Creating Strong Portraits with Forest McMullin

 I am a freelance photographer, consultant, and photographic educator based in Atlanta, Georgia. For over twenty-five years, I have specialized in photographing people on location.

My portraits have varied as widely as inmates in prison, neo-Nazi skinheads, Mormons at sacred sites in upstate New York, CEOs, janitors, patrons of rural pubs in Wales, workers in ethnic restaurants in suburban Atlanta, professional dominatrices, African American rodeo cowboys, and homeless LGBTQ youth.

What connects all of this varied work is my genuine interest in people's stories and thoughts. I want to know why they do what they do and how they feel about their lives. I’m naturally a very curious person, and sincerely want to learn as much as I can about anyone I meet.

Photography has proven to be the perfect tool to indulge my curiosity. Having a camera gives me permission to ask questions that in other circumstances might be considered too personal or rude. It’s my skills at talking, not photography, that allow me to go into virtually any environment and come out with a strong portrait.

As an educator, students often ask me how I create portraits in which my subjects appear relaxed and comfortable even if we are strangers. After contemplating my process, I have put together a guide of what to consider when photographing portraits:

1.       In the beginning, keep your photography as simple as possible. This might mean shooting with the available light or with a simple one light setup. Make sure you’re completely familiar with your equipment. Don’t use that new, borrowed or rented camera with controls that could confuse you. At first you need to be able to concentrate on your relationship with your subject and not let the photography get in the way.

2.       Consider scouting your location in advance. This can allow you to avoid struggling with the situation in front of you and distracting you from the communication with your subject. If this isn’t possible, then keep it simple.

3.       Do research on your subject(s). This will prepare you to have a few questions and will hopefully provide you with information that you’ll want to learn more about. You don’t need to know everything about them, just enough to give you the basis for a conversation.

4.       If possible, pre-light the scene so the person doesn’t have to sit around waiting for you to wrestle with your gear. When I was shooting regularly for major magazines, I arrived at locations a minimum of two hours early to figure out where I was going to shoot and how I was going to light. If this isn’t possible, again, keep it simple.

5.       Build trust with your subject, even if you only have a few minutes, by showing genuine interest in them and engaging in conversation.

6.       Keep the conversation focused on them and ask open-ended questions: “How do feel about. . .?” “Tell me about. . .” “What was it like when. . .?” “How do you go about. . .?” Almost everyone responds to someone who expresses a genuine interest in who they are and what they think. Make sure you’re that person for anyone who has taken the time to sit in front of you and your camera.

7.       Keep part of your mind on the visual conditions of the person and the location. Use the conversation to get clues to how to tell their story visually. Is there one corner of the room that will make for a more dynamic composition? Is there a specific prop I should use in the image? While paying attention to our conversation, I’m also letting my eyes do visual reconnaissance. After all, making a great picture is why I’m there.

Great photography is still possible even if you aren’t able to follow all of these guidelines. Everything in this article is intended as starting points, not rules. Whether you’re new to photography or just new to portraiture, you’ll discover what works for you and how you can make the best pictures possible. The most important thing to discover is how to make your pictures--not mine or anyone else’s-- yours. That’s where the joy of the craft comes from!

Learn more about Forest and his work at:

https://www.lensculture.com/forest-mcmullin/ and http://forestmcmullin.blogspot.com/

Thomas Gardiner

Thomas Gardiner graduated from Yale with an MFA in Photography in 2012. He earned his BFA from The Cooper Union, during which time he began working with a 4x5 camera to document the small communities he grew up in around Western Canada. During his studies at Yale he switched to 8x10, and began documenting working-class cities in the Northeast around New Haven. In his first year he was awarded Yale’s Schickle-Collingwood Prize and in his final year both the Leeds-Marwell Photography Scholarship and the Tierney Fellowship. He currently lives in Vancouver.

