Education Quote by Fay Godwin

"I hardly teach" is a sly act of self-editing: Fay Godwin refuses the podium before anyone can put her on it. Coming from a photographer whose work is often discussed in terms of vision and authority, the line quietly dismantles the myth of the master artist dispensing secrets. She swaps hierarchy for ecology. "A gathering of minds" isn’t false humility so much as an ethic: art as a shared field of attention, not a pipeline from genius to students.

The subtext is methodological. Photography can’t be transmitted like a recipe; it’s learned through looking, misreading, comparing frames, testing taste against other people’s reactions. Godwin frames learning as collective calibration: we tune our seeing by bumping it against someone else’s. Even "one subject" matters here. She’s not romanticizing free-form creativity; she’s describing disciplined attention, the slow, communal work of circling a thing until it gives up its meanings.

There’s also a defensive tenderness in the phrasing. Teaching, especially for artists, can feel like being asked to turn instinct into doctrine. Godwin sidesteps that demand by emphasizing process over proclamation. "I enjoy the process" lands as both confession and permission: the point isn’t to produce miniature Godwins, but to make a room where curiosity is the medium. In an art world that loves gatekeeping and genius narratives, she argues for something more radical: reciprocity as craft.