Using Photography to Complicate Women’s Artist – Teacher Practice
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
8-3-2025 11:40 AM
Description
Dr. Joanna Fursman, Senior Lecturer and Researcher, Birmingham City University and Melanie Woodhead, Ph.D. student at Birmingham City University, United Kingdom
Using Photography to Complicate Women’s Artist – Teacher Practice
This paper explores how photography enlivens education practices, and rather than solving the difficulties around defining artist-teacher identities, it makes them more complex. The presentation will draw on our joint chapter: “The Demands of the Artwork, Complicating Artist Teacher Practice Through Photography.” published in 2024.
Discussing two distinct photography projects they taught with young people in the West Midlands, England: The ‘Beauty and Utility Project’ and ‘Looking for a new School Portrait’, these projects explore unfixing identities through co-constructive and unfolding photographic processes. Exploring the effect these projects had on pedagogical approaches and relationships between the camera technology, students and images they made, the presentation proposes to explore relationships between analogue, plant-based (alternative), and digital photography and the transitional spaces and pedagogies created when photographs are made with non-traditional methods.
Fursman and Woodhead will discuss how putting cameras into the hands of young people they teach and gathering images using the methodology of the photowalk (inspired by the collaborative artwork of Annette Krauss and research by Rita Irwin and Stephanie Springgay) positions the educator and students in a non-hierarchical relationships. These spaces we sought for learning outside the studio and classroom invited ways of thinking, creating and learning that focussed less on the individual and more on collective experience, pointing to ‘embodied, cognitive, sensual, relational, visual, communicative dimensions and possibilities’ (O’Neill and Roberts 2020: 15).
This conference presents an opportunity for the authors to explore their contemporary photography practice and writing through the complex perspectives we embody as women photographers. This aligns with what Tiffany Fairey describes as “coming to voice using photography”, (2024:33) allowing the authors to understand and express more about how to encourage all their participants to “take up their own space” in the collaborative and education contexts created in their photography projects.
Dr. Joanna Fursman is leader of the PGCE Secondary Art and Design programme at Birmingham City University, England. She has also taught Fine Art, the Artist Teacher Scheme and on the MA and BA Art and Education Programmes at Birmingham School of Art and Newman University, Birmingham. Joanna's research and art practice examines non-normative representations of education through photography and filmmaking to critically explore the distinct field of pedagogy and it's appearances in contemporary art-practice and the photographic image.
Melanie Woodhead is an artist, educator and PhD researcher who has taught in Further and Higher Education in England. She has delivered visual arts projects in museums and art galleries for over 20 years. Her studies on the MA Art and Education Practices at Birmingham School of Art led Melanie to investigated how the conditions for creativity and learning flourish in the space between familiar and unfamiliar territory. Melanie's PhD research experiments with digital and alternative photographic practices, examining transnational urban and green spaces, co-creating with bordering human and non-human communities.
Relational Format
Conference proceeding
Recommended Citation
Fursman, Joanna and Woodhead, Melanie, "Using Photography to Complicate Women’s Artist – Teacher Practice" (2025). Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day 2025. 34.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2025/schedule/34
Using Photography to Complicate Women’s Artist – Teacher Practice
Dr. Joanna Fursman, Senior Lecturer and Researcher, Birmingham City University and Melanie Woodhead, Ph.D. student at Birmingham City University, United Kingdom
Using Photography to Complicate Women’s Artist – Teacher Practice
This paper explores how photography enlivens education practices, and rather than solving the difficulties around defining artist-teacher identities, it makes them more complex. The presentation will draw on our joint chapter: “The Demands of the Artwork, Complicating Artist Teacher Practice Through Photography.” published in 2024.
Discussing two distinct photography projects they taught with young people in the West Midlands, England: The ‘Beauty and Utility Project’ and ‘Looking for a new School Portrait’, these projects explore unfixing identities through co-constructive and unfolding photographic processes. Exploring the effect these projects had on pedagogical approaches and relationships between the camera technology, students and images they made, the presentation proposes to explore relationships between analogue, plant-based (alternative), and digital photography and the transitional spaces and pedagogies created when photographs are made with non-traditional methods.
Fursman and Woodhead will discuss how putting cameras into the hands of young people they teach and gathering images using the methodology of the photowalk (inspired by the collaborative artwork of Annette Krauss and research by Rita Irwin and Stephanie Springgay) positions the educator and students in a non-hierarchical relationships. These spaces we sought for learning outside the studio and classroom invited ways of thinking, creating and learning that focussed less on the individual and more on collective experience, pointing to ‘embodied, cognitive, sensual, relational, visual, communicative dimensions and possibilities’ (O’Neill and Roberts 2020: 15).
This conference presents an opportunity for the authors to explore their contemporary photography practice and writing through the complex perspectives we embody as women photographers. This aligns with what Tiffany Fairey describes as “coming to voice using photography”, (2024:33) allowing the authors to understand and express more about how to encourage all their participants to “take up their own space” in the collaborative and education contexts created in their photography projects.
Dr. Joanna Fursman is leader of the PGCE Secondary Art and Design programme at Birmingham City University, England. She has also taught Fine Art, the Artist Teacher Scheme and on the MA and BA Art and Education Programmes at Birmingham School of Art and Newman University, Birmingham. Joanna's research and art practice examines non-normative representations of education through photography and filmmaking to critically explore the distinct field of pedagogy and it's appearances in contemporary art-practice and the photographic image.
Melanie Woodhead is an artist, educator and PhD researcher who has taught in Further and Higher Education in England. She has delivered visual arts projects in museums and art galleries for over 20 years. Her studies on the MA Art and Education Practices at Birmingham School of Art led Melanie to investigated how the conditions for creativity and learning flourish in the space between familiar and unfamiliar territory. Melanie's PhD research experiments with digital and alternative photographic practices, examining transnational urban and green spaces, co-creating with bordering human and non-human communities.
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