JUXT Rewind:  Originall Posted on February 10, 2012

R:  Rebecca D:  Deena

R: Deena, you’re a fairly elusive creature.  I’ve followed you on instagram practically since I joined and I’ve managed to glean only bit of information about you even though a part of your soul seems to reside in every picture you take.  Tell us about yourself. How did you begin taking pictures? How did you discover mobile photography? What do you want us to know about you and your work?

D:  Elusive. Not sure I have been called that before but I would imagine from the context of instagram, I can see why that would come to mind.  I currently live in upstateNew York, about 1 ½ hours north ofNew York Cityin a town called Rhinebeck.

My father was a photographer, who used to shoot with various cameras from his Pentax K1000 to his plastic Diana camera, all of which I now have and use. Additionally, I have his Graflex medium format camera given to me years later by his friend Ralph, to whom he originally gave the camera. It’s rather remarkable having it come full circle.

My first experience with photography was when I was 6 years old. I remember going out into fields with my father so he could make pictures, coming back to the house and going to the basement with him to watch him develop prints. The amazement and awe I felt when seeing an image of me appear in this tray…I still feel that way today with my own imagery.

My first photography ‘project’ was when I was in 6^th grade. I was living in NYC with my mom and siblings. We were planning on moving back upstate and I wanted to remember my friends. I made them all stand in front of a closet in our classroom or outside next to this fence and made portraits of them. I photographed each class in my school and the 8^th grade graduation. I still have all of them.

I spent six years living in the Bay Area of California ended up back in NY in my early 20s and decided to take some photography classes I was incredibly lucky to have two amazing teachers running the very small photography department at the community college I was attending. We had two black & white darkrooms and a color processor so I was able to print my own color images. I started interning at Howard Greenberg Gallery in NYC. Two months into the internship I got hired full time and moved to NYC. At my mother’s suggestion, I got in touch with Howard, who started the Woodstock Center for Photography in 1977 with my father, to see if he could help in some way. When I showed up at his gallery, I said, “I know I haven’t seen you since I was 8 but do you have a job or internship?” He was really receptive to the idea. That was the beginning of an amazing time of learning in my life.

I started taking pictures with my first phone that had a camera. I think it was a Sprint PCS thing. For the obvious reasons, I never considered them much of anything. In December 2007, my friend and her husband got the first generation iPhone. She got me one for Christmas and I remember being so excited because I saw the images she was taking with hers. My first photo app was Toy Camera. It was simple and easy to use. At that time, I had a camera stolen from my car and dropped another, so having this small camera that didn’t require a carrying a heavy bag was very much welcomed. I had accumulated 1500 photos on that phone and then upgraded to a 3GS of which I had two of those. I’ve taken thousands of images which I’ve filed away, like my old negatives, to hopefully organize and use in the future.

R: When i look at your work as a whole, themes of solitude and vastness appear again and again regardless of subject or location.  Can you talk a bit about these ideas and how they might relate to your images?

D:  The feeling of space is a wonderful thing and influences me heavily. After living inNew York City for six years, I moved out to the east end of Long Islandand photography began to take a more full time role in my life again. Living at the ocean for nine years and all the hours I used to spend at the beach year round it was hard to not see everything with a vast perspective. The fall/winter/spring months filled with great moments of solitude on the beach unlike the summer when everyone comes for the vacation destination that it really is. I am finding that space and solitude exists everywhere and it’s just a matter of seeing it within that context. I had a hard time when I first left the ocean and surrounded myself with trees and mountains again.

R: Sometimes your eye appears to look out and sometimes it looks in. Your images feel intimate in both directions.  How does the place influence what you “see” and how you shoot it?

D:  I find that the images I make during the course of each day always reflect the place/feelings/experiences I am having and therefore that intimacy becomes inevitable. My mother once told me I was a terrible liar. I think I have always tried to be as honest as I can be (at times to a fault as not everyone likes honesty) and I have learned to embrace this and use it to my advantage. I love looking at images that project an honesty and intimacy in some form or fashion. I think that can come in many different formats as that concept is different for everyone.

R: You and I have talked about the virtues of photos without edits versus photos with edits.  You do both beautifully.  How do you decide when and how to edit and when to keep it raw?

D:  When I first started making images with my iPhone, the apps I had were simply just applying colored filters on the images. I don’t think I started editing anything until ten months ago. I started seeing what other people were doing and was so incredibly impressed with all of the different things one could do to manipulate an image on their iPhones. This tool and the apps opened up this whole new world to me. What came out of the “experiment”, was finding a few apps that work for me.  I don’t think that major editing is something I am good it. I find myself seeing images singly and there are times that I actually see composites in my head. I have these “notes to self” images that I make hoping I will go back and remember what I was thinking about. A lot of time I can see a few different ideas in my head about how I want the final image to look, but recently have been drawn to images that we all readily see without manipulating it to look like something different. Even in my edited images, I find I am gravitating toward something relatable.

R: I’m interested in how artists go about their process. Is there are place your mind needs to be in order to work?  Do you plan to shoot pictures, as in a photo walk, or is it more spontaneous? Would you talk a little but about your process?

D:  Hmm. Well I think I probably answered this in the various questions above. I will say that I do have a couple of photographer friends that I get together with once a week (providing our schedules work out) and we go around to different areas to walk, make images, and stop for lunch or coffee. I also attend a photographer’s salon once a month to spend some time looking at other people’s work and hopefully engaging in some thought provoking commentary.

R: Lastly, who or what has influenced your picture taking the most?

D:  My father is one person that has influence my picture making process tremendously. He was the one who showed me what it was and how it would change my world and viewed it. The photographer’s work of which I had the great fortune of seeing and meeting when I worked at the gallery; William Klein, Robert Frank, Robert Adams, James Karales, Saul Leiter, Ted Croner, Minor White, Josef Sudek, Kenro Izu, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, amongst many, many others. I also think the experience of seeing how other people document the world around them and being open to it all, good and bad, is an important practice. There are a lot of people on IG that I have found that I admire the imagery they create either with traditional photography or with the editing practices used.

Juxt thanks you both for your art and your words.

View Deena’s work on Instagram:  @deena21

About Author

Rebecca Cornwell

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