Photography Educator: Lynn Whitney in Dialog with Andrew Hershberger

Photography Educator is a month-to-month sequence on Lenscratch. Once a month, we rejoice a devoted images instructor by sharing their insights, methods and excellence in inspiring college students of all ages. These educators play a transformative function in scholar growth, performing as mentors and guides who create environments the place college students really feel valued and supported, fostering confidence and resilience.

For the month of November, I’m happy to characteristic a visitor dialog between educator and photographer Lynn Whitney and educator Andrew Hershberger.

Lynn Whitney: The Camera, A Compass
by Andrew Hershberger
Lynn Whitney earned a BFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) and an MFA in Photography from Yale University. Soon thereafter in 1987, Lynn started educating images at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in Ohio. After a 34-year educating profession, Lynn not too long ago retired from BGSU in 2021. I first met Lynn in 2001 once I began working along with her at BGSU. I arrived as a newly minted Ph.D. photograph historian, and I used to be really thrilled to show alongside Lynn since I instantly felt a reference to a up to date photographer utilizing an 8×10-inch view digicam with black-and-white movie – like so most of the earlier photographers that I liked and had studied as a scholar and that I’d be educating in my very own BGSU lessons. Indeed, considering of my very own photograph historical past lecturers at Arizona State University (Van Deren Coke, Diana Hulick, and Bill Jay), and on the University of Arizona (Keith McElroy), and on the University of Chicago (Joel Snyder), and eventually at Princeton (Peter Bunnell), all six of them liked photographers who labored with 8×10 cameras. Thus, I consider 8×10 view digicam pictures as mainly the final when it comes to visible curiosity inside the medium. Not surprisingly, the beautiful great thing about Lynn’s works instantly resonated with me. I used to be fortunate to work with Lynn for therefore a few years, and I miss working along with her now, as the next dialog will present.

AH: Who was your first instructor in images?

LW: My first instructor taught persevering with training lessons at MassArt. He was humble, unassuming, and terrific. His title was Ron Morris.  Ron was instrumental in so some ways.  Most importantly he launched a basis to creating footage that is still my core. He believed in what has been known as the “straight” image, exposing movie for mid tones and printing with out methods. As properly, he taught me to have a look at the world in a approach that match me. I recall that when he moved again to Louisville, a few his college students helped him kind and pack up his belongings. For our assist, he gave every of us a print of his personal work. The print I obtained is of a lone Texas Longhorn, head and horns turned ever so barely to the fitting, constructed from a distance of no various yards, with an open sky and area, and with an ideal horizon line to satisfy the darkish coat, white underside, and darkish legs pinned to the bottom beneath. That print nonetheless hangs over my desk (Fig. 1). Like Ron and the way he noticed the world, I noticed how this Longhorn mirrored who Ron was. Both are drawn to or inhabit large areas, each possess an air of resoluteness. And whereas I didn’t meet the Longhorn, I think that he and Ron shared a mutual kindness with and for his or her respective worlds. Sadly, Ron passed away in 2021.

AH: In addition to Morris, who else did you research images with in your individual BFA and MFA packages?

LW: Reflecting the time interval (and the occasions nonetheless haven’t modified all that a lot), nearly all of my lecturers have been males: Nicholas Nixon, Baldwin Lee, Tod Papageorge, Richard Benson, and Thomas Roma. The few exceptions have been Jo Ann Walters and Sage Sohier. I additionally took workshops with Joel Sternfeld, Gary Winogrand, and Lee Friedlander. While I used to be a scholar, a number of visiting artists, resembling Judith Joy Ross, Nancy Hellebrand, and Nan Goldin supplemented the common school at each MassArt and Yale.

AH: That is an unimaginable and fascinating checklist. Thinking rapidly, I acknowledge some 8×10 digicam photographers in your checklist of lecturers, together with Nicholas Nixon, Joel Sternfeld, and Judith Joy Ross. Did these three (or others who used an 8×10) significantly encourage you? Did any particular works by these three photographers (or others who used an 8×10) seize your consideration? As an instance, simply considered one of my all-time favourite (and most shocking, particularly once I first noticed it) pictures must be Joel Sternfeld’s McLean, Virginia, 1978, from Sternfeld’s great ebook venture, American Prospects, 1987.