Untitled, USA

I grew up in the isolated, hinterland regions of Western Canada. Economic life in these working class communities revolved primarily around resource extraction industries such as oil, potash, uranium, and farming. Far from large cities and the cultural centers of the world, I desperately wanted to leave the small towns of Saskatchewan. When I did eventually leave, I found photography. Returning home after several years living in Vancouver and then New York, I saw the people and places I left behind in a totally different light. Through the camera, Saskatchewan seemed like a place from another era, yet at the same time it felt more familiar than ever before. Now living in the US, I find myself searching the towns and cities of this new country for the places I knew in Canada. 

When I photograph, the most important thing I look for is a kind of visual complexity in a space. I tend to find and return to urban communities where industry or manufacturing once thrived, ending up in back alleys, empty parking lots, behind strip malls, and in neighborhoods lost in the seams of the interstate freeway system—economically neglected places that reflect the nation’s disinvestment in its working people. Many of these environments— like the towns where I grew up— seem frozen or forgotten in time. Yet beyond any simple nostalgic attraction to these places, a contemporary theme is located somewhere within the challenging relationship of a visibly aging infrastructure in America versus the overwhelming crises of the modern world we live in today. Despite the apparent frozenness of these neglected spaces, time is still moving forward. 

Though there is certainly a documentary impulse throughout my work, even more important to me are the possibilities for the deliberate creation of a scene. The 8x10 view camera I use is traditionally regarded as a tool for exquisite detail, harnessed for its mimetic ability, for its higher descriptive fidelity. Yet my interest is in rendering those things generally less-easily seen: human desire and the interior dramas within individual lives. By using an 8x10 camera, I want the meditative attention to detail, but also I want the energy of the decisive moment, as is most commonly associated with smaller, faster, lighter cameras. My goal is always to attempt to overcome these limitations of the larger, slower 8x10 camera, and I feel it’s when I come close to this goal that the images are most satisfying to me. The result is a photograph with a unique kind of drama that is both fixed and transient. 

Once a person has agreed to let me photograph him or her, I feel we have become co-agents in a kind of script. The individuals I meet have a concrete relationship to the environment where my camera is placed. My contribution to the script, however, comes from murky memories—psychological, visual, social, and more— of my own past. The people I photograph are in this way cast into those memory scenes, yet simultaneously their actions and decisions infuse the scene with new meaning. The photograph becomes a kind of dialogue, the end result often being a departure from what either photographer or subject imagined. For me, photography is a complete sensory experience. Despite these attempts to describe my photographic process, I firmly believe that attempts to spell out in words a photograph’s meaning are destined to reduce its power. While this isn't to say that writing can’t aid in interpretation, there will always be something lost in translation. That is why I want viewers to consider these images without captions or theoretical viewpoints. And so the only title can be: Untitled, USA.

Laura Pannack

Laura Pannack is a London based Photographer. She was educated at the University of Brighton Central Saint Martins College of Art and LCC. Her work has been extensively exhibited and published both in the UK and internationally, including at The National Portrait Gallery, The Houses of Parliament, Somerset House, and the Royal Festival Hall in London.

View more of her work here 

Young Love Statement 

I think we often have quite a pessimistic notion of young relationships and forget that sometimes the simplicity of young love can form very strong relationships. Our ‘first love’ is a relationship we never forget and can act as template for future behavior and expectations in the future. A relationship free of worry, responsibility, experience and future plans can ultimately lead to one of fun and intimacy. Perhaps young people rely on relationships to ease the burden of the frightening time of handling adolescence and all its uncertainties; finding support in someone who will not judge but share the experience. Who will despite any fears or insecurities we may have, accept and love us.

But this is not to invalidate this partnership, as we all engage in romances for our own reasons. Creatures of self-gain it is through out ties with others that we establish a sense of self and a clearer understanding of acceptable emotional behavior. This lack of experience and perhaps vulnerability means that our early relationships are not sheltered by the protective walls we embellish to defend ourselves from our previous damaging experiences. We embrace all the relationship has to give, we accept and believe the emotions of the other half and we do not question their actions, as we have no reason to.

