The fotobus Manual

I love teaching photography! There’s nothing else I want to do.

The Fotobus Manual is my personal teaching manifesto. When I started, I knew absolutely nothing about education. I began to write down stuff that seemed to work for me and over time, 32 teaching principles emerged. They function as goals and ideals that outline how I personally want to teach. I feel strongly about these 32 rules, but the only person I’m giving advice to is myself. These principles can be used to teach photography, design, art, film, music and literature. In fact, I believe they can be helpful to teach anything. It would make me extremely happy if some of them would work for you!

The basis for the Fotobus Manual is a 30-year-old repair manual of a Mercedes-Benz O 303 Omnibus, the exact model that is used by the Fotobus Society, a non-profit organization that I founded together with my students in 2018. Chiho and I collaborated on this book. We used blue ink to print images of the Fotobus journeys onto the existing black and white design of the original repair manual. Additionally, we used gold silk screen ink to print the 32 teaching principles on top, building three layers that merge into each other and create something entirely new. The published version of the Fotobus Manual is a facsimile of the original artist book. It looks very similar and follows the same concept, but it is created using three color offset printing.

The pictures in the book were taken by the members of the Fotobus Society and the video was made by Josh Kern. Thank you so much, you’re the best crew! The Fotobus Manual will be published in collaboration with Eigensinn Publishing.

The Fotobus Society is a network of almost 900 students working in the fields of photography, film, art and media from more than 30 European universities and schools. The Fotobus travels to photo festivals, workshops, conferences and does expeditions throughout Europe. It’s a photo school on wheels.