LW: Yes, each one of many 8×10 individuals impacted me in numerous methods. Nancy Hellebrand lent me her 8×10 once I was a graduate scholar. She is an in depth good friend now and somebody whose braveness and work I love deeply. Nick’s unabashed approach of dealing with the digicam fluidly, as if it have been a handheld digicam (this has been mentioned after all), but additionally his deal with the pores and skin of all the things – for me that’s considered one of his constant themes. His footage are a lot concerning the description of the pores and skin that wraps or holds us in area, be it individuals or bushes. Nick acknowledges the particular potential of the 8×10 and its lenses to articulate surfaces. His technical facility was approach over my head, however I gravitated to his project-based approach of working, and the way he paired studying poetry and literature with making footage in his lessons.

As far as Joel goes, such as you, Andrew, I fell hook, line, and sinker for the pumpkin shed/burning home image as a scholar, believing the “truth” of it: how may that fireman take a pumpkin and never do his job? Joel additionally taught me about coloration. I’ve made just some coloration footage – one thing I now considerably remorse, given coloration’s accessibility and recognition. Joel posed the “truth” query in footage for me, and he dropped at my very own time interval a have a look at American tradition after Robert Frank’s The Americans. My earliest undergraduate diploma is in (what was then) American History and Civilization from Boston University. Then, as now, writing alongside strict lecturers was a problem. As a solution to keep away from writing papers, I satisfied my advisors to permit me to discover subjects utilizing my digicam. For context, I had a darkroom at house all through highschool, and I used to be a yearbook photographer who satisfied my outdated world, great highschool artwork instructor to permit my unbiased artwork venture to be pictures – although he didn’t subscribe to the notion that images is also artwork.

Judith Joy Ross does all the things I want for in my very own work. Honest portraits, not weighted by method, all the time with a layer of her issues for democracy, and our tradition. She’s blunt, although cautious to not overstate, and she or he’s obsessive in her search. She, just like the others, fueled and continues to gas my love of creating footage.

AH: Since I do know that you’ve additionally used 35mm, 6x7cm, and 4×5-inch cameras earlier in your research, why did you decide on the 8×10 format?

LW: I liked the 8×10 contact print, and I liked that I may enlarge it too. I liked that my presence on the planet was apparent, and – to anybody listening to what I used to be doing – it made them curious and ask questions. I realized that being engaged within the 8×10 approach – and being seen – made no matter I believed I used to be doing extra clear to me and to no matter or whomever I used to be working with. My educating colleague from 2000 to 2004, and a terrific former scholar and good friend, Kevin Vereecke, helped me to search out and to purchase (not borrowed) my first 8×10 digicam from eBay, in 2000. I’ve upgraded since then and for a very long time now I’ve used a Keith Canham 8×10 digicam.

AH: I like how we each know Keith as properly, me from my Arizona days and also you from proudly owning considered one of his great cameras. My subsequent questions are: how lengthy did you train images at BGSU? What are a few of your favourite recollections as a instructor?

LW: I taught images at BGSU for 34 years in whole. All my recollections circle again to at least one factor: serving to and watching my college students construct up their very own confidence in seeing and considering critically. My first yr, I had a scholar, an Art History main, Stephen Tomasko, very vibrant and energetic and stuffed with questions. He took to the darkroom, to the streets, and to pictures, and he modified his main to Studio Art though he was nearly able to graduate. He was then, and nonetheless is, actually good. He made great footage of my marriage ceremony in black and white and in coloration, touring from right here to the East Coast to do it as properly. Now, his daughter is getting married to considered one of my son’s greatest associates from highschool – a loopy coincidence.

Another reminiscence I’ll share entails a courtroom home venture we did as a category. Students have been assigned courtroom homes to {photograph} for eventual show within the District Attorney’s Office in Toledo. We checked out Tod Papageorge’s courtroom home footage, amongst others, for steering. My scholar and good friend immediately, Lindsay Glass, learn To Kill a Mockingbird aloud as a part of the category. Her voice and that venture stand out as a treasured reminiscence. Lindsay is now Director of Community Engagement and Capacity Building for the Toledo Arts Commission. She was instrumental in serving to me safe venues in Toledo to exhibit the images of Individuals with Developmental Disabilities from our Wood Lane Community Projects class for the Wood County Board of Developmental Disabilities right here in Bowling Green.

And that brings me to the final however extremely essential reminiscence: the Community Projects class. Dianna Lust Temple , a very outstanding scholar, now Executive Director of Ohio SIBS, got here to me to recommend that she and I develop a category for college students to discover the complexities and nuanced lives of people with developmental disabilities – so usually exterior the body, and so usually oversimplified by the overall media or left unseen. Dianna and her consumer/good friend Mark from Wood Lane are key to the success of our class (Fig. 2). My images college students taught, engaged with, and photographed with their Wood Lane companions. In the primary yr of the category, we curated a bodily exhibition of the work on the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) in its Community Gallery, and we laid out a sequence for a ebook. Each subsequent yr the category would curate, exhibit, and design a ebook, and members from the neighborhood – Wood Lane, the scholars, and out of doors individuals – all got here collectively to rejoice these connections.

