Photo Elective • Applying Lipstick

Here’s another Photo Elective shot by Tina Garceau of Tina Garceau! As I’ve written before, all sophomore students majoring in illustration at The Philadelphia College of Art were required to take a minor course in photography where the students would shoot and process 35mm black and white photographs. At the time, it seemed like a needlessly pricey course that stood in the way of what illustrators really wanted to do which was to draw and paint. The illustration students didn’t necessarily want to be in a darkroom, and the photography students saw the illustrators as an intrusion on their territory. There was a limited amount of photographic equipment and not a whole lot of space in that eighth floor photography department. Photography majors felt they had eternal dibs on the enlargers although we were all on the hook for tuition and darkroom fees. Arguments would invariably break out. The course was something that just had to be endured for a semester.

I often wondered if this requirement remained as the Philadelphia College of Art became The University of the Arts and the whole wide world went digital. It would seem to be something that the school would keep in place just to make things needlessly difficult and outrageously expensive. I can’t imagine what a box of 8″ x 10″ photographic paper would go for nowadays or where it could be purchased. I imagine there are online retailers that would fulfill the order, but you better pony up some dough!

It’s a moot point because The University of the Arts went belly up a little more than a year ago. Their insistence on the “way things should be done” doesn’t really count for much any more.