In 2020, the pandemic impacted graduating students in a profound way. Thesis shows were cancelled, graduations were unique to say the least, and many students felt shorted by the last days of in person learning. But with difficult situations comes new ways of celebrating the next generation of photographers….and so The FotoFika 2020 All Stars Project was born.

Strange Fire re-imagines how their archive can bring long-lasting change to the institutions educating the next generation of thinkers. They developed tools to utilize and interpret their archive in  classroom settings, making it easier for educators to find the resources we need to diversify our curriculums.

Strange Fire: The Strange Fire artist collective is a group of interdisciplinary artists, curators, and writers focused on work that engages with current social and political forces. Strange Fire is a platform for work that critically questions the dominant social hierarchy, dedicated to highlighting work made by women, people of color, and queer and trans artists. Their collective practice is centered around increasing the visibility of meaningful work and creating dialogue and community through publications, exhibitions, and events. Strange Fire was formed in 2015 by Jess T. Dugan, Hamidah Glasgow, Zora J Murff, and Rafael Soldi.

Rafael Soldi, Co-Founder: Rafael Soldi is a Peruvian­-born, Seattle-based artist and curator. He holds a BFA in Photography & Curatorial Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art. His practice centers on how queerness and masculinity intersect with larger topics of our time such as immigration, memory, and loss. He has exhibited internationally at the Frye Art Museum, American University Museum, Griffin Museum of Photography, ClampArt, The Print Center, Museo MATE, Filter Space, and Burrard Arts Foundation, among others. Rafael has received grants and awards from the Magenta Foundation, Puffin Foundation, smART Ventures, Artist Trust, 4Culture, the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, and Center Santa Fe. He has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, PICTURE BERLIN, Oxbow Space, and the Bogliasco Foundation.

His first monograph, Imagined Futures, was published in 2020 by Candor Arts,

His work is in several permanent museum collections and has been reviewed on ARTFORUM, The Seattle Times, The Boston Globe, Photograph Magazine, The Seen, Art Nexus, and PDN. He is an SPE board member, co-founder of the Strange Fire Collective, and co-curator of the High Wall, a yearly outdoor video projection program that invites immigrant artists to intervene the facade of a former immigration center building in the heart of Seattle.

Keavy Handley-Byrne, Educational Resources Coordinator, Content Contributor: Keavy Handley-Byrne is a photographer and writer. Handley-Byrne holds an MFA in photography from Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA in photography from Purchase College, SUNY. Keavy’s work addresses issues of queer identity and gender, with a particular focus on finding joy in the wake of trauma and loss. Their work has been featured online with A New Nothing and StayAtHome.Photography, and has been exhibited across the United States. Keavy is currently working with both the Northeast Chapter of the Society for Photographic Education, as well as the LGBTQ+ Caucus as their Northeast Chapter representative, and is pursuing collegiate teaching as a profession. They are currently based on Lenape and Canarsie land (Brooklyn, NY).

See you WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17th, 4pm EST at:

ZOOM ID:https://zoom.us/j/93761631388?pwd=eTYxL0NSVkVNWDh4SnVhclFXTEorQT09Zoom – PWD – fotofikahttps://zoom.us/j/93761631388

John, Betsy, Anne

P.S. Please consider donating to our Kickstarter campaign for our 2020 All Star Trading Cards:

See you Soon: JANUARY 20th, 4pm EST at:

ZOOM ID: https://zoom.us/j/93761631388…

Zoom – PWD – fotofika
https://zoom.us/j/93761631388

Online, Hybrid and Traditional all have their challenges and advantages and I am hopeful that once Covid no longer dictates our teaching we will emerge with more ways to teach than ever before. And while FotoFika began as a place s is help us develop coping strategies, we are hopeful that it can become a place where we all continue to grow as educators, students and artists.

So all are invited to come and share your experiences from the last year, to talk about different strategies and resources and ways of approaching darkroom in the age of Covid or if you wish just come and listen. We will share resources and assignments, we will build on ideas and talk about ways to approach this coming semester and beyond.

