Last winter, I taught course I had been thinking about for a long time. The idea was to engage with a small group of photographers over the course of a few months to help them understand their photographs and process. Everything was done online (over Zoom).
In my introduction, I described my approach as teaching a method, and that is what it is. The method starts out from approaching photographs in a very simple and straightforward manner, and essentially everything else follows from there. Contrary to many other approaches where taking photographs is considered as being separate from editing them, which, in turn, is then different from writing a statement, in my method, everything flows together.
It’s easy to see why the method has such huge advantages: it’s simple, it does not require years of MFA studies (not even to mention associated costs), and it does not pile challenges upon challenges.
If you understand how your photographs operate, you understand how they operate when placed into the same context (for example a photobook). If you understand how your photographs operate in a photobook, you understand what the book — and by extension the work — is doing. If you understand what your work is doing, it becomes straightforward to talk or write about it.
And given it’s a method, once you put one project aside and consider another one, the underlying approach does not change. As a teacher, my main goal thus is to make my presence unnecessary.
It was extremely heartening to see the group of students (from all over the world) deciding to continue meeting up with each other after the course had ended. And everybody was able to show their work twice during the course, to have their fellow students discuss it in detail.
The time has come for another such course, the 2025/2026 edition. It is called 9×9 for a reason: 9 students, 9 meetings (plus an introductory one), and it’s $900, because I don’t think taking part in a masterclass (which it essentially is) should break the bank.
You can find some more details plus student testimonials on this website. If you are interested in joining the next course or if you have questions, please simple be in touch: jmcolberg at gmail.com.
And if you know someone who might be interested in this, please send them the information. I’m not on Facebook or Instagram any longer, meaning it’s a bit harder for me to get the word out. Thank you!