Finding a path in the field of photojournalism
By: Kerri Lotven, AAEA Member
My photography story seems pretty typical. I received my first camera as a gift sometime in my formative years – I’m guessing around age 12. You hear that a lot from photographers. It’s so common, in fact, I rolled my eyes a little bit as I wrote that line.
The camera wasn’t anything special, just a 35mm Panorama Wide Pic. For those who don’t recognize that specific model, it’s basically the equivalent of a reloadable disposable box camera. There’s one currently listed on eBay for $15.99 if you know any 12 year olds. The only cool thing it did was capture three sizes of prints – a standard 2×3, a 5×7, and you guessed it, a panorama. It was also electric blue, so it had that going for it.
At 12, I wasn’t focused on creating art with this new tool, though I do have vague memories of “landscapes” of my front yard. I mostly concentrated on taking blurry, bad hair, last day of middle school photos of my friends by the hundreds. I would hang these masterpieces up with scotch tape on this giant collage wall I’d created over my sliding closet doors, which was basically the late-’90s print equivalent of Instagram.
In high school, I stepped up my game with a Kodak-something digital, probably because my parents were going broke developing rolls of film. It was pretty cool with its automatic zoom lens. My dad was a teacher, and my mom was a social worker, so even that comparatively crappy camera by today’s standards was expensive. I didn’t get a “real” film camera until freshman year of college. I bought it myself, also off eBay, for about $100. It was a used Canon AE-1, and I had no idea what to do with it, but by that point I had already declared my major as photojournalism. I was ambitious and incredibly presumptuous.
My first subjects were cats. For some reason, it is really satisfying to develop pictures of cats in a darkroom. As the years went by and I worked my way through the journalism course list, however, my classes became more specific, and I eventually had to do actual journalism of people, places and things.
When I tacked these early environmental portraits, detail shots and landscapes on the wall next to my peers during my entry level photo classes, they didn’t stack up. Until that point, I hadn’t really delved into the works of great photographers. My prior fine arts education had focused more on painters and sculptors, and the camera had just filled in for my lack of fine motor skills.
At some point in college, I was given a copy of “In Focus: National Geographic’s Greatest Portraits,” and I poured through the pages. I took my exploration outside of those pages to the internet. I loved Dorthea Lange’s work for the Farm Security Administration. Richard Avedon’s “In the American West” also caught my eye. “Afghan Girl” by Steve McCurry is one of the most recognizable portraits in history. Annie Leibovitz, Joel Sartore and Ansel Adams were all clearly greats in their field. My college professors, Rita Reed and David Rees, both produced their own amazing work they used in discussion. It transcended simple documentation and rose to that same level of fine art I was taught in high school.
Still, closing the gap to greatness seemed unattainable, but closing the gap between me and the next guy was a goal I could work toward. Class after class, as we walked around the circular college classroom, from one photo essay to the next, I continued to compare my work to my peers.
This article was supposed to be on the topic of “photographers who you looked up to,” and I’ve meandered around the topic. By all means look at the greats. Study them, see what speaks to you about their work, but don’t overlook those who are in the process of becoming great around you.
I’m a member of several organizations. AAEA is one of them. We have a photo contest every year. I invite you all to take a look at our previous winners and then look at their websites to delve further. Winning photographer of the year in this category puts you among the greats as far as I’m concerned. I’m also a member of NPPA, the National Press Photographers Association. They publish a quarterly magazine with a lot of amazing photography. Many of my college classmates are often represented in that book. My current colleagues at Today’s Farmer Magazine all produce stellar work. And, as I wrote this, I also stumbled across a website called americansurburbx.com. It includes photo essays from across the world and through history. I’ll add a content warning here though for violence and nudity.
Since writing the first draft of this article, I have taken another job outside of agriculture journalism. While doing this work has been incredibly rewarding, I also started a family in the last two years and have become a little road weary. In my new job, I will still be telling stories, just more locally and on the nonprofit side.
Still, the initial point I wanted to make holds steadfast. Don’t stop looking. Don’t stop seeing. Don’t stop aspiring, and don’t stop working toward something. Write three lines of a novel, then write three more tomorrow. Blow out a few photos while mastering fill flash. Plan a trip. Spend time with family. Don’t stop becoming someone great, whatever that means to you.
I’ll sign off with that and this: thank you to everyone who has helped me work toward something on this path, including many of you who may be reading now. I am forever grateful.
Kerri Lotven is a photojournalist. She previously worked at Today’s Farmer Magazine.