Photography Studies College, commonly abbreviated to PSC, is a privately owned independent tertiary photography college established in 1973, located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
History
1973 founding
Photography Studies College was first named the Gallery School of Photographic Art when it was founded by Roger Hayne at its present address in 1973, through his business Impact Photography Pty. Ltd., 203 Canterbury Road, St Kilda. Previously a publicity officer for the Victorian Railways he had later worked with the Australian Antarctic Division,. During the seventies he traveled and photographed around Australia, in Europe, Russia, Asia and the Arctic and, along with his photographs from the Antarctic, he exhibited that work in 'Lifestyles and Landscapes' at PSC over July 1980. By late 1977 there were 250 students enrolled, and the institution was an employer of career photographers including lecturers John Cato, videographer Phillip Ashton, landscape photographer John Riches, and Ted Keogh, by tutors Philip Quirk, Ian Cherchi and later Sandra Irvine who all trained at Prahran College, and Jean-Marc Le Pechoux, founder/editor of Light Vision. In mid 1978 the school was advertising that its courses 'For a Professional Career' were the first to be recognised by the Australian Institute of Professional Photography.
An early innovation of the course was that the first semester students were required to use colour transparency film exclusively, to encourage in-camera composition and to learn correct exposure without the cropping and adjustment enabled in black-and-white processing and printing which was reserved to second semester. The use of colour 'slides' lent itself to the teaching of programmed multi-projector audio visuals. Tutorial reviews of students' progress in their photography was conducted weekly. A program of visiting lecturers including photojournalist Graham Bezant, and fashion and advertising professionals Robert Imhoff, John Street, Peter Walton and Michael Wennrich was introduced to augment the teaching program.
Name change
In July 1978 the name had been changed to 'Photography Studies College' supported in marketing by the adoption of a distinctive lens-aperture logo (which, in 2020, it still uses) and more modern typeface, and it advertised full-time and part-time courses in "Photojournalism, Expressive Art Photography, Advertising and Fashion Illustration, or Audio-Visual Production" with no formal academic qualifications required for entry into its summer and winter semester intakes of both school leavers and mature-age students.
1980s
One of the college audio-visual productions of this period was 'A Taste of Life', a "sensitive illustration of life for the disabled" which was presented as part of the Moomba Festival program of 1981, utilising the carousel slide projector. The college enjoyed relationships with 1990s organisations including a school for autistic children, the Police Training Academy, the Royal Children's Hospital and the Gertrude Street Artists' Space which each granted students access and permission to photograph. The college maintained a rural retreat on a property between Faraday and Chewton for weekend classes away from Melbourne, and in the mid-80s, Hayne conducted photographic expeditions to the Middle East and China for groups of students.
An 'advertorial' in The Age newspaper in March 1983 promoted College courses in videography, announcing that "the video revolution is upon us". Staff member Sue Scales, interviewed for a 1985 advertising feature emphasised the size of the photography industry with an Australian national annual turnover of $1376 million and noted that the college had a "faculty of nine full-time and part-time lecturers...drawn from both the profession and the arts." Typical fees for a college course such as video in the 1980s was $A500. By the end of the 1980s the college was in competition with five other public and private institutions, including ACPAC which was started by ex-PSC lecturers Perry and Riches, that were offering tertiary-level photography courses. Its annual graduate exhibition was attracting attention, and critic Gary Catalano in 1985 hailed a show of thirteen final year and recently graduated women students as "the best exhibition of photography I have seen for a long time", with special praise for "a concern with intimate experience" in works by Chris Barry, Claire Jackson, Stephanie Stead, Josephine Kuperholz and Seham Abi-Elias.