It was the photography school par excellence. Anyone dedicated to the discipline had spent more or less time around EFTI, whether as a student, staff or teacher. The unexpected closure of the school a few weeks ago caused a stir. Almost 40 years of experience supported this institution of photography that, in the end, turned out to be just as fragile as any other.
So was that utopia that turned out to be Blank Paper Escuela. Founded in 2006, it marked several generations of artists with its practice and style. Its end was somewhat confusing, in 2017 it separated from the Blank Paper collective to become Dinamo Visual Lab and, just a year later, it ceased its activity. Fosi Vegue, director of this center, acknowledges that the school “made losses every year.” The teaching vocation, the desire to do things and the enthusiasm fueled the project for more than a decade, but it was not enough either. Just as it was not enough for EFTI to be an international benchmark: it declared bankruptcy.
If the nearby pedagogical proposal of Blank Paper Escuela did not work, nor has the great EFTI machinery, is there an educational bubble for photography? Intensive courses, workshops, specializations, masters… The offer is varied and wide, but is there really so much demand in a world marked by tutorials and mobile photography?
For Gloria Oyarzabal, photographer and teacher at Lens School of Visual Arts, “what is offered in these schools is not so much the technique, which you can learn in a YouTube tutorial, but the learning, research and image editing strategies.” Although it is true, the feeling is that, given the number of options, one training or another is chosen because of the prestige of the center, the teachers or the possible professional opportunities associated with each school, not because of the educational offer itself.
Official studies cannot compete with the private offer either. There is only one public university degree in Photography (the Degree in Photography and Audiovisual Creation of the Rey Juan Carlos I University, created in 2021 and which, curiously, is taught at the TAI affiliated center, a private school) and the title of Higher Technician of Plastic Arts and Design in Photography, which consists of two academic courses, and is a training that is very technically oriented and little artistic. In order to specialize, many university graduates who wish to specialize in photography seek the postgraduate option, such as those offered by the Institut d’Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya, which is a non-profit cultural association, with the philosophy of an entity at the service of the public. , but outside the public education system.
And, in this context, what happens if you choose the self-taught path? Is it necessary to go through a training center? Paco Gómez, photographer of the NOPHOTO collective, had practically self-taught training: “My feeling is that many people end up in photography schools because they are running away from something, but they have no vocation. Photography is a long-distance career, you have to be indifferent to failure, listen to opinions, have a critical outlook and, above all, be curious.” Gómez could not study at EFTI as she was too far from her economic possibilities, so she looked for an alternative: “I needed to learn more, but I needed to do it quickly and for little money, so I spent the entire days in the Reina Sofía library, watching photography books.
Educate the eye
Education – self-taught or not – through the observation and understanding of images is something as basic as it is absent in compulsory education. And it is one of the main factors of the precariousness of culture. It is impossible to understand and support professional photography, or any type of artistic manifestation, if there is no sensitivity cultivated since childhood.
From the cultural sector there are numerous personal and collective initiatives to bring this visual education to the general public, such as, for example, the FIEBRE Photobook festival, which is held between June 21 and 23 at La Casa Encendida. “FIEBRE emerged as a meeting point where we could chat, exchange opinions and sell self-publishing. Thanks to these sales, authors and small publishers can think about the next project,” explains Miren Pastor, photographer and co-director of the event, and adds: “To activate this engine, it is important to open this entire universe to new audiences.”
However, the festival, carried out by a small team, was unable to find a space – neither public nor private – to hold the event last year and had to be suspended. In this eleventh edition, FIEBRE has expressed solidarity with the students and teachers affected by the closure of EFTI and is putting original copies of their photographs on sale to raise money that will be used for legal assistance; They have called it Error 503, like the message that appears when trying to access the photography school’s website, which was deactivated the moment they informed the students and workers of the closure.
At a time when the desired National Center of Photography is immersed in the bureaucratic labyrinths of its creation, support among colleagues in the union can partially alleviate the lack of institutional involvement. However, there are still other components that affect the way in which photography is perceived: “The lack of social prestige, competition from the tools we use, the lack of unified studies or references at a mass level, nor an authentic pedagogy about how images are used around us, contribute to a hopeless state,” says Gustavo Alemán, photographer, editor and professor at EFTI.
Today’s world, dominated by emoticons, videos and images, suffers from a serious and paradoxical visual illiteracy. While waiting for compulsory primary and secondary education that contemplates the need to integrate subjects into the study plans that help develop critical thinking through art, the private sector assumes this task unevenly and without guarantees of continuity.
The closure of EFTI not only means the disappearance of a consecrated institution, but also highlights the evident precariousness suffered by photography and the cultural sector, in general. A large part of the school’s teaching staff had studied at it, or at other similar schools, and teaching classes had become a way of acquiring the desired economic stability. The scheme becomes flawed: studying in schools where you can then teach to escape precariousness.
The centers do not collapse, the model collapses. A model of education and professionalization that, built on the fragility of not being understood or valued, condemns photography training to die and be reborn, to try and fail. And, again, start over.
