Dear Internet Spiders, you may have noticed that my blog this week is being posted on Friday, not Thursday. I decided to make a little bit of a change and so I'm dedicating my regularly-scheduled blog post to Freya, not Thor. Why? Well, the last few days have been a very challenging time for me and Freya is all about renewal and happy endings. Thor, we'll get back to you next week. Don't smite me, bro.
I've been teaching at the Light Factory, a photographic museum and education center in Charlotte, for a bit less than a year now. I taught an Introduction to Photoshop and was trying to get some Intermediate and Advanced Photoshop classes set up. Twice I was able to run alternative photography workshops at the Light Factory, teaching students about anthotypes, lumen prints and cyanotypes. I was looking forward to expanding those workshops, doing more of them and developing second-level workshops about toning cyanotypes, processing lumens digitally, that kind of stuff. Taking the processes a bit further, you know? There were other classes I wanted to teach and had pitched successfully, just pending a good time to schedule them. Things like bleaching and heavy-metal toning of silver gelatin prints, or a LiquidLight workshop where students could make photos on fabric, glass or other fun stuff!
These things shall not come to pass. On Monday, the Light Factory suspended all operations and terminated its staff. There are noises being made that the shut-down is temporary, but that is not the impression I have received. If the Light Factory survives, it will be in a new format, new location and with a new administration. It won't so much survive, as die now and come back later.
After 41 years of promoting photography, teaching students and inspiring visitors, the Light Factory has failed and fallen. I am honored to have been part of it, even if for a brief time.
The educators and staff I worked with at the Light Factory are amazing people, and I'm not going to let the closing of a facility stop me from continuing to work with them. I'm not going to let it stop me from teaching either. I'm going to be looking into ways to continue teaching, the same kind of lessons and workshops I've been doing. There will be challenges, because I'll have to coordinate everything myself instead of just showing up and saying words at people until they learn things. I'll need to find spaces for the classes and somehow gather new students. How? No idea. I'm bad at social networking.
I wish all the best to my friends formerly of the Light Factory, and all the best to my students that are just as sad to see a place they learned so much fall apart. We'll still make things work, they just have to change now.
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