Brooks Photography School Closing: Shattered Dreams

[tunalegs]

Where are you getting these ideas?

You should know by now how to spot a troll. 😉

If I were continuously derailing topics and resurrecting dead threads, I'd probably already have a slew of PMs from the mods. I wonder what's going on.

 

[sevo]

Bauhaus kinda did survive in a way. It came to Chicago and became the Institute of Design (Moholy-Nagy) and ultimately became part of IIT. Callahan, Siskind and Mies van der Rohe all taught at IIT.

More than that - other clusters of Bauhaus professors re-surfaced after the war and went on to found or reform (state run) art schools all over Germany, most notably at Ulm and Krefeld.

And given that legalising "for profit" academies in Germany did not happen until the Neocon revolution of the 1990s, it is rather unlikely that the Bauhaus would have drifted that way. For profit (or indeed non state-operated) education doesn't really have any tradition in continental Europe - it is a very recent development that any for profit institution may offer academic degrees. Only for the past ten or fifteen years everybody and his corrupt family clan seems to be founding "business academies" to sell MBA degrees to managers that lack a prestigious wall decoration.

Photography also having a un-academic strain apart from art schools, there actually were two or three old for profit (or at any rate, independent) photography schools in Germany (dating back to the early 20th century), but these offered apprenticeships or journalism training rather than degrees, and were generally considered quite a few steps down from art schools.

 

[Canyongazer]

Well there are two or three posts about Brooks?

Yup, which is about one or two more than those posters who actually have any first hand knowledge of Brooks.

 

[pepeguitarra]

Yes, unfortunately, this US American «McJob» phenomenon is reality everywhere today, even in Good Old Europe.

Another very interesting demographic point regarding colleges:

Why do today most college grads in the USA remain childless until they're 35 or even 45, whereas in Europe (including UK) it's definitely not uncommon that college students become parents while studying — AND graduate?

I think it is the opposite. Europeans (at least in Spain) do not believe in getting married and much less in having kids. In fact, that is the reason of the waves of immigrants going to England, Germany and France. Those countries subsidize having children, so immigrants do not have to work but to procreate.

 

[Canyongazer]

NWM: "Discuss."

Will try but perhaps too verklempt. 🙂

You are right re: it was commercially oriented. In the '70s majors were "color, portrait, photo illustration and industrial (technical, scientific) and motion picture. You were being prepared to get a job in a photographic specialty.
But that specialization took place only after a year of general photography preparation which all took place before a major was selected.
We got one week off in summer, another one at Christmas/NY.

After the first six months over half of those who started were gone. It was a demanding journey.
An MFA program was added in, I believe, the mid-1980s.

In 1945 Ernest Brooks and his later son Ernie were photographers who started a photography school. Yes, they wanted to make a profit (otherwise they would not remain open for long) but they were photographers first.
Much the same as founder Louis B. Mayer relinquishing Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to Sony and Adolf Zukor's Paramount Studios holdings being turned over to Gulf+Western, so did Brooks become mired in corporatism when the family sold it to an educational version of 7-11.