Student Artist Spotlight: Julia Sun

What main involves thoughts when you consider a scholar photographer? Did you say chemical engineering? No? That’s bizarre, as a result of Julia Sun ’26 is a photographer learning chemical engineering and doing each masterfully. Although she has all the time been an artist, Sun hasn’t all the time been a photographer. She recounted her first foray into the world of images with a Sony a6000 purchased for her by her father. “I just started clicking. … I didn’t even know what I was doing. I really, really loved it — just taking pictures, bringing [my camera] everywhere with me,” she shared. That inspiration led her to take images courses in her senior 12 months of highschool, which helped her hone in on her technical expertise.

Upon getting into faculty, Sun regarded for tactics to place her newfound ardour to make use of. Very shortly, the chance of taking headshots introduced itself. (All Cornellians know that having a great LinkedIn headshot is a matter of life and demise. It was a great name on Sun’s half.) But past availability, Sun felt a deep dedication to doing the job and doing it proper. “They’re paying me money, so I have the responsibility to make them look good,” she stated. Sun by no means takes the belief that her topics put in her with no consideration and all the time strives to ship a ultimate product that makes everybody completely satisfied. If you’re like me and also you’ve had a chopped headshot or three, you’ll actually recognize that conviction.

So, how did Sun go from Cornell campus-based images to New York Fashion Week? “Serendipity at its finest.” It was a basic story of who you already know, and Sun ended up assembly simply the correct individual to get her there at an Adobe creator occasion in Chicago. Going to NYFW was an incomparable expertise for Sun, who had the prospect to construct her portfolio and develop her craft at a widely known style occasion. Though Sun isn’t married to style images, she sees the observe as an extension of cultural exploration, and her dream is to shoot for Vogue sometime.

But past these huge, shiny targets, Sun has a variety of concepts about what artwork and images as an artwork type imply to her. To Sun, essentially the most useful a part of images — when in comparison with different, much less instant artwork kinds — is that “other people can experience what [she] experience[s].” And it’s not only a fastidiously crafted course of, Sun sees images as a measure of inherent expertise and instinct as effectively. “For photography specifically, when you press a button, it’s based on your intuition and that decisive moment,” she shared. Poignantly, Sun continued, “I would like to show the world what I’ve experienced.” Photography is her manner of doing that — of changing a second, a life, an expertise into one thing each lasting and shareable. Each click on of her digicam shutter is a chunk of her personal worldview being dedicated onto an SD card, later to be printed or pulled up on a display as proof that Sun was there, that she noticed and what she noticed was value making everlasting.

At the shut of our dialog, we circled again to the very very first thing we talked about: Sun’s very disparate main versus her ardour. “I think there’s merit in doing a major outside of art,” Sun stated. For her, artwork is about self-discovery in a manner that her course of examine isn’t. Like many Cornell college students, Sun got here into faculty trying to be sensible along with her selections. She noticed the STEM path as extra dependable, and she or he was content material to maintain artwork as a interest. However, over time, she discovered that her ardour for images couldn’t be ignored, and now she’s absolutely on that path. Even so, Sun doesn’t remorse her selection to check chemical engineering. “I get to use different sides of my brain,” Sun commented. “Photography’s a good break from chemical engineering. Then, once you take a lot of photos, you want to be stimulated again with different problem sets.” I can’t say that I’ve personally ever wished to do an issue set, however I discover her dedication to each areas greater than admirable.

As Sun is on her manner out of Cornell, she’s excited for all the pieces the world has to supply her, whether or not that’s in style images, panorama images, another form of artwork or chemical engineering. Her positivity and innovation will take her far, I’m certain.

You can take a look at Sun’s work at her website.

Sophia Romanov Imber ’28 contributed to reporting.

‘Student Artist Spotlight’ is a column that runs intermittently, that includes scholar artists of all types on campus. For curiosity in a function, please contact Melissa Moon at mmoon@cornellsun.com.

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