January 20th: The Gitterman Gallery, Allen Frame, American Photography & Trunk Archive

Friday began with yet another long, complex metro ride into the city. We met at the Gitterman Gallery, a beautiful exhibition space featuring hardwood floors, giant windows, and absolutely stunning light. Tom Gitterman, the owner, met with us to talk about his life, his work, and his advice for dealing with galleries in the future.

Tom began by stating that he is not, in fact, a photographer. Despite describing his teenage self as a “rebellious, messed-up kid who hated religion,” Tom told us how his entire worldview was altered by seeing a fresco of heaven painted on a vaulted ceiling during an art history trip in Italy. It caused him to look at art in different ways, more as an expression of self than propaganda. “Art enhances my life,” Tom told us. “It’s hope for where one wants to go; it reminds us that we are not alone; it connects us to something greater than ourselves. It can nearly be a spiritual experience for some. Also, it’s fun.”

After getting kicked out of high school, Tom was barely admitted to college into the art history department, where he became deeply interested in history of photography. He explained that he was especially inspired by the struggle by Stieglitz and Steichen to prove photography’s status as an art form, especially because he still found that many people didn’t view photography as art. It was around that time that he started hanging shows for friends, then for Ithaca College’s art gallery, and then for the historical society in town. After graduating, he began interning at, and then working for, galleries in New York. Slowly he worked his way up, but described the impact of 9/11 as a huge turning point. “It made me think, ‘what do you want in your life?’ CHOOSE. Do it. Don’t let life just happen to you. Life is fragile. Go for it.”

Tom described his initial fear at starting a gallery of his own, but realized that all he really had to lose was money. “You might lose a lot of money, but couldn’t you get another job?” That statement really stuck with me.

In terms of the work he chooses for his own gallery, Tom explained that he’s not interested in art that doesn’t look like it’s created by an individual. “It’s not a question of whether or not something grabs your attention,” he told us. “It’s a question of, ‘do I want to keep looking at this day after day?’”

After telling us his own story, Tom jumped right into advice for the young photographer. “Develop a reputation that you’re proud of,” he told us. “Before you contact a gallery, know what the gallery is about… do your homework about who you’re contacting.” He also told us to expect to pay for matting and framing ourselves when preparing gallery shows, and to keep an open mind. “The more finite you are about the way things have to be, the less exciting you will be to work with,” he said. Tom also recommended that we always get receipts when leaving work with people, to set up insurance, and to keep edition sizes small. “It is much better to sell out your edition and move on to the next project than to have huge editions,” he explained. “If the popular image is sold, people will move on to the larger body of work.”

Allen and Tom.

Next, we were visited by street photographer Allen Frame, who passed around his books of moody black-and-white work as he began his talk. Allen explained that he never went to art school, but had Henry as a photography teacher at a community center.  He said that Diane Arbus and Emmet Gowin’s “penetrating psychological perspectives on portraiture” strongly prompted his initial interest in photography.  Since 1977, he’s been working with the same subject matter: that open, ambiguous phase of life when people haven’t settled, and are still exploring.

Interestingly, Allen explained that he’s much more of a natural writer than a photographer, but is attracted to the challenge of visual arts.  As a writer myself, I was intrigued by how Allen managed to fuse the two together in his life – currently, he’s working on writing a play, while also working with photography.  When asked when he knows he’s “got something good,” he answered that a good photograph should present some psychological familiarity, trigger a sense of authentic impact, and even become an emotional experience for him personally.  “Pictures don’t mean as much when I don’t have a connection with the subject,” he explained.

My favorite comment of Allen’s, however, was about fame, something that I see so many people chasing, but that I have no desire for myself.  “Everyone wants to be known, be stars,” Allen said.  “But take a look at those big names.  Look at their pain… look at the dues they’ve paid for it, what it’s done to them.  Either they end up completely wrecked, or so armored, it’s frightening to be around them.”  He paused for a moment.  “It’s curious… but I like where I am.”  I couldn’t agree with him more.

Before we left, Allen gave us one piece of parting advice: “You are so lucky to be where you are. Stop whining. Grow up. NOW.”

