exist, yet, then create it yourself.
In the end, it all comes down to this:
Get to know yourself better.
Figure out what you really want to do (what inspires you, what you might be passionate about). Ignore the rest.
Think about how you can reach goals that will require serious effort.
Pursue your goals, and don't quit. See things through. Show up every day, even on days where it really sucks.
Lastly, don't allow other people to define what success means for you. In other words, don't tether your artistic self worth to what other people whisper into your ears.
Good luck!
And thank you for reading.
-- Jörg