Photography Careers by Mark Jenkinson

Author:Mark Jenkinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Focal Press
Published: 2019-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

Zeno at Delphi (quotation from “he knew his days were numbers”) Four Photographs 54 × 50 inches 2013. Installation View: Come together: Surviving Sandy, Curated by Phong Bui, Brooklyn, NY 2013–2014

MJ: What do you think those discussions did for you?

NW: I think that they helped me develop a vocabulary, or at least become more fluent in a critical vocabulary that I was able to develop. It’s different for me than for other photographers in other programs because I had studied painting at RISD before I went to Tisch Photo. I also did a cultural anthropology minor at NYU which was super-heavy in critical theory, so I had all of these things floating around.

I had also spent a few years doing professional architectural photography and shooting my own work which gave me a whole other set of ideas and vocabulary. I wanted a place where I could bring all of those things together. I wanted a community of people who were interested in those ideas and in providing critical insight into each other’s practices.

I wanted to be in New York. I wanted to develop a network of peers because I felt very much like I was living in a vacuum after undergrad in terms of making my own work and I wanted to stop working in that vacuum.

And the third thing that happened was I had the chance to meet and work with Joel Meyerowitz on a few occasions.

MJ: How did you meet Joel? You know he was one of my teachers, right?

NW: Yes, I do. I met Joel through my mother, who is the director of the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and he had donated some of his prints from the “Aftermath” project to the museum.

Joel insisted I meet Thomas Roma who directs in the photo program at Columbia. I knew in the first meeting that I wanted to spend two years working with this guy! I think that’s the thing a lot of people either don’t realize about grad school when they apply or realize within the first couple of weeks: you have to go to grad school to be with the people that you want to be around and the mentors that you really want to work with.

Tom has a particular view of photography, very close to the way John Szarkowski thought about photography, that was in line with my thinking. Photography takes all of the real stuff of the world and turns it into a new thing, it doesn’t trump it up.

You can have an experience with a photograph, you can stare at it impolitely, it can be like a country song, it can be absolutely, knock-you-in-the-gut, devastating. And that is the thing about allegorical content, it has the potential to be extraordinary no matter what.

I absolutely went to Columbia for Tom Roma, and it also happened to be the kind of program I wanted to be a part of. I also applied to the UCLA, CCA, and USC inter-disciplinary programs, but I found my mentor at Columbia before I even applied; it was my top choice.

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