Next on our list for the day was American Illustration/American Photography, where we met with director Mark Heflin.  Through a competition, American Photography publishes a hardcover annual of the best photography work produced within that year.  The books, which are meant to promote photography and photographers in general, serve as a resource for art directors, designers, etc.  The competition (open to anyone despite its name) is juried by people who hire photographers (and the jury changes every year).  “Even if you don’t get in the book, you’ll still get seen by the jury,” Mark told us.  “Be seen, be seen, be seen.  The world is definitely waiting for you.  Always keep that in mind.”

Mark gave us a detailed description of the book’s process, from the jurying process to the design and printing.  He explained that while there is a special category of the competition just for students, student work is printed in the book right alongside the professionals, with no indication of which is which.  I was really impressed by this straightforward respect of quality work, regardless of one’s professional standing.  Mark also explained that American Illustration/American Photography is beginning to develop more publishing besides their annuals, such as their newsletters Pro Photo Daily and DART, Design Arts Daily, which aim to get news from as many sources as possible.

In terms of advice, Mark said he would encourage us to do everything possible once we’re out of school.  “Take every opportunity to be seen,” he told us.  “The world’s always looking for a new image.  Also, go to parties – they’re a great place to meet people.  Remember that you never know what’s going to happen in your life.  You should have focus, but you never know what’s going to happen.”

Inspired by Mark’s encouraging, positive attitude and the beauty of the American Photography annuals he showed us, we set off to our last meeting of the day at Trunk Archive.  A beautiful office awaited us, featuring giant windows, shiny hardwood floors, and rows of people working away at computer screens -it’s hard to explain, but the atmosphere was very conducive to creativity.  We met with Claudia Lebenthal and Leslie Simitch, who began by describing Trunk Archive’s primary purpose: to find new ways to re-use images that have already been taken.  This, they explained, includes everything from fashion photography to celebrity portraits, decorative/nature photos, etc.

As they spoke, Claudia and Leslie projected a gorgeous selection of images from their website onto the wall, absolutely stunning images that, as they explained, truly did cover a wide variety of topics.  They explained that they don’t bother getting model releases for every image in the archive until someone actually wishes to use the image, and sometimes photoshop their images to make the models less recognizable if they’re on a budget.  They explained that they contact photographers they’re interested in working with – not the other way around – and that 50% of their sales go to the photographer.  I was truly impressed by the beautiful images they showed, and experienced one of those fleeting moments of desire to shoot commercially – a moment which never lasts long for me, but it’s inspiring when it does.

The evening ended with a delicious, photogenic Korean dinner with Abby.

January 19th: National Geographic, NPR, and the Library of Congress

It was a big day.

To start off with, our bus to Washington, DC left at 6:30 AM, requiring Abby and I to wake up at approximately 4:50 AM to get there in time. We arrived mere minutes before the bus’s departure, to our immense relief, and promptly fell back asleep to the rolling motion of the gigantic vehicle.

I had dreamed of photographing for National Geographic since I was a small child, and was beside myself with excitement for our first visit that day. Unfortunately, we arrived to National Geographic’s headquarters in sunny Washington over half an hour late, leaving only 40 minutes or so to meet with picture editor Elizabeth Krist, but I still found myself awestruck with the magic of simply being there.  Inspiring quotes about the neverending exploration of land and sea adorned the entryway; giant prints of some of NatGeo’s most iconic images hung on the walls.  I could have listened to Elizabeth talk all day, but the short time we had was inspiring, informative, and worth it in every sense.

Elizabeth explained that she edits content not only for National Geographic’s print magazine, but also for the image archive, books, CDs, apps, etc.  Now published in 33 different languages, each of those editions is slightly different.  “The job becomes very comprehensive,” she explained.  “We pitch story ideas, work with photographers… the best stories often come from photographer’s own passions.”  She also described how, although National Geographic is one of the few print magazines still experiencing notable success, changing times mean changes in medium.  Where wait times for printed material can range from one to two years, photographers are now being asked to blog and post about what they’re doing now, offering a more spontaneous, unfiltered experience.  In general, the photographer’s job is becoming much more demanding.  “They have to be thinking, all the time, how’s it going to fit together?  Video? Audio?  A slideshow for the web?”  Elizabeth explained that the construction of a visual narrative is the most important job for photographers, be it in science, adventure, history, wildlife, or landscape – although the occasional eye-candy shot doesn’t hurt either.

