Teaching
"The key point of my teaching: you're going to be challenged.

"For the workshops at the bank building [his home and office], I don't go out on the street with [the students]. You don't teach people anything; you just let them discover it for themselves. You show them some doors. If they walk through those doors, it's their trip, not yours.

"I don't think a lot of people are aware of their capacities and how good they are. The things that hold them back are sometimes very simple.

"I do a lot of extensive asking them what they liked and didn't like about the class, and the thing they say was very important to them was the thing they'd never do if they weren't asked to do it—and that's criticize their own work. I tell them, 'I can criticize your work, but next week I'm not around,' so the mantra I give them is: be your own severest critic and your own worst enemy. It's a big fight because people are inherently resistant to criticizing their own work, so I get them to criticize each other's work as long as you can do it in a spirit of learning. I think they learn from each other as much as they learn from me."

Tools
"One of the points I try to make [to the students] is: you know about photography, but how about ivory scrimshaw and Persian miniatures and Japanese graphics and Korean vases? You're never going to know all that, but you have a history, a visual heritage, and to not take advantage of it is insane. To think you would just study photography is short sighted.

"People ask about what photography schools they should go to. I say, 'None. The education you can get looking at pictures in museums is what would help you very much in your work.'

"People ask, 'What would you recommend I do to be a better photographer?' Well, first of all, move your ass. Second, look at what's been done with markings on a page for 30,000 years, and then you'll have freedom.

"Think about it: except for maybe Lartigue, has there ever been a prodigy in photography? I can't think of any. It's part of your life experience. It's not like math or music—that's inside your head. What we're talking about deals with the external world."

Perception
"I tell people, 'You do not always see what you think you see.' There's optical illusion and the references things make to other things. I talk about the fact that color does not exist except in relation to other colors, that as soon as it changes size or is acted on by the environment, it's a different color and you have to be aware of that. Turn an incandescent light on, a fluorescent, and the paint swatch you brought home from the paint store changes. Put it next to a dark sofa or put a black painting next to it and it changes."

Luck
"That's part of the class, too. I try to explain to them, you're going to screw up so many times in your life that when something goes your way, jump on it, take it. You're entitled. It's a gift. And learn from it.

"Don't be limiting yourself to what you intended because part of you is going to see [other] things. Let your intuition take you. And don't be afraid to fail. Nobody's going to die; it ain't brain surgery. And the fear of failure is paralyzing. When Jasper Johns died, something in his obituary just grabbed me. He'd said he always thought of failure as a means of progress.

"Edison had 1,800 experiments that failed, and he said, 'I know 1,800 things that don't work; now I can move on."

There's information about Jay's NYC workshop at www.jaymaisel.com. Jay talks about the photos you see here in the media center at right.