There is an undergraduate university in Taiwan Province Province with a photography department.

There are many practical reasons why the Department of Photography cannot be established in Taiwan Province Province.

1. Teachers recognized by the Ministry of Education are hard to find and may not be competent in photography. So far, there is no doctor related to applied arts. As for doctors in imaging and photography history, the former has great scientific expertise in physics, chemistry, mathematics or photoelectricity and information, and is suitable for research and development in the field of information technology; The latter is only a branch of art history research in the Department of History, which is suitable for professional writing, cultural observation and criticism, or planning exhibitions in Academia Sinica and museums. They may not be qualified for the courses planned by the photography department of normal universities. On the contrary, experienced professional photographers and photographers are regarded as unqualified teachers on university campuses.

2. It is unreasonable for domestic universities to adopt the same tuition standard, unlike European and American countries that let universities adopt their own tuition policies. For photography, film, television, music, arts and crafts and other fields with particularly high education costs, it is really difficult to maintain (make money) departments under the same conditions. If private universities lack donations and subsidies from consortia or churches, most schools would rather set up history departments and Chinese departments for the sake of teaching costs.

3. An independent "photography department" should take into account the development of all-round professional fields. A complete "photography department" must include: ecological photography, macro photography, advertising photography, portrait photography, food photography, high-speed photography, celestial photography, aerial photography, underwater photography, criminal photography, biomedical photography, sports photography, news photography, report photography, artistic photography, computer image processing, permanent preservation and so on. Elective courses in private universities must meet the minimum requirement of 20 students, and full-time teachers must meet the teaching hours of 65,438+00 hours per week. It is difficult to realize the ideal of accommodating many elites in photography teaching in Taiwan Province Province. For example, RIT's "Photography Department" has 40 million dollars of teaching facilities and employs 70 or 80 photographers as photography teachers. It seems that this is an unreachable "Arabian Nights".

4. Set up a decent "photography department" with high hardware setting standards. A well-equipped "photography department" should have at least a sufficient number of color darkrooms and black-and-white darkrooms for teaching and practice. During class, there is a studio for one person, a framed classroom, a Macintosh computer for each person, and it is best to have a standard exhibition hall. Moreover, the school must provide students with the service of lending equipment after class. Therefore, planning a whole building needs hundreds of millions of yuan, but it can only meet the teaching needs of students around 120. I believe that many university presidents have "backed out" of such high quality standards.

The trend of digital photography is unstoppable. The time from pressing the shutter to forming an image is getting shorter and shorter, and the control changes are becoming more diversified and precise. The number of new photographers learning traditional photography skills and darkroom exercises will decrease year by year, while the dependence on computer image processing software will gradually increase. The pace of electronic application is too fast, and the life cycle of computer software and hardware products is very short. This is a very heavy burden for schools that provide image education, and it will be one of the cover doors of the newly established department of image and photography.

6. The number of print media in Taiwan Province Province has far exceeded its actual demand. The merger of newspapers, the closure of magazines and publishing houses are inevitable, and it is also true that a large number of senior photographers and photographers have been abolished, resulting in an oversupply of imaging workers. Of course, for graduates majoring in photography, there will also be employment difficulties and influences. As for artists engaged in installation art and video creation, Taiwan Province Province is bound to embark on the fate of "adventure island" because of the lack of room for the development of pure art. Photographic Group, Department of Translation, Ninth New University

Nearly 20% graduates are engaged in video-related work, which is higher than other art-related departments in universities. Without a substantial increase in the demand for photography, the newly established "Photography Department" is bound to tilt in the direction of digital images. By then, what we will see will no longer be the "photography department", but the so-called "image department" or "visual communication department"

conclusion

In fact, foreign universities have renamed photography as imaging, which shows that traditional photography has changed from a recording tool to a stage of image thinking and computer application. How to change photography from a casual, relaxed and superficial social impression to a professional, up-to-date, well-paid and promising image will be the common responsibility and direction of university photography educators in the future.

Reference: Taiwan Photography Education Association