American Photo On Campus Student Showcase

	© APOC photo by Michael Bühler-Rose
	American Photo On Campus March 2007 Issue

In our November issue we invited readers to submit photographs for a prospective all-student issue, not at all convinced we would get enough work to do it. We got plenty, and then some. This issue’s Student Portfolios section is 22 pages long, our biggest ever. Remarkable work came in from all corners of the country, with a particularly impressive showing coming from the University of Pennsylvania.

In sifting through what we received, I see a few patterns worth mentioning. First, lots of you are looking hard at the world around you, and using your photographs to make people contemplate interesting or beautiful things they would ordinarily miss. Second, you’re all thinking hard—not just about the world around you, but also about the world within you, and using your photographs to question and comment on it. Many of you are doing both things at the same time, of course, and both are legitimate pursuits of photography.

Here’s the other thing. While your level of photographic craft may not currently meet a professional standard—time and experience will take care of that—your openness to “taking risks,” to use the familiar art school parlance, puts a lot of mature photographers to shame. Even the finest of fine-art photographers often get set in their ways, making pictures with a sameness that the academic world often mistakes for vision.

Never let that happen to you, whether you’re going into photojournalism or advertising photography. And one more lesson, taught by this issue of American Photo On Campus: Don’t ever think you can’t get your work published.