MARK HAMILTON: SHAPING WINTHROP’S VISUAL FUTURE

When Fine Arts Professor Mark Hamilton teaches summer photography classes at Winthrop University to middle school students, he pays close attention to their technology tendencies.

After all, it’s a peek into what his future college students will be using four years later.

Hamilton has watched the growing influence of visuals in the way the millennial generation learns. They don’t use Google to find answers to their questions, he said. Instead, they go on YouTube to find videos.

Over the past decade, social media sites such as YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram have become more popular. This generation loves consuming pictures, memes and video across multiple platforms.

“We have a very visual culture,” Hamilton said.

Now in his second decade at Winthrop, Hamilton is helping shape the photography program as longtime professor Phil Moody steps into retirement. Hamilton kept the millennial student’s emphasis on the visual in mind when he suggested recent curriculum revisions.

Hamilton said the department will move the emphasis from commercial and fine art photography to photography and video. The department also recently added a photography minor.

Hamilton said the program has increased focus on visual literacy so that students can communicate with still and moving images, sometimes even without text.

Many of the students seeking the photography minor are business majors who want to improve their

marketing skills, Hamilton said. “We talk about how art is an essential problem-solving skill,” he said. “There is a greater need for art to communicate, and business people recognize that.”

He and other Winthrop fine arts professors push their students to have dialogue with students outside the department and demonstrate their creativity. “We need to bring the greater campus into our world,” Hamilton said. “There is something valuable here.”

Hamilton’s own interest in photography developed as a boy when he spent hours looking at the great picture magazines of the ‘60s. The New York City native joined the Marine Corps after high school, taught himself photography in the service and eventually led a team of 22 photographers for the Naval Atlantic Fleet Audio Visual Command.

He later worked as a fashion photographer with published work in more than 50 international publications with representation in New York, Tokyo and Milan.

Hamilton started teaching at Winthrop part time in 1997, was brought on full time two years later and now is tenured. He pursues personal fine arts projects and collaborative projects with his wife, photographer Jennifer Hamilton, along with commercial projects for select clientele.

Hamilton noted that in a world where everyone has a camera, it is more important than ever to make sure that his students have the ability to visually articulate either their own message or the needs of their client. “There is a big difference between taking snaps and crafting an image on demand,” he said.

When working with students, Hamilton’s goal is to help them unearth the voice that is buried within. “I always strive to have my students transcend the ordinary,” he said. “In a global market, ordinary is not good enough. Art is a field in which there is less competition at the top than there is at the bottom. A personal vision is the key to success.”

Watch the latest installment of “These Professors” to see how Mark Hamilton builds his students up to succeed.

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