Next, Elizabeth talked about internship opportunities, the newest of which is National Geographic’s multi-media internship.  She strongly encouraged us to apply for any and all internships, no matter how competitive, but explained that when it comes to actual jobs, the photographers that are most successful have often been passionately working on one project for 6-8 years – and have the photographs to show for it.  These days, she explained, photographers should be excited about multimedia, particularly video – video and audio are huge credentials these days.  She also described National Geographic’s practices in terms of sending photographers into the field, which I really respect.  The magazine invests a lot of money to give photographers the time they need, she explained.  The very shortest trip would be four weeks… for wildlife photography, trips can last over 16 weeks as photographers often have to patiently wait for wildlife to present itself at the right time and place to trigger a camera trap.

She also talked about the photos used for printed stories, which generally need to be edited down to less than 25 out of approximately 40,000 images.  Each picture, she explained, needs to have some sort of information, or surprise, while still presenting absolutely incredible visuals.  The photos chosen for the story should show a variety in scale, color, subject, etc.  I enthusiastically absorbed everything she said, thinking about how to apply it to my own work.

While I had been looking forward to visiting National Geographic immensely, I had nevertheless been expecting to feel, after the visit, like it was still the impossible dream; that my photos would never be good enough for the magazine.  To my great surprise, our visit with Elizabeth left me feeling inspired, hopeful, and motivated, fairly confident about the wildlife work I’ve accomplished thus far, and ambitious for my work in the future.  All in all, it was an incredible visit.  We ended with a brief viewing of the “Ocean Soul” exhibit by Brian Skerry – amazing.

After a much-needed coffee break, our group of students hailed a series of taxis to the headquarters of National Public Radio, the nostalgic soundtrack to my childhood visits to my grandparents’ art studios.  We met with the energetic Claire O’Neill of the NPR Picture Show, the somewhat new photography blog and website.  She began by explaining that the goal of the blog, for now, is to have new content every day, often featuring stories about photographers’ personal projects – yet she doesn’t believe blogs will be around for long.  “Plan for careers these days to last between four and five years,” she told us.  “Then you might be doing something else.  Things are changing that fast.”  Claire was ready for us with tons of advice, such as to do internships, find something that you’re excited about, and pursue it.  “Get your work out there,” I remember her saying.  “Go to visits.  Get face time with editors… convince people that you’re worth looking at.”  She said that the ideal internship candidates exhibit more inexhaustible curiosity and effort than actual experience or qualifications – and that being willing to take a chance is also key.  Also, learning video and audio was highly recommended.  The entire office seemed to radiate with young, enthusiastic energy; probably one of the most positive and inspiring work environments I have ever experienced, purely from the types of people present.

Keith Jenkins, NPR’s supervising senior producer, wandered into the room.  When asked what advice he had for us, he paused, looked thoughtful for a few moments, then looked directly at us and said, “Read fiction and listen to jazz. Those are the only things that have made sense after 30 or 40 years.”  We all laughed, and he elaborated.  “Have other interests besides photography,” he told us.  “Let it influence your work.  Have a broad sense of the world, and be comfortable improvising.  Be prepared to do a lot of different things, and not be afraid.”  I thought that was some of the best advice we’d received all Wintersession.

Before we left, we were invited to one of NPR’s Tiny Desk concerts in the corner of one of their office rooms.  The band Milagres sat with their instruments amidst bookshelves and paperwork, and played a few beautiful songs before it was time for us to go.  Again, the energy present in the room was striking in its excited, positive energy and youthfulness; we left the building truly impressed with NPR.

