libby march • photojournalist

MPPA weekend 2012 (regarding work by Michigan photographers from 2011) was a great experience. My dear friends Jake May, Sean Proctor, Neil Blake, Katie Rausch, Nick Dentamaro, Ashley Miller, Mike Mulholland, Thomas Simonetti, and Nick King cleaned up. But it started out a rough experience for me.

Last year (MPPA 2011) I did pretty well in the judging - first place Michigan College Photographer of the Year and honorable mention Feature Picture Story of the Year...I was honored. And last weekend I batted straight zeros.

My portfolio received “outs” from all three judges. As in, out within 30 seconds. And the thing is, I agree with their choices completely. The photographers who took 1, 2, and 3 CPOY - Jake May, Sean Proctor, and Ashley Miller - had strong, well-shot work and were completely deserving winners. I wasn’t jealous. I was...well, embarrassed. Despite two internships and working with great people, I batted zeros at the yearly Michigan conference. For the first time ever.

It's not like my pictures are bad. But they aren't great. Some of them are on to something. But my story, as much as Patricia and Jack mean to me, doesn't have the heart I wish it did.

Sol Neelman, Danny Wilcox Frazier, and Jack Gruber asked...where are the photos that don’t need a caption?

Oh. That hit close to home.

To be honest, I sort of saw it coming. 2011, for a variety of reasons, was kind of a difficult year for me. I’d still hoped not to go from top to bottom, but there it is.

I don’t photograph for contests, I photograph for people. Yet I was still embarrassed.

I could blame my edit, or whine about judging, but they are fair choices selecting people I truly respect. And I don’t believe in excuses. So I tried to suck it up and focus on being happy for my friends. But I was lucky it’s dark in the judging room, cause my face was red as a beet.

The party that night was great. We got fancy. We saw more gorgeous work - check out Danny Wilcox Frasier’s “Driftless” when you get the chance. There was booze all around. Jake shaved his beard for the Chris Hondros fund. There were ugly sweaters and portfolio reviews.

I was still embarrassed.

Danny Wilcox Frazier’s work was moving. The scenes and people from Iowa were gritty and emotional at once. And imagery from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation really hit home for me...ten years ago, at age 13, I was at that reservation. It was my first mission trip with my home church in the Upper Peninsula. And I think it was the beginning of my desire to work with and document real people with real hopes and dreams and struggles. So seeing it again brought it all back...and I stopped thinking about mortification. I felt the old itch in my skin to get out and make pictures.

Frazier talked about hanging out with people. He talked about growing close to them, about sharing as much of himself as he asked they share with him. And that’s something to which I relate. When I ask to put myself in someone’s world, to follow them to work, to church, to hospitals...it feels natural to me to open up my whole life for their scrutiny. I have to trust people as much as they trust me.

Yet sometimes I struggle with the concept of “journalistic distance.” The idea that one must be detached to be a good photojournalist. But it isn’t the way I work. I put my whole heart into stories.

When I photographed Russ and Karen Attwater, I sat on the back porch on a warm fall night while Karen had her after-dinner cigarette.

In Haiti my job was only partially to photograph..the other part was to hold and hug and tickle and be cried on, even be sneezed and peed on, by children 6 and under. Last week I spent an evening with a new subject just hanging out at the kitchen table, sharing about life and love and everything between.

That’s how I do my best work. I’m part of a life. I’m right there crying and laughing. And trying to change that disconnects me from what I do best.

At about 2 AM last Saturday night, I had a photo conversation with Danny Frazier. He looked at some of my images and wondered where I was in the photograph. In some of them, there wasn’t “me.” One of the professors at Central, Teresa Hernandez, looked at one of my pictures and asked point blank why I’d put it in my portfolio. And my answer was just that other people liked it.

Other people liked it. And it's a solid picture. But it's not the kind of work I really aspire to. I think for awhile I’ve been so caught up in what I think other people want to see that I walk away from my own instinct and into the realm of what Frazier called “sterilized photography.” And suddenly I realized why I’ve felt so flat in my photographic life. I’ve been trying to be some other photographer. It felt like the whole world was new again.

Here's a photo that Frazier and Hernandez looked at and connected with from 2010 - the kind that isn't sterilized:

I took a lot of notes. I wrote “Ask yourself. Do you feel it? Or not?” “Do what you do. React. Connect.” “You can’t do what other people do, do what you do.”

Nick King joined the conversation and said one of the kindest things anyone’s ever said about my work. He said he’d rather look at a thousand of my pictures, a full take, than what I might choose for the paper, because I don’t pick my best images. He said the best thing about me is that I’m an instinctual photographer, and the images I make that interest me are the ones that resonate. I’m never going to forget that.

Frazier also mentioned at least 15 photographers and work I should check out. Jocelyn Bain Hogg, John Lowenstein, Jane Atwood, Jim Goldberg...all who I’ve never really looked into. Frazier looks at work all the time. And it shows in his pictures. I’ve always known that the ability to recognize a good picture means you’ll be able to make them eventually (thanks, Neil Blake, and Ira Glass on work in general...) but when was the last time I really spent a lot of time just looking?

I get so caught up in work and school and my own stuff that it’s been awhile since I immersed myself in exploring all the incredible pictures out there. And yeah, I’m busy. Yes, my laptop died. And yes, my life is spent constantly at computer screens already. But I can’t grow without looking. And I’ve missed it.

There are a few more things from that conversation I’d like to share -
“Images become more unique because of the experiences you have. Stop worrying about it. Be that vulnerable. Have the courage to go for it. Remember who you are.”

Portfolio advice from the judges in general included the following:
“What would you get up at 4:00 AM to photograph on your own?”
“Either do better or do something else.”

So 2011 was a plateau year for me. But this year? I’m going to look more. I’m going to stop getting hung up on what other people see and shoot what I see.

I’d like to thank everyone whose hard work and beautiful images inspire me. And those that knocked the sense back into me. So I got my butt kicked. So I might again. So what? It’s about the people I get to know and the moments that are relevant to me.

My eyes are valuable. My emotions are valid. And if I can put them together again in pictures, I’ll be doing what I’m really meant to do. And what I want to be doing.