Photography Program
The Student Art Association Photography Program has allowed MIT students and community members to explore photography 24 hours a day since it was founded in 1969. A modest endowment will significantly improve its ability to offer relaxed and specialized instruction in film photography to our students.
Digital photography is now commonplace. As such, student experience with the physical manipulation of chemistry and light is ever more rare and valuable. The SAA Photography Program is committed to teaching and experimenting with chemical photography.
Centered on the traditional “wet” lab, our photography curriculum includes basic shooting techniques, theory and composition, and advanced archival exhibition quality printing. At least one class per semester also explores more specialized creative processes such as non-silver printing, hand coloring, and color printing. Small class sizes emphasize individual attention to student interests and needs.
99 graduate students, undergraduates, staff, alumni, and other MIT affiliates, in that order, were enrolled in these classes in 2006.
The SAA Photography Program functions in a 500 sq. ft. chemical darkroom suite. Our eight, 35mm through 8x10, film enlarger workstations have an output size of up to 40x54 inches. An adjoining 100 sq. ft. finishing room contains a light table, a dry mounting press, and a matt cutter. The 1060 sq. ft. SAA Drawing, Painting, and Project space doubles as a classroom and a lighting portrait studio for photo classes.
MIT provides us with space to work and a four-hour-per-week, part-time Technical Instructor staff position to organize cooperative efforts to maintain the studio. Student fees currently pay for all other class expenses. In order to keep fees low, we currently pay our teachers well below market level, and we provide only photochemistry to our students.
The SAA darkroom is open 24 hours a day. This access allows students to truly experiment. The results are often wonderful. Our students often exhibit their photography locally. Several have become professional photographers.
Thanks to a generous grant from the Council for the Arts at MIT, we can now lend nine 35mm Canon Rebel EOS T2 cameras, a 500c/m Hasselblad medium format camera, a Mamiya RZ medium format camera, and a Graflex 4x5 large format camera to our students.
As MIT takes a leading role in the digital arts, MIT students have ever-higher expectations of campus art studios. A modest endowment will allow the SAA Photo Program to meet this demand. It will allow us to practically eliminate class fees for students, provide free class materials, account for depreciation of equipment, increase the Studio Manager’s employment level to a 12 hour per week position, and pay our teachers at market level.
Endowing and naming the SAA Photography Program is a unique opportunity to benefit the visual education and creative life of MIT students.
Annual Photography Studio Budget Needs
Student Fee Subsidy ,200
50% Studio manager salaries (w/ EBs) 17,200
Teaching payroll to $40/hr. 9,000
Class materials 11,000
Equipment Depreciation 4,500
Total annual expenditure 47,900
Please visit the MIT Giving Page to support the Photography Studio.
