ylagandre

Try UIC. They have a great interdisciplinary program that I just found out about from a friend who's going there. There's a photo department and a moving image department, which faculty you would also have access to. It's not very expensive, big studios (with your own lock and key) and you get to teach your own class second year. The people are all really smart and make a close knit group. I really see your work fitting in there.

I for one would be excited to find a good fallback school. There are really solid MFA programs all over the place only I can't find something that fits. I'm looking for an MFA in film with the flexibility to do installation as well. I am decidedly a non narrative filmmaker so that rules out just about every film school except Bard, SFAI, CalArts and SAIC. I won't apply to Bard because it's low-residency. SAIC is my first choice and the easiest to get into with a 35% acceptance rate for the film program, which is great compared to their painting or sculpture departments. So my question for people is what other school could you think of where my work would fit in? Do I need a fallback school? Michaelwebster, I'm interested to know how you see this fitting in with the work you might have seen from that department. https://vimeo.com/49641305 https://vimeo.com/49641304 Please excuse the audio/squashed image on The Gift. Someone just stole my hard drive with all my work on it so I can't fix it for the web (good thing I burned DVDs so I at least have something decent to submit to the schools).

Ditto about the suggestion to apply to SAIC's performance dept. and the resemblance to Nick Cave. It's not California and is potentially expensive but the work would really fit in there. There's really no replacement for faculty completely dedicated to your area of interest, no matter how interdisciplinary the alternatives are. I have a friend who graduated from that department and has nothing but good things to say about it. Plus, if you're into costumes, you can take seminars in the fibres dept. with Nick Cave himself! It's really a match made in heaven from where I'm standing.

It definitely shows that you only take a few shots. There isn't enough interaction going on between you and the subjects nor enough trial and error. Looking through contact sheets is time consuming but not silly. Annie Leibowitz once talked about how long it took her to learn to size up a contact sheet with a single glance—it took years of apprenticeship under another photographer. The more you shoot the better. One of the better photographers I know once described taking the perfect photograph as like making the perfect sandwich. You can make three sandwiches and never know anything better or make thirty sandwiches and fall upon that truly memorable sandwich. Once you find that best tasting sandwich you'll never be able to reproduce it, no matter how many more times you try, but you'll never taste it to begin with unless you set out to try. I would suggest working without the sketches as their preconceived notions are tying you down. Play more and allow yourself to be more spontaneous. It is all a game of make believe is it not? By the way, that particular Pina Bausch film in not readily available. Look out for the documentary by Wim Wenders or look at her theatre work on youtube instead.

I can't say that I care for the first two series very much; although, Last Thoughts Before Falling Asleep grabs me by the pure theatricality of it. It reminded me of Pina Bausch's film The Complaint of an Empress in terms of imagery, tone and vignette structure. On the other hand, I feel like the psychological construct of your work is lacking. There is no underlying dramaturgy to tie things together. I neither understand your motivations nor your obsessions, which is perhaps why (and please correct me if I'm wrong) michaelwebster has a problem with the "overt symbolic icons". The images show us a glint of genius but fall apart because we don't understand where the drama is coming from. You need to assert yourself as the director or the metteur en scène. Keeping It Together is the strongest image; however, and I'm being severe in order to make a point about directing, the boats in the background don't match the nostalgic character I feel overall. Andrei Tarkovsky once cleared an entire meadow of it's spring blossoms because the cheerfulness of the flowers would have interrupted the desolation in the story. I'm curious as to how much shots you take during a shoot. Are you an economical photographer or do you shoot rolls and rolls? I would also suggest picking one of the schools on your list as your top choice and dropping the rest in favor of some fallback schools. The programs you chose are very competitive and I think the risk of total disappointment is too high.

I have a friend who had an excellent experience at Hunter. He's a video artist so they set him up to work under Tony Oursler as a studio assistant right off the bat. Now he shows at MOMA P.S.1 and is published in Flash Art magazine. I have another friend who went to a different CUNY and he also seemed to have a beneficial experience by making connections in the city. The city is definitely a huge asset to consider.