It seems that as we evolve and new generations form, the sanctity of marriage and traditional notions of romance hold less importance than it once did. Divorce is no longer a taboo and the increase in liberal views has encouraged society to be more forgiving of unconventional relationships. During a period of heightened emotional changes and the complications and new found territory of love and relationships brings into questions many issues that surround shaping who we grow up to become. The often perceived naivety can be viewed as a brave invincibility and produce a bond of unsheltered shared emotions, truly revealing oneself to another individual.

Ellen Wallenstein

Wolf Kahn, painter

Ellen Wallenstein is a photographer and book artist from New York City. She teaches at Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts, and writes articles and book reviews for photography magazines. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in the collections of many national museums archives and libraries. Wallenstein earned a BA in Art History from SUNY Stony Brook (1974) and a MFA in photography from Pratt Institute (1978). She is a NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) Fellow in Photography. Her work has been nominated for the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography and the Santa Fe Prize. She has just published “Respecting My Elders”, a first volume of portraits of creative people over 80 who have affected the American culture. (http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/530767)

View more of Ellen's work here
Purchase her book, "Respecting My Elders" here 

Editta Sherman, photographer on the cover of "Respecting my Elders"

Ashley Kauschinger: What inspired you to begin your project "Respecting My Elders"?

Ellen Wallenstein: I always follow my instincts and I’ve been led to interesting projects. I was drawn to this at a certain age and for certain reasons. I could not have done this work before I was fifty but I can see how it’s connected to my earlier work. My Dad died in his late sevenies, in 1996. He and I had been good friends. I couldn’t be there when he was dying, which led me to think about being a comfort to others at that time. So I trained to become a hospice volunteer. I was assigned to Anne, who was in her mid-eighties, the age my father would have been. What I expected - a short-term volunteer situation - turned into a deep, lasting and meaningful friendship. I made many photographs in her apartment and of her life over a period of time; those photographs (“Opus for Anne”) earned me a NYFA Fellowship and changed my life as an artist. When she died I decided to photograph other people of her generation (my parents’ generation). After photographing my mother and her friends and my friends’ parents I began to write to people who I admired who had influenced me artistically and intellectually. The photographers, the artists, the writers. I was pleasantly surprised to get some positive answers to my letters of inquiry.

Lois Dodd, painter

AK: How has this project grown? What has it taught you about art, life, and yourself?

EW: I tend to work on long-term projects slowly, and to take photographs in spurts, when I can make time. This project grew from a vague idea of making portraits into a book. It took a number of years to do this first volume; I’m looking forward to getting back to the process of shooting. Art and Life- small words, big questions! Art is about the power of practice and perseverence, of working at something over one’s lifetime. Hopefully creating something worthwhile to share with others. As Edward Albee wrote to me “Be useful, be useful. Do something that matters with your life”. Life is by its nature about aging. I take photographs to make a record and preserve the present. I am trying to portray older artists in all their beauty. Most of my subjects were still busy at their craft, and had a sense of theirselves and their accomplishments. For myself, working on a long-term project means dealing with all that can mean - fits and starts, mountains of lists, sending out inquiries, following up with appointments, trying to stay organized, obsessing. At least that’s my experience. No one is making me do this: it’s a labor of love. I also found that I can’t do this alone or in a vacuum. I appreciate all the feedback I’ve gotten along the way from friends and colleagues. And my husband, also a photographer- my biggest blessing- he’s incredibly supportive in so many ways. I am so lucky to have a wonderful and loving partner.

AK: You are also a book artist. How do you feel these two parts of your working process inform one another? How do you feel creating an artists book differs from a photo book?

EW: Making photographs and making books are different in some ways and similar in others. Both require visual skills, technique and practice. I make photographs as a habit, and as a meditation, a centering for myself. I carry a small camera with me all the time in case I see something that intrigues me. (No, I don’t have an Iphone, yet.) Or a bigger camera when I go to make a formal portrait. Sometimes the photos become part of a book. As a book artist I’m concerned with making a physical object to contain my art- be it photographs, collages or words. I’m concerned with particulars, such as which is the correct form for the imagery -a scroll? a fan? an accordion? a group of sewn signatures? And how do the images tell a story or illustrate an idea. You have to be ruthless about what works and what doesn’t because one wrong picture or placement can mess up the entire book. A book is more complicated, it has to work on many levels. (The three Cs- Craft, Concept and Content.) And sequence. And text, or no text, if text where, what size and which font. An artist book is a book created by an artist from start to finish - physically made by the person whose work it contains. A photo book can be an artists book; many artist books are photo books.

