Interviewing a photographer for class

Hey,

My name is Zach and I'm in a senior project class for Photography at Northeastern University. We have an assignment where we have to interview a professional photographer about their experiences and their body of work, and I was wondering if anyone was aware of any photographers in the Boston or near-Boston area who would be willing to sit down with a student and discuss their work. It wouldn't be a long interview, probably half an hour, maybe an hour tops. I'd also need a picture of the photographer in their workspace (just a fast crappy jpeg, nothing fancy. it's required for the assignment).

Anyway, we don't HAVE to pick a large format photographer, but I figured this is supposed to be a good experience for me both educationally and professionally and I think I would get the most out of it by interviewing a large format photographer since that's where my interest lies most.

Thanks so much in advance for any suggestions, replies, or ideas. It's greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Zach

Zach, I expect your mailbox to be flooded with offers to sit down with you for an interview. Some photogs even might offer to do an on-line version, mailing you not a crappy jpeg but a nicely scanned tranny of their studio. This is a good opportunity for them to get a message out to high school students that LF is what has always been missing in their lives. Or isn't it?

I believe Nicholas Nixon lives and teaches in Boston, or vicinity. A very well-respect LF photographer, if you could get him to participate.

Elsa Dorfman is in the Boston area. elsa.photo.net probably has a contact number.

Zach -

Have you ever heard of Neal Rantoul?

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the replies already.

I'm working on finding Nicholas Nixon's email address. I'd looked last week, because I'm familiar with his work, but didn't turn anything up. I'm sure if I look harder I can find it. His work is incredible and he would be perfect.

Thanks also for the Elsa Dorfman suggestion. I will look her up and get in contact with her soon as well.

And Louie, thanks for the recommendation of Neal Rantoul. I'm a big fan of his work too, but there's one little problem...

He's the teacher who assigned this. :-D

Thanks again.

-Zach :-)

Zach - try Mass. College of Art I think it is, where he teaches part time

(I think he lives in Brookline?)

Zach, sorry I called you a high school student, a small misreading.

Zack if you travel a little farther from Boston to Vermont there is Richard Ritter. He body of work would be a bit different. In that his body of work would include cameras and photo equipment he worked on or designed. For info on him go to www.lg4mat.net.

Zach, Check out Michael Hintlian (email michael@hintlian.com) who publishes quite a bit locally, as well as nationally. His 10-year project on Boston Big Dig construction focusing on the men and women construction workers down in the trenches and holes and tunnels (very dark !) culminated on a beautiful B&W photography book "Digging" last year. Here's a relatively recent WGBH program on him. He also teaches at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School practically next door to Northeastern. A very approachable guy with a big, great heart. I think he works mostly in 35mm B&W.

Cheers,

I think Michael Hintlian's work has been with M-Leica and Mamiya 7 rather than LF. Contact info here:

www.hintlian.com/

Wow, thanks for all the help!

I've emailed Elsa and it looks like that's gonna go through, but I'm also working on Michael Hintlian and Nicholas Nixon. Also trying to find information about all the other photographers you guys have mentioned.

You've all been so helpful! Thank you SO much!

Any more ideas are welcome, I'd really like to interview 3 or 4 people rather than the one I'm required to interview. The experience is great and it's a real honor to meet some of these people.

-Zach

If you're going after Nick Nixon, why not track down some of the other excellent photographers who teach at Massart? Abe Morell, Barbara Bosworth, and Laura McPhee would all be interesting to talk to.

Nick Nixon isn't a professional photographer in that he doesn't ( or at least extremely rarely) work on commissions. I believe the same is true for Abelardo Morrell and Bosworth as well. I don't know the other photographer mentioned in the last post.

Here are three ways to find professional photographers in a given area. Not all professional photgraphers belong to any of these organizations but most do. especially the industry leaders.

The American Society or Media Photographers (ASMP) has a find a photographer service: http://asmp.org/findaphotographer

The APA (Advertising Photographers of America) has a similar service: http://www.apanational.com/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3370

PPA (professional Photographers of America does too: http://www.ppa.com/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=121

I believe Clint Clemens, one of the leading USA advertising photographers for the past 20 plus years, lives in and has his studio in Boston: http://www.clintclemens.com/home.html

hmmm - is a professional physicist only someone who works for and gets a paycheck from General Dynamics, or also someone who get a national research grant to study string theory...?

I assumed from the phrase "body of work" that this was for an art class, not a trade class. what kind of photographers are you looking for?

Hey all.

I tried looking for Nick Nixon... yeah thats probably not going to happen. I also emailed Laura and Barbara from MassArt. Also didn't receive anything back from them (yet). Got in touch with Michael Hintlian and that might work out, however.

This is for a senior thesis class. We basically just have to get in touch with people and kind of get ourselves out there, probably in an effort to work on our people skills and interview skills.

I'm sort of looking for anyone who piques my interest. The thing I seem to gravitate to most is b&w landscapes and nature photography. But I also like architectural and portraiture in b&w too.

Thanks for all the help everyone. It's really wonderful and appreciated. :-)

-Zach

For me the difference between a photographer like Nicholas Nixon who works on projects that are interesting to him and a professional photographer who does work on commission photographing subjects specified by clients is the difference between Ron Jeremy and me.

Like Mr. Jeremy, I too love sex, but sexual performance is how Ron puts food on his table.

The people who hire a professional photographers (or cast porn stars in movies ) are dependent on the professionals they hire to get the job done. These responsibilities make a huge difference in the way one thinks.

If Nick starts on a project and it isn't working -into the trash it goes and know one else will be affected. Screw up an advertising, commercial, editiorial or portrait gig and other people get hurt by your failure.

The other difference is that after a couple of weeks the photos from the advertising, commercial, editiorial or portrait gig will also probably be in the trash. Nick's project will most likely be around for a long time to come.

BTW, photogrpahers such as Nixon who are professional artists often do undertake important commissions. When someone like the Guggenheims commission such a photogapher to photograph their Estates, for example, they had also better not screw it up and deliver the product on time and on budget.

Or when an internationally renowned institution commissions them to document the work of a well known landscape architect for a book, the same goes.

Like a few in a thread started recently by Richard Boulware before, Ellis is equating professional photography to assigment photography. This might be the safest, most common, or most lucrative way to earn one's living with photography, but it is not the only one.

Exactly. Most professional photographers are commercial assignment photographers, but there are other ways to be a professional.

Some artists (meaning personal project oriented photographers) support themselves with personal work. They are professionals to.

Others do the art work for themselves and the commercial work to pay the bills. How do you know Nick Nixon has never supported himself like this? A lot of famous artists have done so. You just don't hear much about it because the work that they're know for--that's unique to them--is the personal work.

"Others do the art work for themselves and the commercial work to pay the bills. How do you know Nick Nixon has never supported himself like this? A lot of famous artists have done so. You just don't hear much about it because the work that they're know for--that's unique to them--is the personal work."

Stephen Shore has done various magazine assignments - and they seem to win awards whenever he does so in the ASME National Magazine Awards and the other various annual industry awards

I'd suggest that you contact the architecture photographers Stephen Rosenthal or Peter Vandewarker. I studied with Mr. Rosenthal, some years back, and learned a great deal. Mr. Vandewarker is well known for his "Cityscapes of Boston" and his photography of the Big Dig.

As for the (IMHO non-existent) dichotomy between "professionals" and "artists", well, that's a subject for another thread.

If you want somethng a bit different, try Felice Frankel at MIT.

http://web.mit.edu/felicef/

She is responsible for several of the most memorable Science and Nature covers in recent years.