To round out our experiences that day, we finished our trip to DC with a visit to the Library of Congress, a bleak and rather sterile building requiring extensive security screening to enter.  Once inside, we were greeted by Beverly Brannan and Carol Johnson, curators of photography, who began by showing us an impressive selection of historic photographic prints.  From Civil War tintypes and ambrotypes, to salted paper prints and cartes-de-visite, the selection they presented seemed right out of a Histories of Photography slideshow.  In addition, however, they also had more contemporary photos documenting recent world events, such as hurricane Katrina, turmoil in the Middle East, etc.  Beverly and Carol explained that they buy photos they think should be preserved, but that they don’t have to be from big-name photographers.  Photographs that document the changing world, changing landscape, education, and people’s relationship with land are all topics of interest, but they did note that the Library has more photos from parts of the world with good US relations – not so many from parts of the world like South America and Africa.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the Library’s bland, uninspiring atmosphere, but appreciated seeing that the government is invested in preserving so many photographs.

Finally, absolutely exhausted, we began the slow journey back to New York.  I thought about everything we had learned at National Geographic, and excitedly began working on a book I’m producing for this class (to be unveiled in a few weeks!)

January 17th: Off to New York

On Tuesday afternoon, after hurriedly packing my bags and double-checking my tickets, I met Abby in downtown Providence to catch our bus to New York City.  Although we’d been talking about it for over a month, the event itself snuck up on us, and it was with a sort of bewilderment that we departed Providence in the pouring rain.  The world rushed by the windows in a blur of grey and blue.  The adventure had begun.

Henry would later cringe to discover that Abby and I, by far the most “small-town girls” of the entire student group, were traveling together, despite knowing classmates quite familiar with New York.  Convinced that figuring it out ourselves would likely make for a much bigger adventure, we were nothing less than enthusiastic to set foot onto the nighttime city streets amidst crowds of people and sparkling city lights.  We struggled with our belongings onto the metro, and following directions provided us by our ever-helpful iPhones, began the laborious process of traveling across town to where Abby’s cousin Kelsey was babysitting, picking up her extra set of keys, and traveling to Queens to Kelsey’s apartment.  As we were already exhausted, hauling luggage, and each trip required several different train trips and extensive amounts of walking, we were delighted to finally arrive at Kelsey’s door.  We ended up at a nearby restaurant called Salt & Fat for dinner, which began with us laughing at the name but took a turn when we realized the menu (southern with a Korean twist?) looked delicious and inexpensive.  It was a great first night in New York.

January 6th: Dana Mueller and Elsa Dorfman

Our first field trip to Boston began early the morning of Thursday, January 6th. The majority of us students took the train from Providence to meet Henry in Boston, where we walked through the sunny, unseasonably warm city to the Art Institute of Boston.  I was impressed by the part of the city we walked through; the streets were clean and relatively quiet, with a lot of parks and trees.

We arrived at the Art Institute of Boston for our first visit with photographer Dana Mueller. Dana grew up in what she described as an idyllic, peaceful town in former East Germany before moving to the US in 1993, where she has been ever since. The division between East and West Germany during her childhood was mentioned a lot during her talk, as it was a huge part of her life growing up.  First, she showed us a series of black-and-white photographs she made of areas surrounding Nazi concentration camps that were designated as entertainment, such as a bear zoo and an abandoned swimming pool.  The old recreational areas, beautifully portrayed in her photographs, took on a morbid tone as she explained the background of their locations.

Next, she showed pictures from an ongoing series titled The Devil’s Den, featuring photographs of German prisoner-of-war camps in the United States.  The first series, shot in 2006-2007, included pinhole photographs, diptychs and triptychs of areas where German prisoners were put to work in the American landscape, assuming nurturing agricultural jobs taking care of US soil.  The stillness and romantic atmosphere of these places Dana photographed invoke a quiet contemplation of the irony of the situation.

The second part of Dana’s series The Devil’s Den continued the theme of German prisoner-of-war camps, this time featuring vivid large-format color images of locations in the American South.  The lush, surreal detail of these photos appealed to me the most, as did the redemptive quality of thriving vegetation completely overgrowing these old sites, invoking ideas of rebirth and the cyclical nature of life.  Dana described a desire to return to innocence and purity after a time of corruption through these photos – how else to engage with history?

