The hopelessness of it all.

Futility, it seems, has a new form and it thrives within the local photography course. The fusion of art and irony has become something horrible. I’d like you all to bear in mind that the story I’m about to tell you is absolutely true.

This story takes place in a one-to-one session, a private meeting between an academic and one of her pupils. While I’ll leave the details of my friend, the pupil, to your imagination, I can’t help but paint an image of her tutor. She is a rather emaciated woman, who fights her naturally mousy appearance with her hard jaw line, harder expression and sternly feminist haircut. It’s shorn extremely short, revealing the contours of her skull, and she sports its salt-and-pepper decline with cool pride. Her preferred facial expression is an earnest attempt at  ‘intellectually quizzical’ but she appears to be an individual incapable of raising one eyebrow above the other in order to complete the effect. Instead, she settles for squinting with one eye, giving one the uncomfortable impression that she is the world’s youngest stroke victim, or, alternatively, a cartoon villain.

Her voice completes the ensemble, a nasal and patronising noise that seems to emanate from the chin. This is because she cranes her head backward in an effort to look down her nose at people, most of whom are taller than her. Her most credited work is a series of photos that, in her own words, is a ‘serious comment on the Iraq war.’ It consists entirely of novelty jelly moulds backlit on a hill.

The meeting between young pupil and learned teacher begins with a mild bollocking regarding our pupil being absent from a previous meeting. Our pupil missed this meeting due to being accidentally omitted from a register sent to everyone but her, via email. Our teacher reprimanded her less severely upon learning this, but insisted that, should exactly the same thing occur in the future, our pupil would not be absent again. Sadly, my friend lacks the ability to read minds and will therefore be unable to comply.

But that has nothing on the particularly contemporary Catch 22 that followed. My friend produces work in a particular style, dismantling her sketchbooks and reordering her work to improve her project’s continuity. This does not go down well during this meeting, apparently it indicates that my friend is ‘working for the course’ instead of ‘working for herself.’ In order to ‘work for herself’ she must do exactly what our teacher tells her to do: in this case ceasing to dismantle the sketchbooks. Should she ‘work for the course’ by continuing to do what she likes to do, she will be penalised by the course.

I’ll rephrase that: in order to ‘work for herself’ she must religiously adhere to her teacher’s instructions. Should she choose not to conform to her teacher’s instructions, she will be criticised for conformity. Should she obey her teacher to the letter, she will be praised for her rebelliously individual style.

The cherry on the cake and the nail in the coffin is the final demand of our teacher. Our photographer’s photos are ‘too tight’. They need to be ‘more free’. I order you to be free. I order you to do your own thing. I order you to rebel. Should you not comply with my orders, I will make your grades suffer.