Rebecca Lepkoff, photographer

AK: On your resume, it says that you were an assistant to W. Eugene Smith in 1977, a year before his death. He is one of my favorite photographers, and so I must ask, what was he like? Did you get to spend any time with him before his death?

EW: Nice, funny, open, great to be around. He seemed much older than he was, actually. Literally, he’d been through the war. He was only 58, a few years younger than I am now. I was 25. He looked more like 75 to me, then. Of course I was a bit intimidated on meeting him as I’d studied his work- his photographs are so great. His output, his determination was remarkable.. All his stories for Life Magazine, the Pittsburgh Project, the Jazz Loft, Minamata…he was a true documentarian artist. And a master printer. But also just a man, you know? A very cool guy. I am so fortunate and grateful for the experience of knowing him for a bit. The year I knew him was his last in New York City; he was getting ready to move his collection and himself to Arizona, to the Center for Creative Photography where his work was to be archived at, and I believe he was going to teach out there as well. My assistant job was less photographic and more clerical; you might call it an internship today. I wrote correspondence, ran errands, bought his supplies, dusted things off - (he had a complete set of Camera Work that needed attention.) Organized, packed up boxes and hung out, with him and my friend Tom Okada, who was his major assistant. Gene paid me $5/hour, all of which I ended up giving back to him by buying one of his photographs. At that time in his life he really needed the money- part of why he was moving to Arizona. It was the mid-1970s, and the city and everyone was in a financial crisis. And he was no longer working for magazines. Everything was changing. I heard he died of a heart attack in a supermarket. Which is a sad end as he’d been through so much. But he left an incredible legacy of work which is being preserved and managed. He is honored through the International Center of Photography’s W. Eugene Smith Award, given annually to a photojournalist. I think he would be proud of all the photographers who won this award (and the countless others who toil every day all over the world.)

Edward Albee, playwright

AK: What is your process of self promotion? How do you balance your life with creating art?

EW: I’ve been a teaching artist for over 30 years so self-promotion is something I’m really just learning about. The most important thing I did for myself was to start a website, in 2005. I was going to show in an International exhibition in Madrid and realized I needed to have a presence on the web, and a business card. So I was prepared, if also lucky, to be discovered and recognized after many years of work. When I started fundraising for my book I hired someone to do “social media”. It helps to have someone else toot your horn. I’m on Facebook and have a presence there, on my own page and in some groups. I don’t Twitter, yet. This stuff takes up too much time! I’d rather be photographing or writing. I’m an artist - I photograph, I write, I make collages. I make books, sometimes with all three. And as I mention above I’ve been a teaching artist for so many years- instructing and inspiring others and being inspired back. Teaching forces me to be creative - to continue making images, and books- to keep pace with what younger people are doing and thinking. I also try to take classes so as to maintain my (computer) skills, and to remember how it feels to be on the other side of the desk. I was part-time for many years and did other things for money - worked in archives and museums; worked for the city; read tarot cards… I always managed to take photographs for myself along the way. I’m currently an adjunct professor at two schools and between them I can support myself. I’ve worked long and hard for this, so I’m appreciative of the attention being given me right now. Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk with you

Jess T Dugan

 I am excited to share my interview with Jess T Dugan about the series Every breath we drew. This work has an ambiguous mystery that asks questions about identity.

 More of Jess's work can be viewed here: http://www.jessdugan.com/

Ashley Kauschinger: The candor in Every breath we drew is brave and empowering. How did you come to find this bravery within yourself and then to share it in this work?

