Young Photographer Returns to Oberlin to Teach

Oberlin grad Will Wilson a newly minted professor

Imagine walking down the streets of downtown Tucson, Arizona with collages of photographs in big wooden frames hanging from your shoulders.

Evidently, this is not too difficult for Will Wilson, Oberlin's new photography professor, who performed an art installation like this in an attempt to recontextualize negative images of Native Americans with more pro-active photography.

Wilson is the interim instructor for Professor Pipo Nguyen-duy, who is taking a sabbatical this year. While Wilson's experiences teaching "Visual Processes and Concepts in Photography" and "Problems in Photography" will be new to him, living in Oberlin will not. After growing up on a Navajo reservation in Tuba City, Ariz., the youthful Wilson came to Oberlin for college.

Since attending college here, Wilson said of the Art department, "This department has totally been transformed in the past few years. It is much better now." Many give Nguyen-duy that credit, which may make it hard for Wilson to be accepted by some students.

Junior Westen McConnel said that "Nguyen-duy is the closest thing to a god that this campus has, the best professor of art that I have ever worked with."

A dark-room monitor and art student, senior Pauline Shapiro was especially struck by Wilson's interest and dedication. She said, "The amount of time he invests in students extends way beyond the obligations expected of a professor. He demonstrates a very sincere interest in students. I'm extremely impressed by the caliber of his students' work, and wish he could stay forever."

An outside committee of established artists recently reviewed the art program at Oberlin and "found the studio art curriculum at Oberlin to be the most carefully considered, highly functional, innovative, multi-cultural, and interdisciplinary," in the country. Students will be glad to know that Wilson was chosen by Nguyen-duy and the rest of the department by a "unanimous, enthusiastic decision" and that he is seen as a "highly qualified" addition to the department, according to Dan Goulding, the chair of the Art department. Goulding added, "We don't expect Will Wilson to be Pipo. He has his own style."

Fresh from teaching sculpture in Santa Fe last year, Wilson said "I miss being out west. That's where my family is." Although an avid admirer of the southwest, Wilson is not a stranger to being far from home. Before teaching, Wilson spent a few years as a photojournalist in Costa Rico. Working for The Tico Times, an English newspaper in San Jose, he got a taste for "the hairy nature of it," and enjoyed "being under the gun to meet a deadline."

As an artist, Wilson stresses the importance of technique, insisting that over-analysis can be stifling. "You can't censor yourself at every turn, can't always do the right thing," he said of being a photographer.

This year, Wilson plans to focus on his classes and instructing younger Obies, who he believes are "smart, creative, and hardworking." Although currently dealing with technique in his classes, later in the semester the instructor hopes to discuss how photography can be used politically, as with his interest in the Native American experience, which he considers his "most intense source of motivation."

Wilson gives Oberlin's politically charged atmosphere credit for his critical awareness of society. "My interest in photograpy started with social change," he said, "it grew out of Oberlin."