Dana’s most recent work, again in rich, large-format color, captures contemporary life at the edge of a German forest, which she described as a previous “no man’s land between East and West Germany”.  In the thriving landscapes, her subjects talk on cell phones, play soccer, and plant gardens.  I thought this work was particularly strong because of its closeness to home for the photographer herself.

After looking over Dana’s work, conversation then turned to the focus of our class, professional practice in photography. Dana is one of many photographers who teaches photography as a way to earn an income in her field while still having the time for personal work, and it seemed to be working well for her. The advice she gave us was to continuously maintain an engagement with the outside world – not just one’s work and one’s website. She suggested submitting work to competitions and galleries, sending out work and cards to people, and most importantly, to keep it up. 

Things picked up at the Art Institute of Boston.

With that, we left the Art Institute and walked through the crisp afternoon air to Cambridge, following the riverside for most of the walk.  We dispersed for a while to eat lunch and warm up a bit, then continued to Elsa Dorfman’s studio in Cambridge.  Elsa, now 75, is famous for her giant polaroid portraits, which measure 20×24 inches (the camera used to take them is one of 6 in the world).  Rows of postcards lined the walls, all identical full-body portraits on white backgrounds.  Her subjects were characterized both by a slight awkwardness and incredible realness – a far cry from the glamorous, photoshopped portraiture that has become standard today, with the “what you see is what you get” nature of instant Polaroids. The variety was both charming and hilarious – a beaming couple stood cradling armfuls of cats, an old man sat smiling in his socks while his grandsons removed their shoes, and a proud mother stood between her grown sons, wearing only their boxers, in a photograph titled “Mom, Realtor of The Year.” Elsa herself was an incredibly vivacious, energetic, youthful woman for being 75. “I don’t know how I got so old!” she exclaimed. She instantly charmed the class with her humor, outgoing manner and charisma, and began to tell us about her life in photography.

Rows of postcards covering the walls of Elsa’s studio.

Elsa listening intently to a student’s questions, proudly wearing a t-shirt she got from involvement with a Kickstarter project.

Rob showing the scale of Elsa’s giant camera.  

  I thought Elsa was fascinating in that she never studied photography, and actually worked first as an elementary school teacher, but made photographs in her own time, and kept a darkroom in her house.  With joyous nostalgia, she reminisced about times when she would go onto the street with her prints in a shopping cart, selling her pieces first for $2.50 each, and over a period of 10 years, eventually for $20 each.  She described the bitter cold in the winter, all the times when she got kicked out of areas or sent home by the police, but with utmost happiness, the fun of it all, and of coming home and counting out the little money she’d made.  That particular anecdote, of following one’s passion despite hardship, really stuck with me – it was clear that Elsa’s optimism, enthusiasm and friendliness are largely responsible for her success as a photographer.

Elsa then showed us a series of photographs from her book Elsa’s Housebook, featuring fairly candid black-and-white photos of her life between the ages of approximately 20 and 37.  She talked a lot about how times were different then; how people would just drop in to say hi or to stay awhile, and how her personality attracted a lot of spontaneous visitors.  Most of her photos were taken in her house, featuring her boyfriend (who became her husband), her friends, herself (she said she has always loved, and still loves, photographing herself for something to do), and poets and writers who stayed with her, most notably Allen Ginsberg.  These photos were really inspiring to me in how candid moments from a young woman’s everyday life could later become this marvelous collective portrait of a period of time.

A photograph of a poet that visited Elsa in her youth, from Elsa’s Housebook.

Henry and Elsa laughing and reminiscing. 

  When asked how she comes up with work, Elsa explained that she doesn’t often think before making projects; instead, she just “gets that she has something about 3/4 of the way through.”  She definitely had a lot of advice for us – first and foremost, never to do a project with a friend without a clear agreement about what it is. She also emphasized the importance of getting model releases and copyrights, and to be organized early (as her own organization, she put it, is hysteria).  “Imagine, all the time, that people will be your enemies,” she told us.  As we left, she generously gave us whichever postcards we desired, as well as a small artist’s book each.  We left her studio in great spirits from her quirky, fun-loving energy and original work, and headed back to Providence.