Jess T Dugan: I almost don’t know how to start answering this question…  In many ways, Every breath we drew grew naturally out of the color portraits I was making for Transcendence, yet in many ways it is radically different.  Gender and sexuality have long been topics of exploration in my work as well as in my life.  At the beginning of last fall, I was focusing on making portraits of transgender folks on the female-to-male spectrum, which I thought was going to be my subject of focus in graduate school.  My work up until that point had brought me to a place where I was focused on the construction, creation, and adoption of masculinity, primarily within the female-to-male community.  Of course, my photography has always been heavily intertwined with my identity and personal life, and in this manner, this investigation of masculinity was as much about coming to understand the deliberate construction of my own masculinity as it was about making portraits of other people. 

Every breath we drew has been incredibly intimate for me to make.  It involves a constant (and rather emotional) checking in with myself, examining my own sense of identity, sexuality, attraction, intimacy, etc.  From an intellectual point of view, I wanted to make photographs that explored men and masculinity through an intimate lens.  Emotionally, I was exploring my own identity and my own attraction to men and masculinity- a simultaneously simple and complex area where my desire to be/be with overlap.  I sought out people whom I felt connected to and asked them to be intimate with me or vulnerable in front of my camera.  I invited myself into their bedrooms and asked them to lie down, to look at me in a way that was new for me.  I created situations where intimacy could unfold.  “Intimacy” is a word I use a lot; though I know it has many interpretations, ranging from sexual to emotional.  When I use it, I am referring to that moment when your being connects with the being of someone else in a profound way, whether it be for a second or a lifetime, whether it be on an emotional plane or a physical one.  It is a broad term, and I would never attempt to define its parameter, but it has been the word/concept foremost in my mind as I have been making this work. 

AK: The portraits in this series require an intimate collaboration with the sitter. How do you build that relationship with your models especially when dealing with such delicate and subtle subject matter? 

JTD: The images I make definitely require an intimate collaboration.  My subjects generally come from my life in some way.  I am not big on photographing complete strangers, though it is something I have done before and continue to do from time to time.  I prefer to meet someone and make a connection before asking them to pose for me.  I often think that finding subjects is a lot like dating. I’m just attracted to certain people, photographically speaking, and something about their energy captures my attention.  From that point, it is a matter of building trust, getting to know each other, and ultimately negotiating what kind of photographs I would like to take and what their boundaries and interests are.  It’s a natural process.  I believe very strongly in respecting my subjects at all times, and as such, my photographs are always collaborative.  I would never try to push someone past where they are comfortable. I am asking my subjects to engage with me intimately like you would in any other situation; only the mode of relating is through my camera.  And as in any relationship, people are willing to go to various depths depending on who they are and their relationship to me. 

I also photograph some of the same people repeatedly- Dallas, Korrie, Alex, and many more- and each time I return to them to make a photograph together, we begin from a deeper place of trust and engagement.  My process of photographing people is fairly inseparable from my personal life and the development of my (non-photographic) relationships.

AK: Your self-portraits offer a private view into your personal everyday life, but also begin to form an understanding of your identity that builds as the series progresses. Have you thought of this progression as its own series separate from the other portraits that are exploring different individual identities? 

JTD: Yes, definitely.  It’s funny, I don’t think of myself as being a photographer who makes a lot of self-portraits, but I actually do.  Looking back, I have always photographed myself as a way to document my life, understand my identity, and make sense of my sometimes-complicated (and definitely non-mainstream) world.  To me, the self-portraits in Every breath we drew are engaging in the same dialogue as the other portraits, raising questions about identity, intimacy, sexuality- as well as shared human experience- but I am aware that they are different than the others.  It is, of course, a different process to make work about yourself so directly than it is to make photographs of others (which in many ways are also about my own experience, of course).  I am curious to see how the self-portraits evolve over the next two years, and I could definitely see them evolving into a separate project, or a separate aspect of the same project.  My body has also changed a lot recently (as a result of intentional weight loss and strength training) and I am curious to see how that development plays out in my work.  The self-portraits could also change depending on my personal relationship status.  If I entered into a romantic relationship, I imagine that would filter into the work, though in many ways I think the lack of that kind of a relationship has opened up an emotional space for my work to go the direction that it has. 

