Why I Hate AP Art
Here’s my problem with AP Art. AP grading is very objective. Either you are good at x, y, and z. Or you fail. Usually, I am not good at x, y, or z, but you know what I am good at? All of the letters from a-w.
I am a stinking talented photographer. For having had zero training outside myself, experience, and the odd YouTube video, I am damn good. Because I feel my subjects. I feel their soul, see into their minds, and capture their hearts. I see things from a funny angle. I get down and dirty and take pictures in ways that no one before me ever has. I take pictures that only I could take. And do I use stinking Unity and Variety and Figure/ Ground Relationships? Maybe. But I don’t box myself in to exemplify what artists before me have done. My pictures appeal to the average person; they reel them in; they make them feel; they change perspectives. Because I see things differently. By making me present my work in a specific way, you are getting rid of what is mine.
Did I sign up for this? Yes. But when I did, I thought that AP Studio Art: Photography was going to be about the beauty of expression and the craft. I know how difficult it is to score high. But I thought that you score high when you make the scorers feel. You know how many people play by the book? Do you know how many people take the same damn picture outside at the tower in Pisa holding it up? Do you know how many people take the same pictures that are uniform, boring, and soulless? Art is about expression. Art is a freedom. A privilege. Who are you to tell me how to present my art, my freedom? I take pictures when people aren’t looking. I take pictures of them when they are laughing so hard that their salad is spewing out of their mouth and their Coke is coming out of their nose. I go outside in the rain, let my lense get soaked in rain drops, and take pictures of the mud pouring out of the bushes onto the concrete street. I find peace in places with no one around, cry at how fantastical this world looks, and take pictures of the ducks pooping in a crystal clear pond. In the woods. In the city. In hot, sticky July. I am not afraid of getting dirty. Because this world is a dirty, dirty place. My pictures are for me. My pictures are for me to enjoy taking. Me to enjoy looking at. And me to show to the people that I choose. My pictures are the words I cannot say, the thoughts I cannot express, the songs I want to sing about this godforsaken world that is slowly spinning to its end that won’t creep out of my vocal chords. My pictures are mine. And I don’t want you to look at them sometimes. Because they are for me. They are my diary, how I see the world. My visual documentation of existence and life and process.
And now I have to sort through my years’ worth of pictures and find the ones with a list of eight subjective styles of photography that I think shows my College Board viriaty of quality pictures. And I have to pick one subject that I think I can capture well twelve times. And upload them online for you to click through in about fifteen seconds and slap a score on. Are you planning on feeling? Are you planning on saying, “Wow, no one has ever captured the world like this before. This kid is totally visionary.”? Or are you just going to think to yourself, “Seven out of eight characteristics of good art. Four. Next!”? I see everything differently ever time. SOmetimes I like to look at dead flowers, mildewy leaf piles, and crushed branches and see the beauty. Sometimes not. Sometimes I enjoy making someone laugh with glee, and just as they start snorting at the climax of their hysterical laughter, take a picture of their eyes and nose. It depends on how I feel. Because art is about a feeling that the artist and the viewer get inside. And I can’t always count on feeling every time I look at something enough to take twelve College Board level pictures. I don’t have that in me.
And let me tell you, dear College Board, you cannot tell me how to capture my world.
