Tuesday August 2, 2005

I Am Not Your Mommy: Peggy Levison Nolan

This is going to sound a little funny, and you may need to make special arrangements with your work. Assuming, of course, you actually have a job.

There is just enough time to register for Fall classes at FIU so you can get into Peggy’s Nolan’s Color Class. Starting at the end of August, it will run Monday and Wednesday mornings. So we hope your employer is supportive and understanding, because Peggy does not plan to offer night classes. Why would you (a respectable adult) want to take a beginning color photography class?

It’s not because you want to learn to use your camera and it’s not because you want to take better vacation pictures. You come to Peggy when you want lessons in looking at the world. As most people understand it, photography is the act of taking pictures of interesting things. But the sort of art that Peggy, William Eggleston, and most serious photographers espouse is the art of creating beautiful configurations of ordinary things on a piece of film negative.

A wonderful photographer herself, Peggy has no trouble taking her students to task for missing the big picture (as it were. Or taking the long view). But those open enough to learn to look with new eyes will have the experience of a lifetime. And Peggy is not the sort to hold on to some sort of traditional student/teacher distance; she shares things with her students the way she would with her friends

Nolan’s beginning color photography class ought to be a rite of passage for any FIU student, in any major. But the class is entirely worthwhile for non-FIU folks, or those not currently attending any college, to take the class. The Cult of Peggy is the proof: this is more then a photography class; this is a communion of looking. Peggy Nolan’s Gentlemen may or may not be a hoax, but by the end of the semester you may wish it was not.

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  1. harumi    Wed Aug 3, 07:58 PM #  

    peggy you are my #1 mom!

  2. Abortion Baby    Thu Aug 4, 11:02 AM #  

    After reading this post I was kind of interested in signing up for her class… until I saw the required materials… a film camera? :/

  3. cohen    Thu Aug 4, 01:09 PM #  

    msg newness really means for the cult of peggy nolan worshipers, dont let the film thing discourage being part of this class,abortion baby

    PEGGY number 1

  4. coochycoo    Wed Nov 16, 01:58 PM #  

    Warm and fuzzy to see you with that same expression after all these years: defiant and puzzled and looking to get laid. . . . But doll! Ixnay on the granny glasses. You who could be should be Miami’s La Saraghina . . . .

    “Guido: All the confusion of my life…has been a reflection of myself! Myself as I am, not as I’d like to be.”

    Big hug, air kiss. . . .