Above: Jenny Kettler photographs in the cloud forests of Costa Rica in a recent project on rare ecosystems and rainforests. Photo by Ben Ludwig.
BY: HIBA OBEED
Staff
At the heart of being an educator lies an opportunity for community and impact. One such educator uses her experiences as a photojournalist- from writing for magazines and newspapers to traveling to India and Ecuador- to teach her students what photography means, not just as a means of record, but of connecting with and reaching a broader group of people.
Jenny Kettler is an artist and teacher who focuses on exploring important environmental issues. Here, she gives insight into her journey, her values, and her art.
Could you give a brief introduction into who you are, what you do, and how long you’ve been a professor?
My name is Jenny Kettler. I have been a professor for 12 years and I work at St. Louis Community College, Lindenwood University, and Maryville, so I am the professional adjunct. I call it the “adjunct shuffle,” but this is kind of what a lot of universities are doing. They’re not hiring people full-time as much anymore. Before that I was a photojournalist, and I got my degree in photojournalism from Mizzou. I worked for magazines and newspapers for about 12 years. I first did the small town newspaper- the oldest newspaper in the state of Missouri [Fayette Advertiser], and I was the managing editor and the head photographer. It was really good to get great experience working in the community. I worked in Columbia, Missouri for four magazines; two business journals, and two home and lifestyle magazines. I did everything from fancy homes and photographing how they decorated for the holidays, to working with local businesses that were newly opening in the community and profiling them. It was really fun and very diverse and I got to learn a lot. I did a lot of cross-cultural journalism when I was doing magazine work. Magazine work was kind of like my bread-and-butter, but then I would take my sort of breaks or holiday. I lived in India for a month and I did a lot of street photography. I worked at an underprivileged school and had an entire photography workshop there for middle school kids. Then I came back, and had an art show in the states and part of the proceeds went to that school. I went to the Galapagos, and went to Ecuador, and I looked at how tourism was impacting the local ecosystem and natural areas.
Why did you choose photography as a career, and how did it transition into an educational profession?
I got my first camera when I was 10. It was a little film camera, and it was red and black and it was all made out of plastic. It was very 1980s late/early 90s and I just took pictures of beautiful things and of moments of happiness in my upbringing. I became fascinated with this idea of how a picture can transport you from one time space to another; it has this magical sort of time travel ability. I had kind of a rough childhood and so I really liked how pictures were kind of like a way for me to time travel or escape. I started shooting after that in high school, and I took a photography course. Then in college I worked for the magazine, and I did photojournalism at Mizzou. In the journalism program there you work for a community newspaper the whole time you’re in college. You’re working for a full-time community newspaper so it kind of accelerates you into the real world, sink or swim. I did journalism for 12 years, and then I got burnt out because I was shooting multiple assignments every single day all the time. I actually didn’t photograph for a couple years because I needed a break. I always loved teaching- I taught those workshops in India, I did camps and stuff. So then I decided to get into teaching, and I got my first teaching gig. I didn’t have my master’s at that point, but they gave it to me because I had so much real world experience. I was hooked. I loved it, and it was a great way to make a bigger difference.
What aspect of photography do you most enjoy or value?
I really like its ability to transport you, it’s a great universal communicator, and I like this idea that photography can impact people more deeply than almost any other medium. It has the ability to do good in really profound ways that can shift politics, society, or even the environment- so I think it’s a really powerful tool. There’s a philosopher that says that the camera is man’s greatest tool for self actualization. We can turn the camera on ourselves and learn more about ourselves, or we can turn the camera on the world and learn more about how we see and understand the world, and that can help us all come to better self actualization.
What aspect of teaching photography do you most enjoy or value?
I loved building relationships, I loved community, and I had those things in journalism but they were fleeting. With students, now I can be connected with them. It’s more fulfilling and it’s really great to see and inspire the next generation. I feel like I could give back more as a teacher.