AK: You decided to go to Columbia College Chicago to get your MFA in photography and study with Kelli Connell and Dawoud Bey. Can you speak about why you made this decision and how it has benefitted you?

JTD: When I graduated from MassArt in 2007, I knew that I would eventually go back to get my MFA.  I took four years off in between, during which time I worked in the museum field to earn a living and aggressively pursued my own art practice and career in Boston.  When I started researching graduate programs, I assumed that there would be a “best” school, or an obvious choice for me, but the more I looked into different programs, the more I realized that each school has its own unique philosophy and style.  In other words, the whole concept of wanting to go to the “best” grad school kind of dissolved for me.  I spent a year looking at programs around the country, and I ultimately decided only to apply to Columbia.  There were many things I was drawn to about Columbia, but the main three were the faculty (Dawoud and Kelli specifically), the philosophy of the program (making-oriented as opposed to more conceptual) and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, which is a part of Columbia and where I currently work.  I really wanted to find a program where I would have the best, most productive experience possible, and where I would be challenged but also supported, and Columbia has turned out to be exactly that.  I have my reservations about grad school as an institution, but ultimately I decided that it is the right step and place for me at this point in my career. 

Working with Dawoud and Kelli has been amazing and has hugely impacted my work.  They both push and challenge me in their own ways while also being very supportive and encouraging.  Dawoud doesn’t let me off easy- in fact, he constantly pushes me to be a better, more rigorous photographer, both technically and conceptually.  Kelli has also supported and challenged my work in wonderful ways, and she is always the first one I want to see my new work, especially when I’m feeling unsure or shy about it.  She has the remarkable ability to offer critique while being unbelievably supportive and safe. 

I really felt that choosing faculty to work with was the most important part of choosing a graduate program, and while the similarities between my work and Dawoud’s and Kelli’s is obvious, they both very clearly encourage me to push myself as far as I can go down my own path, not down theirs or anyone else’s.  I am excited to see how my work continues to develop and move forward over the next two years here. 

AK: What is your process of self-promotion? How do you create a balance between making work and promoting it? 

JTD: This is a big question.  I’d say that my four years between undergrad and grad school involved a huge amount of promotion and getting my work out there. I found wonderful gallery representation early on at Gallery Kayafas, and that relationship has played a huge role in my career thus far.  I have had three solo shows there and Arlette (the owner) has been incredibly supportive of my career and development as an artist.  Now, I am lucky to have representation by multiple galleries in different cities, which is helping me to get my work seen by a wider audience. Having gallery representation still requires a lot of work and promotion on my end, and I strongly believe that a gallery/artist relationship is like any other relationship- it only works if both parties are engaged, communicative, and working towards the same end or goal. For example, right now I am planning a solo exhibition at the Schneider Gallery in Chicago for this coming September, and I am working with the gallery directors to create a catalogue, coordinate programming such as gallery talks, and generate press.  I do not think the responsibility of promotion falls entirely in the hands of the galleries.

In the beginning, I applied for a lot of group shows, but now I am more selective about that.  I am shifting my focus to solo shows, museum shows, and curated (as opposed to juried) group shows. I am constantly working on the promotion side of my career, whether by attending conferences and networking, researching grant and exhibition opportunities, or meeting with curators and other photographers, but I also try my best to separate the promotion from the creation. I also maintain a website, and I think this is important.  From a museum/curatorial point of view, it is very helpful to me when I can easily access work and information about other photographers. Websites such as Flak Photo, Fraction Mag, and Lenscratch provide great exposure for photographers while also creating a very real sense of community. Ultimately, I think that it is most important to find a way to keep your inspiration and excitement alive in order to make work.

Thank you Jess for taking the time to share an in-depth look at your working process.

This is an abridged interview, to view the interview in its entirety, follow this link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/101580284/Dugan-LightLeaked