One scholar particularly, Clara Delgado, who enrolled within the class not as soon as, however for 3 years, deeply engaged and contributed her vitality whereas encouraging others to widen their lens to essentially see and to grasp. A current graduate from RISD with an MFA in Photography, Clara’s perception, ambition, plus humility, and her outstanding expertise and ethic will, like so many others, make me proud that we discovered one another. It’s exhausting to call just some college students, I may go on ceaselessly. When I retired, Clara gave me the present of a compass – an vintage. She understood how highly effective the digicam is to find one’s approach. 

 AH: It is a pleasure to recollect your former college students for me as properly. For a few years now, you’ve labored with a Master Printer. Please inform us how that relationship began and the way your collaboration works immediately.

LW: My printer is a good friend from MassArt, David Haas. He has labored for a variety of artists together with Larry Fink, Judith Joy Ross, and Nancy Hellebrand amongst others. When I first met David, he was the darkroom assistant for Gus Kayafas, and he labored for Palm Press in Littleton, MA (which moved to Concord, MA, afterward). I started by helping David with jobs after which started printing my very own work with him helping me at Palm Press. Gus had studied with Minor White at MIT, and Gus was the founding director of the MassArt undergraduate and graduate images packages, and he had an amazing community of photographers who sought his and David’s printing companies. Lee Friedlander printed with Palm Press, and when considered one of his prints was able to be examined within the mild, Gus requested Lee: “What do you think”? Lee mentioned: “I don’t know. Let’s ask the expert,” that means, after all, David. Since then, Gus has labored with, amongst others, Aaron Siskind, Duane Michals, Harry Callahan, Helen Levitt, and Harold Edgerton. As a tagalong, I visited Harold “Doc” Edgerton’s darkroom to ship some newly made prints. I used to be even given a print, and I bear in mind being in awe that I used to be within the area of the person who had made that bullet go through the apple .

AH: Since you talked about Gus Kayafas, and since I do know that Kayafas had studied with Minor White, I’m simply curious: Do you bear in mind Gus or others at Palm Press speaking about White? Did White’s printmaking strategies ever come up?

LW: Minor White was considered one of Gus’ influential mentors and lecturers at MIT. When I labored at Palm Press, Minor White was introduced up very often. But solely in reverence for him and his footage. As I recall, we by no means printed any Minor White negatives. In my first days at Palm Press, Aaron Siskind’s unfavorable was within the enlarger. I bear in mind fairly clearly how little I knew about making a print, particularly one with a lot extra drama in it than I used to be accustomed to.

AH: During your profession, you’ve gotten created a variety of sustained images initiatives, together with your current Lake Erie venture and your earlier bridge venture in Toledo. Which of your individual predominant images initiatives would you want to focus on on this interview?

LW: I started making footage of cattle with a 4×5 digicam. Probably these pictures happened as a result of I wished to see if I may talk with the animals, and to see if I may will them into being nonetheless for my exposures. Or, possibly it was as a result of my father had wished to work on a farm, however his father forbade it. Or, it may have been due to my studying of Animal Farm, or possibly it was as a result of I liked animals. In any case, the challenges have been actual and thrilling and most of all magical, however then additionally alarming. The animal footage started with such innocence after which they concluded with my eyes extensive open to their collective destiny (Figs. 3, 4, 5). I observed, after all, the varied landscapes and the style of camouflage, and their aloneness and togetherness.

This aloneness and togetherness thought then led me to {photograph} girls who selected to grow to be Sisters in convents. I narrowed my focus on this venture to novices or younger nuns (Figs. 6, 7, 8). This work was a approach for me to study a cloistered life whose sole goal was considered one of devotion. Their each day practices have been scheduled and their clothes was all the time the behavior. The behavior masked a person’s full id, delivering faces and gestures that have been derived from a profoundly inward area.
Both of these early initiatives have, at their core, private questions and looking out. I questioned and was in awe of an animal’s instinctive routine and duties, and the way they served people and the land. And I questioned and was in awe of the Sisters’ dedication to their perception system, a system that had been practiced for ages. I made this work within the 1980’s. Things in images have been very totally different then versus now, that means entry to issues was a bit extra free.