Have you noticed any specific moments, subjects, or themes that you find yourself constantly returning to in your photography, continuously or subconsciously?
I’m an Eco feminist. I’m an Eco artist photographer that shoots from an Eco feminist lens, so everything that I shoot or make work on has to do about humans’ relationship to nature, and particularly during the time of the anthropocene. We’re living in a new geological era, we had the Jurassic time period, the Holocene, we’re now in a place called the anthropocene where humans, plastic pollution, and their nuclear waste is going to be permanently embedded in the bedrock of the Earth. I’m really interested in that idea of us having such a big impact, what do we do with that? I look at it from an Eco feminist lens, which means I believe in looking at the relationship from a nurturing perspective; what can we do to nurture it back to health to fix the damage? How can we use intuition instead of logic to make things more balanced and holistic, instead of engineering our way out of things? What does it look like to have a relationship of reciprocity with nature, instead of one that is ‘what can you do for me?’
What is the relationship between the photographs you take and the story you want to tell? Do you ever see the photograph as a starting point for a bigger story, or do you want it to start and end with each photograph you take?
I think we’re so end product driven as Americans and I think one thing that photography- or really any advanced study in any subject will teach you is that it’s not about the product, it’s about the process. For me, my process as a photographer I usually start with a photo, and then I figure out what my idea is and refine it. Sometimes I start with an idea and then I go out and do the photo. I think the process of the unfolding, and the figuring out, and the readjusting, and calibrating- that’s what matters the most. For example, my “Where We Find Refuge” project that’s at Maryville, I started first with a camera that my adviser had given me. Just a film camera and some free film. I just took a picture of one of my students standing in the window, her silhouette. Then I went outside, and I photographed the clover on the ground and I did double exposures. I didn’t wind the film, and I didn’t know why I did it until I developed the film. Then I saw the picture and I discovered that my two feelings, and those two different times and spaces when I took the picture was what I was looking for. I was this girl who was looking outside wanting to be outside and then regrounding myself by going and shooting the Earth, because I was in a very chaotic time in my life. I wanted to rebalance, reground, find a direction- connect more to the natural world. My intuition kind of guided me. So I think the process of how we move through that is really important.
Tell me a little bit about your photojournalism, what kind did you do and for how long? What was your motivation for it?
I did community journalism for magazines and newspapers, everything from the county fair, to city hall write ups, feature articles, and fashion. I think it helped me decide that I really like working with environmental issues, or environmental stories, or green stories that have to do with the community. That kind of helped give me more of the environmental focus. I really like that in teaching I can bring it forward in my work. I can shoot photographs, but then also have a conversation about the environment. You can kind of make it into whatever you want. Whereas a sports story you have to go do sports. So I like the freedom and the flexibility to sort of create the Zeitgeist of a society and develop the consciousness.
What do you think effective photojournalism consists of?
A lot of sacrifice, a lot of hard work, and a lot of character. You have to have a very strong sense of integrity, dignity, fortitude, and hard work. I went to school with National Geographic and Sports Illustrated photographers, and the choices that they have to make to do their jobs is very respectable and admirable. I didn’t have it in me, which is why I knew I couldn’t work at one of those big publications. I just did community journalism, because I don’t have the guts to decide whether to photograph a dying child or help them; I would want to go help them. Really diehard photojournalists will photograph the dying child, and then maybe go help them, or not help them at all. I really admire what they do; they risk their lives to bring us the news and the truth, and not a lot of people respect that.
If you could photograph anything in the whole world, without restrictions, what would it be and why?
I would be very interested in photographing the most delicate ecosystems, the places, the plants, and the animals to sort of bring awareness and highlight them. I think they’re sort of disappearing worlds. Not photograph it in a way that was, ‘look at this amazing picture,’-but do it in a way that made people want to try to preserve it, or use it to change policy.
You can see more of Kettler’s art at jennykettler.com.
