Walking around the lower level of Usdan, it’s hard to miss Alexander Fink ’08.5’s colorful, whimsical photographs. For the past semester, Fink’s photos have covered the walls near the information desk, captivating onlookers with their innovative use of motion and scenery.
Disheartened by Usdan’s sterile and impersonal atmosphere, Fink designed his show, “Charact’icatures,” to add some personality to the space.
“The old campus center represented the vibrant student life of the campus,” Fink explained. “But Usdan lacked that. I wanted to brighten up the space and bring some student character back into our campus center, which is why the show features all Wesleyan students in Wesleyan locations.”
Fink has been a staple of the Wesleyan photography scene for the last four years, contributing to photography magazines on campus, and most recently serving as the sole photographer for Senior Cocktails. He also designed, shot and edited all 12 photographs for “Unlocked’s” much-anticipated calendar, which was released earlier this week.
Perusing Fink’s photos in Usdan, it’s hard not to get excited and feel a strong sense of school pride. There are over 30 students captured in the photos, which were shot at 12 Wesleyan locations. The photos are very Wesleyan themselves, or at least the Wesleyan I know and love—quirky, effective, powerful, strange and even, yes, ironic.
In one photo, a young woman in a black and white dress sits despondently on the railing outside a chapel, the light behind her unfolding and curling to look like wings. In another, a boy bites down on a hamburger while being splattered with ketchup and mustard, utensils raining down on him from above.
Fink first became interested in photography at the age of 12, when a friend of the family, named Keith Drosin. took him to a park and showed him how to use a camera. Drosin, a prominent Middle Eastern dance photographer, mentored Fink for years and had a profound influence on Fink’s current interests.
“All my photographs are really intentional, really located in a specific space, which is something he did,” Fink said. “[Drosin] would conceive of a photo before he had a model, and he was all about capturing motion within a still image, which is one of my biggest obsessions. This obsession evolved into my style, which I call ’kinetic photography.’”
Like the famous photographer Jeff Wall, who takes photos that resemble (but aren’t) advertisements, Fink’s photographs toe a fine line between art and commercial product, between video still and personal expression, between the organic and the contrived.
“I do not consider myself an artist as much as a craftsperson with creative tendencies,” Fink explained to me. “I hate when people call me an artist and [I] would never be so presumptuous to call myself one.”
Now that Fink has his sites set on fashion photography after college, he is beginning to grapple with the undeniable influence that the commercial sphere has on photography and art at large. Despite an interest in entering fashion photography, Fink has definite qualms with the industry.
“High fashion is in a lull right now,” Fink observed. “It’s just pretty person, pretty outfit, pretty location. Granted, it’s supposed to sell a product, but there’s so much more that can be done. When I go into fashion photography, I want to highlight art and marginalize the commerce. I care more about subtext and meaning.”
“What makes you not an artist?” I finally asked Fink.
“It’s semantics, but it’s also more than that,” he said. “You work with so many people on a shoot it would be ridiculous to say you were the ’artist behind it all.’”
It’s this kind of attitude that makes Fink, and his work, so appealing.
Thinking about Wesleyan’s recent explosion in the music world (Santogold, MGMT), I have to wonder if this non-pretentious and fun, yet clever and skillful quality is what so many people love about Wesleyan artists.
Whether or not Fink agrees with this label, his photographs will remain in Usdan for us to enjoy until he moves west to make a name for himself in the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles.
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