The bridge venture got here from a special a part of me. In 2003, I used to be commissioned by the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) to {photograph} the FIGG designed I-280 bridge development now referred to as the Veterans Glass City Skyway (Figs. 9, 10, 11). Here was an opportunity to honor a few of my different heroes from the historical past of images: Lewis Hine, Berenice Abbott, and Walker Evans. Using the 8×10, I initially had entry to the development website carrying a tough hat, boots, and a yellow vest. Then there was a horrible accident (not close to me) and a few employees died and new restrictions have been imposed. The new restrictions have been a very good factor. I used to be assigned an escort who was nice, however, after all, one other individual that I fearful about. I requested myself: Was she okay? And, was what I used to be doing okay? In the top, the portfolio consisted of 20 x 24-inch gelatin silver prints, 26 in quantity, and all housed within the TMA’s great assortment. The Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Jehan Mullin, not too long ago discovered them and has given them area (three at a time) in one of many galleries, which has made me very glad.

Finally, with my current Lake Erie venture, the threads of my curiosities and themes roughly all come collectively. This work started as a fee as properly. The George Gund Foundation in Cleveland and Mark Schwartz honored me with the chance to {photograph} Lake Erie, in Cuyahoga County, OH. This is/was an enormous deal as a result of lots of my favourite photographers and associates have been amongst those that had been granted an earlier Gund Commission, together with Frank Gohlke, Barbara Bosworth, Nick Nixon, Thomas Roma, Lee Friedlander, Andrew Boroweic, Judith Joy Ross, Sage Sohier, Andrea Monica, Lois Connor, and Mark Steinmetz. Lake Erie as a physique of labor makes an attempt to handle a multi-layered set of points: from its environmental well being, to it being central to an extended historical past of “use,” to the lake’s existence each commercially and recreationally (Figs. 12, 13, 14, 15, 16). Lake Erie’s shallow depth produces fast turning climate patterns and feelings, and it harbors a hazard considerably masked by the phantasm of vastness. I noticed Lake Erie and I associated this physique of water to the feminine expertise. In the top, this work introduced collectively my ideas in a approach that was each surprising and full.

AH: In relation to your initiatives, how do you determine what you’ll {photograph}? How do you begin a venture, or what motivates you in the beginning?

LW: Initially, and doubtless nonetheless immediately, making footage has been my approach of gathering what I like. I noticed a Paul Strand portrait ages in the past, the Young Boy, Gondeville, Charente, France, 1951. The magnificence there within the boy’s expression of confrontation blended in with a sure androgyny was astounding, and I felt that that is how I wished to work. I hoped I’d be capable to make footage that contained the wonder in addition to the sharp edges with which we should stay on this world. This is a way more difficult query for me to reply in sentences, however mainly, I ask myself to contemplate taking a look at issues or locations that I don’t know however that I wish to discover out about, as a result of I like the best way these items, individuals, or locations look visually. The extra I have interaction with them, the extra I study my relationship to these locations, individuals, or issues, and my world view opens wider. I don’t begin with a viewpoint or opinion, however within the strategy of going again repeatedly it clearly has an impression on how my footage as a gaggle lastly learn.

AH: Congratulations in your many current exhibitions and in your current Lake Erie ebook too! Which of your exhibitions would you want to focus on for this interview?

LW: I’d most likely select my April to May, 2025, solo present on the River House Arts Gallery in Toledo. To have been requested to exhibit there was an honor and, to be trustworthy, a shock too. Paula Baldoni works tirelessly for artwork and for her gallery. I used to be thrilled she took me in since I do know very properly that undramatic black and white pictures are usually not a simple promote. I used to be proud to see a number of Lake Erie footage within the present. I used to be actually happy with the professional hanging carried out by Paula’s Gallery assistant too. Additionally,  my husband Claude’s intuitive, mental eye for sequence and spacing made the Lake Erie work learn as I hoped it could.

AH: You not too long ago attended Paris Photo and signed copies of your Lake Erie ebook there too. Please inform us about that have.

LW: Paris Photo was unimaginable. The week was jammed filled with sales space displays, artwork talks, and ebook signings. Kehrer Verlag was great in that includes my Lake Erie ebook amongst all their different top-notch publications. I used to be honored to satisfy Todd Hido as properly, a local of Ohio who stopped and took a have a look at my ebook and mentioned to me one thing alongside the strains of: “How come I’ve not heard of you? This is a really nice book.” It was a memorable and surprising second for me, and one of many true highlights of being at Paris Photo alongside being in Paris after all.

