Artistic practice and the art of teaching are not mutually exclusive. Kai McBride, SoA ’08, certainly proves that. The photographer returned to campus this fall as a professor after his most recent exhibit, “Facing Florida: Self-Projecting Sunbelt Citizens,” graced Times Square in the fall of 2008.
The exhibit budded from McBride’s Master of Fine Arts thesis project in which he photographed local billboard culture in Tampa, Fla. His interest in these advertisements began when he drove through the city for the first time in 2007 and noted that billboard characters were virtually the only humans present on Tampa’s otherwise vacant streets.
McBride asserted that his study of people’s own self-representation cannot be classified as portraiture. Instead, he explored how the endearing and vulnerable quality of the people’s images draw attention to Florida’s economy, which relies on a stable flow of newcomers to maintain commercial prosperity.
The opportunity to place these images in the context of Times Square’s commercialistic bacchanal allowed the photographer to add a new conceptual dimension to the studio project. He compared the contrast between the Florida images and the commercial advertisements in New York to watching Telemundo after being immersed in the high-production television culture of America.
Yet, he called the successful translation of his work from an MFA studio project to city-funded piece a “perfect storm of sorts.” In fact, he asserted that messages generated by public art rarely fulfill an artist’s aims and are tailored to the patron’s desires. Likewise, McBride continues to refine the project to satisfy his own goals. He hopes to create a book containing many of the images from the project.
McBride’s fascination with place did not begin in Tampa. Born in Hawaii, McBride had lived in many parts of the country by the time he was a teenager. He acknowledged that this childhood experience taught him to tolerate difference and to hone his powers of observation, both of which are essential attributes of a photographer.
The photographer-professor first developed an affinity for photography his senior year of high school. He then studied photography as well as a variety of other artistic media, receiving a bachelors’ degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. After working at a variety of jobs, McBride “went in with open eyes” to the MFA program in his mid-30s. “Nothing beats life experience,” McBride said. Still, he found the time to pursue a master’s.
McBride returned to school with the intention to teach and enjoyed working as a teaching assistant for four semesters at Columbia. He continues to embrace the teaching style of Columbia darkroom legend professor Thomas Roma as he leads his own classes. “With the camera, you are editing the world with your choice of shots,” he said. He encourages his own Photography I students to develop the same critical eye that he has employed in his own projects.
According to McBride, Columbia’s photography classes provide a forum for rich intellectual exchange since a student from the School of International and Public Affairs may sit next to a film student during a critique. Students may learn from one another’s academic disciplines as they explore photography’s visual language.
While McBride imbues his students with the insight that only experience can provide, he also engages in the struggle of creating meaningful art, constantly placing himself in his students’ shoes.
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