Here is a short list of possible launch points for the 2 hour session.

• What is essential in a darkroom class?
• How do you cover what you deem to be essential in a darkroom class?
• The challenges of teaching darkroom without a common meeting area.
• Different strategies for remote teaching? For socially distanced teaching? For hybrid?
• Alt processes? At home processes?
• Approaches to using PhotoShop for black and white post-production.
• Specific tools?
• Discussion about object-ness and engaging physically and over distance.

Any other ideas or strategies are welcome. See you on Wednesday January 6.

Jonathan Molina-Garcia is an assistant professor of Photography + Film. He is a Salvadoran-American, photo-based media artist whose projects are committed to experiments in radical sharing, as a practice of both material exchanges and social communing. A citizen of the third world and an American DREAMER, his work examines various zones of conflict at the intersection of national and sexual identity, counterfeiting new criminal identities under the aegis of experimental technology and mechanical media. Heavily grounded in processes of collage, his mediums of interest also include time-based actions: performance art and video; book-making and labor crafts. His exhibitions include a solo presentation of the Bethesda Brotherhood at the Lawndale Art Center in Houston, and “Looms” at Sweet Pass Sculpture Park in Dallas. He is the recipient of the 2018 Nasher Microgrant and has been awarded various other developmental grants from organizations including the artist-run space Art Tooth, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and the Dallas Museum of Art. He earned his MFA in photography from the California Institute of the Arts, and graduated with dual bachelor’s degrees in photography and art history from the University of North Texas.

Atget Studio provides a simple digital platform that makes a back-and-forth exchange between creator and teacher fast and effective. Ask questions, share your art and receive critical and clear feedback that helps you better communicate your ideas.

Gest is the Associate Chair of Part-Time Programs at the International Center of Photography (ICP), and has taught art at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), Barnard College and the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in NYC and Princeton University and Rutgers University in NJ and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago. His work is in the permanent collections at The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; LaSalle Bank, Chicago; Tweed Museum of art, Duluth and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. His photographs have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore; the Renaissance Society, Chicago; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Ben Gest is currently based in NYC.

See you Wednesday, DECEMBER 2nd, 4pm EST

at:ZOOM ID:https://zoom.us/j/93761631388?pwd=eTYxL0NSVkVNWDh4SnVhclFXTEorQT09

Zoom – PWD – fotofika
https://zoom.us/j/93761631388

4pm EST – Wednesday, 11/18/20
Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/93761631388

Terry Barrett is the author of books on criticism and aesthetics including Criticizing Photographs and CRITS. A new edition of Criticizing Photographs is being published later this month and is available for pre-order now (Routledge Press). CRITS is a manual written to and for students about studio critiques published (Bloomsbury, 2019).

https://vimeo.com/161259012?fbclid=IwAR3tgZ3ykRhKLzT01ICCmYd-OPs_r8YvX-wuVOHJObfC3EeYMuuBUzRyx0k

The second thing was well, the semester itself. Teaching in person small classes spaced out with no darkroom time, no close time and a mid-level asynchronous class with 30 students known by name only– I began to get frustrated by the lack of deep engagement. No one it seemed could say anything even slightly critical or negative about each others work. So when I do its sounds like I’m just out of it or adhering to old ideas.

And then a former student sent me this Tik/Tok by Ghost Honey–which is funny and was funny until I realized that as much as old school art school critiques drove me crazy– the only thing that still happens is that people say “I like the colors”–

https://twitter.com/tylergaca/status/1313308793237721088?lang=en

And then someone posted Terry Barretts tips for running a critique and that launched a discussion on the Photography Professors page that made me realize that I do not use silence well, at all. And I wondered what I could do to get better at this thing I’ve been supposedly good at for the past 20 years. 

And well, I have a lot more to say but its Wednesday and FotoFika day and I am looking forward to hearing what others are thinking as well.

Looking forward to beginning to dig more deeply into this issue later today.

Betsy