AH: Next time you go to Paris Photo I’d love to return with you! Thanks a lot for doing this interview with me. Just a few of the concepts you talked about earlier stick out in my thoughts. If I bear in mind appropriately, I feel, for you, making footage supplies you with a compass that provides you confidence in seeing and likewise permits you to have interaction extra deeply with all that you just love. If that’s correct, please share with us your concluding ideas about what these concepts imply to you. Thanks once more!

LW: I hope I’ve conveyed some sense of what I imply with the solutions to your questions. It is tough for me to not sound sappy answering why I {photograph} as a solution to have interaction with all that I like. I hope that my footage are stunning visually and likewise convey complexities. I can’t simply make a “pretty picture.” I take advantage of the digicam as a approach to assist me discover that means after which to search out my very own voice. I’m a quiet individual, nevertheless it’s additionally been tough for “women of a certain age” to talk up, and to belief our ideas. I’m actually fortunate that I grew up when images was additionally discovering its place within the artwork world.

AH: Thanks once more a lot!

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About Lynn
Artist Statement
Making pictures is my means to pose after which, as thoughtfully as potential, to look at the world and our place inside it. The panorama figures prominently in all of my footage and, as it’s thought-about by some to align with the feminine, these concepts are sometimes seen collectively, highlighting up to date points.

I take advantage of giant format and medium format movie cameras. Providing each a canopy and a presence for no matter or whomever I would encounter, the digicam’s generosity extends to my content material.

My early footage explored farms, the army, the convent, and household. I used to be and I’m inquisitive about how particular person human beings stay as such inside these constructions, and the way they decide to serve issues bigger than themselves. I questioned and marveled at their braveness – via selection or lack of choices – to dedicate themselves to a lifelong endeavor.

Two commissions, photographing the development of the FIGG-designed Skyway Bridge over the Maumee River (in Toledo, Ohio) from the Toledo Museum of Art, and photographing Lake Erie alongside Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) from the George Gund Foundation, helped each to broaden and to supply depth to my cultural questions and issues. My most up-to-date work focuses on Lake Erie, and it’s tied to my earlier pursuits and expands them via dwelling, educating, and getting older.

Over thirty years in the past, the issues shared above traveled with me to the Midwest, from my house the place Henry David Thoreau lived, and wrote : “A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” Women and water are and have been seen as an countless useful resource to make use of, misuse, and abuse. Placed collectively the images talk about fragility, vulnerability, and the seemingly countless capability to “take it.” The nuances and qualities of the lake and/or the encircling land mirror what we’ve got carried out to it, and to one another, they usually ask us what the possibilities for our collective future is perhaps.

Bio.
Lynn Whitney is Associate Professor Emerita within the School of Art at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. She has served because the School of Art’s Associate Director, 2017–2020, Studio Division Chair, 2006–2017, and Head of Photography, 1987–2020. Lynn earned her BA in American Culture Studies from Boston University, her BFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and her MFA from Yale University’s School of Art. Among her awards, Lynn has obtained commissions from the Toledo Museum of Art, the George Gund Foundation in Cleveland, and an Individual Artist Grant from the Ohio Arts Council. Her work is within the collections of the Toledo Museum of Art, the George Gund Foundation, Columbia College’s Midwest Photographer’s Project, The Cleveland Clinic, Ohio Humanities Council, the Southeast Center for Photographic Studies, and Yale University.
Website: www.lynnwhitneyphotographs.com

About Andrew
Dr. Andrew E. Hershberger, Professor of Contemporary Art History at Bowling Green State University, obtained a Ph.D. from Princeton. A specialist within the historical past of images, he has held the Ansel Adams Fellowship on the Center for Creative Photography (AZ), the Coleman Dowell Fellowship at NYU, the inaugural John Teti Fellowship on the New Hampshire Institute of Art, a Visiting Fellowship at Oxford (UK), and a CIWAS Resident Fellowship on the Cody Institute for Western American Studies (WY). Most not too long ago, Hershberger was chosen to hitch with a world group of twelve professors at Yale for his or her Summer Teachers Institute in Technical Art History (STITAH). Hershberger has printed a number of peer-reviewed articles within the journal History of Photography, and he has refereed articles within the Art Journal; Early Popular Visual Culture; Analecta Husserliana; the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching; Academe; Materia: Journal of Technical Art History; and Arts of Asia. Hershberger has printed a big (86 edited articles) compendium entitled Photographic Theory: An Historical Anthology (Boston and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell). The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) chosen Hershberger for an SPE Insight Award.