Light Work, Newhouse partner to feature students’ photography

Students in the multimedia photography and design program at the Newhouse School all have different catalysts for pursuing their stories, but the connecting thread is to challenge their audience.

Light Work, a photography nonprofit, has partnered with the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications to showcase student work in the “2018 Newhouse Photography Annual.” The exhibition reception will take place Thursday from 5-7 p.m. in Light Work’s Hallway Gallery, and the work will be on display through July 27.

This is the photography annual’s first year, and the idea developed through conversations between the nonprofit and Bruce Strong, chair of the MPD department.

“I think it’s an opportunity to celebrate the range and quality of the work that our students are producing,” Strong said. “And in that process, invite the public to see it.”

Strong, members of the MPD department and guest judge Lauren Steel, who is the founder and visuals director at The Verbatim Agency, selected the showcased photos. The point of the annual wasn’t to curate harmonizing work but to showcase student work to the community.

Narrowing down the final 30 was a challenge, Strong added. When the committee got together to make its decisions on the winners, it came down to which photos appealed to them the most — they didn’t know whose photos were whose, because that’s not what it was about.

The result was a variety of work, ranging from photojournalism that follows the lives of local farmers, a young girl with terminal brain cancer and an international project in Colombia to illustrative photography with complicated light, texture and color that challenges the viewer to make their own story.

Colleen Cambier, a graduate student whose work is featured, embarked on a yearlong project in January 2017 to shed light on the offseason in the agriculture field. Cambier, who is also a staff photographer for The Daily Orange, worked with three local family farms, and it wasn’t long until she began to truly know their way of life.

“You get to see what their childhood is like growing up on this farm and what chores they have to do to help (the family),” Cambier said.

The photographer also noted the unconventional ways children find fun, which is something she wanted her work to help people think about.

“I like to educate people because I think knowledge is power, and the more knowledge you have, I think it makes you a more well-rounded individual,” Cambier said.

Cambier spent about a year documenting the lives of local farmers, and wanted to concentrate on capturing their off season.
Courtesy of Colleen Cambier

Moriah Ratner, a former assistant photo editor and current staff photographer for The D.O., also chose to document family. Her story followed Lola, a young girl with terminal brain cancer. After a few weeks, what started out as a school assignment quickly turned into something much bigger.

“I felt like I owed it to the family to ensure that they had pictures of all of them together and of her,” Ratner said. “Pictures that show who she is, and her spirit and that she is not defined by her cancer and that there is more to Lola than her diagnosis.”

Her photojournalistic work on Lola has earned the senior several awards, including grants, but to her, “it just was never about the grade.”

While Ratner’s piece in the exhibit is a part of Lola’s story, graduate student Zach Krahmer has traveled the world to visually reveal how policies can affect the individual. He’s pursuing dual graduate degree in international relations and photography with a certificate of advanced study in conflict resolution in an effort to not only capture these effects, but to have the ability to speak about them as well.

Krahmer has two pieces featured, one of which is a photo of ice climbing, which he describes as more of a pretty picture. The other was taken during his time exploring a 50-year long dispute within Colombia.

“The work itself is meant, within Colombia, to draw more awareness to this (issue),” Krahmer said.

He cut through the mass amounts of images people see every day and used an alternative photographic process to draw attention to the story, said Krahmer, who is only the second student to be in a dual graduate program in Strong’s 11 years at Newhouse.

Strong said of Cambier, Ratner and Krahmer: “They’re all in very different places, but I think as a whole they represent our program quite well.”