“It can be difficult to want to take pictures,” said Niki Achitoff-Gray ’09. “You want to ask people before you photograph them but you also want to take a picture of what people are doing. The minute you ask for permission it changes things, they throw their arms around each other and give you a thumbs up, which is interesting, but not necessarily what you were hoping for.”
Exposure, the new student photography publication, will premiere this Thursday. Sophie Finkelstein ’09, Danica Pantic ’09, Josh Koenig ’09, Sam Jones ’10, Jake Nussbaum ’10, Jason Reif ’09, and Brook Olaussen ’09 comprise the editorial board of the magazine, which focuses on bringing out the issues behind the picture.
“The idea is to be a form of discussion and cohere the photographic community at Wesleyan,” Koenig said. “We wanted to include a wide variety of student work. Based on the fact that there is such a limited amount of spaces in photo classes and so many students are involved with photo outside of class, we wanted to give people a place to show their work. Our mission was to get people to think more about photography.”
Although Koenig wants to do a photography thesis, none of the publication’s staff members are photo majors.
“At the end of last semester, I got obsessed with photography,” Koenig said. “I started subscribing to magazines, and realized that we could have one, too. There was no reason why we shouldn’t have one, and so many different people are interested in photography to varying degrees that I was surprised that we didn’t.”
In hopes of becoming an established presence in the Middletown community, Exposure ultimately had 1000 high-quality copies printed in color by the same printer that does The Wesleyan Magazine. The group raised an impressive amount of money through fundraising efforts, including a grant from the Middletown Commission of the Arts and funds from Alpha Delta Phi, the Student Budgetary Committee (SBC) and the Studio Art and Theater departments.
“It was important to us to provide the magazine free to the Wesleyan and Middletown community,” Koenig said.
In addition, the magazine held a fundraising concert at Eclectic, at which Orchestra Fiebre headlined with the swing band Barney Bates and the Hot Tamales, followed by Daguerreotype playing photography-themed music. In the future, Exposure would like to branch out from publication and hold more events on campus, as well as bring in speakers and collaborate with other student groups.
For the editors, putting together a magazine was a learning process. Images were selected by gut reactions and discussions among the editors.
“As of this semester, we were totally democratic,” Koenig said. “There were four of us at the core, and we brought in three or more people when it was time to evaluate submissions. Everyone had equal say. We went through each submission one-by-one and rated them yes, no or maybe.”
Next year, however, Exposure is planning to implement a more systematic selection process and to establish a traditional magazine staff with set departments and roles.
“Internal structure is important to the future,” Jones said. “No positions causes conflict. If we’re going to continue, it has to become more institutionalized. This year there were no positions, we all pitched in and figured it out. We learned how to use InDesign [layout program] as we went along. We’d like to bring in more people interested in design, and be more intelligent about the layout.”
In addition to photographs, there are six features in the current publication and a seventh called “Seeley’s Vault” that includes work from old photo classes. The features highlight different uses and perspectives on photography. There is no guiding theme for the first issue, and the editors don’t plan to establish any themes in future issues.
“We don’t want to limit ourselves by defining what we want to have,” Koenig said. “We actually had to disclude work to create a wide variety.”
The decision to include features reflects Exposure’s mission to initiate discussion about photography. Many of the photos submitted to Exposure by students were from travel experiences. Achitoff-Gray wrote a feature that takes an ambivalent stance on travel photography.
“Travel photography is important if you feel the inclination to photograph things; it’s a great way to visit places and creates a heightened awareness of what you and other people are doing,” Achitoff-Gray said. “But ultimately, I disavow my work in Exposure. I don’t like my photos. They mean something, but not what is obviously apparent. Taking pictures is political. It’s about what’s lost in translation between what you are aware of being in an image, what you see outside of the frame and what people who look at the photograph can see. There’s always the feeling that you are sacrificing something in photojournalism, be it to effectively convey things, give voice to the right kind or wrong kind of people. Personally, I want to play an explanatory role if I have to choose, but I don’t necessarily want to have to choose.”
The magazine also includes features that deal with more artistic issues.
“Photography is not just about what we can see but access to things that we see,” Jones said. “That’s something we’ll have to deal with in future issues: what is a photo, what isn’t.”
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