Rangefinder Magazine
October 2005

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Profile: Joyce Wilson by Judith Bell
Femmage

In a career spanning four decades, Joyce Wilson has established herself as a leading portrait photographer, a photographer’s photographer, and one of the industry’s most influential and respected teachers. Her advertising clients include Fujifilm, Mamiya America, Eastman Kodak and the Indianapolis Symphony orchestra. Her work is in permanent collection of the International Photography Hall of Fame and is shown in galleries nationwide. The steady arc of her long successful career and her adherence to and belief in the power of creativity continues to provide motivation and inspiration for her students at Brooks Institute of Photography, where until recently she was head of the Portraiture Department, and in the workshop retreats she teaches here and abroad. I recently talked with this master photographer about her unlikely beginnings in the business and her ongoing passion for the medium

Judith Bell: When did you first become interested in photography?

Joyce Wilson: I have been fascinated with the arts since childhood. When anyone would ask me what I wanted to be, I would say an artist, although I had no idea what that really meant. I have no idea where any of this came from. I grew up in conservative Indianapolis, IN, in a German-Dutch family where my father’s idea of music was Liberace.

JB: Did you discover photography in school?

JW: I had no formal education. In the 1940s, if you were a girl and didn’t want to be a nurse or secretary, you were expected to get married. I rebelled from the time I was seven years old. I did marry at 19, and three children quickly followed. In 1960 when my youngest was six months old, a friend involved with his father’s photography business asked me to dress up in a pixie outfit and take Christmas photos in a Santa House. There were all these kids lined up at door waiting to see Santa. I discovered I could make those little kids do anything and get incredible expressions out of them. I fell in love with that camera and what I could make it do.

JB: What kind of equipment were you working with?

JW: I was shooting on a 35mm camera attached to the wall with a strobe on a bracket. I had no idea what I was doing. My friend had written “f/8 at 125 FEC” on the wall—I didn’t even know what it meant. But I knew how to set the camera and load the film.

JB: How did you learn about the equipment?

JW: I signed up to take photography class at the local high school. The focus was on the darkroom; there was nothing about composi- tion, portraiture. But I went through that door and never looked back. I read everything, including a lot of photography magazines from the 1950s. I began experimenting with hand-coloring on family photos, ruining half of them. I began to get work handcoloring for studios. With loaned equipment from friend’s studio, I started photographing my own children. I began pursuing child portraiture, sending letters to my friends and relatives—heritage portraits of children, I called it. I set up a studio in my living room where I would work for two years before I moved to a commercial location.

JB: So, you were in business. Was there a major turning point that led you in your ultimate direction?

JW: In 1965 I learned that Adolf Fassbender was teaching a fiveday workshop at a photography studio in Richmond, IN. I had no money, and it was tax time. I decided to delay the tax payment, swallow the late fee, and use the money to take the workshop. Fassbender was the pictorialist that turned my life around. He gave me the love of technique and knowledge of composition and design. He took me aside at the end of the workshop, saying, “I teach, I give all that I know, and no one does anything with it. But you will take the ball, and you will carry my legacy forever.”

JB: How do you think you’ve done that?

JW: His methods inform everything I teach at Brooks. He was such a beautiful soul and had a lasting impact on my sense of design, composition and professionalism. His teachings instilled in me a love of classic style and pictorialism, and I have passed on this legacy to my students over the years. He was so beloved that his students simply addressed him as “Papa.”

JB: Were there other photographers who were of help to you as you developed your eye?

JW: Yes, two years later, I studied with Mel Newsom, the portrait photographer for Eastman Kodak. At this time, the emphasis for portraiture was on studio work, but his focus was environmental. Kay Isaacson’s workshop on hand-painting was also helpful. I was becoming a bit overwhelmed by all the rules being thrown at me; it wasn’t where my heart was. I met Jason Hailey, a commercial shooter out of Los Angeles. He looked at my work and told me not to lose my own vision, to follow my own path.

JB: This was the figure study work, the work with women?

JW: Yes, but remember I had a thriving general photography business. I was really just concerned with making a living. My husband, who was in the business with me, died in 1970. I remarried in 1977 and moved first to St. Louis the to Oregon. Starting over wasn’t working. 1980 was a horrible financial time, and Oregon’s lumber industry was belly up. There were problems with the person who had bought my Cincinnati studio, so I packed up my dog and the car and went back and repossessed my business.

JB: When did you begin to focus on the figure work?

JW: In the early ’80s I was successful, cranking out work and totally miserable. That’s when I really started experimenting in my personal work. This was the heyday of the objectification of wome in men’s sex magazines. I found this treatment of the female form so blatant. I had a different viewpoint. I’d studied a lot of mythology; I wanted to show a different side of women. This was when I found myself, and my personal work really took off.

JB: There’s an aura of mystery, a reverential quality about these studies. Did they evolve out of client work?

JW: No, the fine art work is totally mine. Every time I was hired to do nudes, I didn’t enjoy it: It wasn’t my best work, and I won’t do it anymore. I photograph who I want. They are not professional models; they are my own daughters, the daughters of friends, women anywhere from 21 to 70. I discovered a passion for the storytelling of women. I started doing a lot of women nude with their babies. My personal work—“Femmage” (a combination of “femme” and “homage”)—is my work-in-progress over the past 20 years. It is an homage to the female spirit. The work revolves around women’s appreciation for their own strength and respect for their vulnerabilities.

JB: You’re experimenting with printing mediums with some of these images.

JW: Yes, I’m fascinated with the bromoil technique favored by the early pictorialists, whose work speaks to me. The method imparts the look of an etching. It’s very sensuous, the handwork with thick printers’ ink and brushes, the soaking of the paper.

JB: There’s a feeling not unlike Joyce Tenneson’s early work when she was hand-applying emulsion.

JW: Yes, interestingly, we were both working in a similar direction and unaware of each other for years. We now joke that she’s the Joyce of the East, and I’m the Joyce of the West.

JB: How did your relationship with Brooks evolve?

JW: I began doing guest lectures and workshops at the Brooks campus in the ’70s with the California Press Photographers Association, I first explored teaching there in the ’80s—I wasn’t ready, it didn’t work out. In retrospect, I’m glad. During those next 10 years my personal work really took off. I reassessed my business and quit doing everything I didn’t like in order to focus on me. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been teaching.

JB: What changed your mind?

JW: You could say my children made the decision for me. My middle daughter discovered photography and fell in love with Brooks during one of my workshops there, and transferred to the school. She encouraged my son to follow—he’s now a chef with a catering establishment, and my other daughter and her family followed. Five years ago, I followed suit, closing my studio of 36 years. I continued to go out to Cincinnati three or four times each year doing select client work.

JB: And Brooks?

JW: I came on board in 2000 to revamp the portrait program. They had been nine months without that department faculty. I saw a desperation in the students for the opportunity to be creative. I designed “Beyond Portraiture,” a course that would address these needs. I’ve recently resigned from heading the department, but I continue to teach this class in alternative process. It’s an elective for third-year students and very popular. After two or three years of technical, technical, technical being pounded into them, many are freaking out. They’ve lost their passion for photography, and they love the chance to “play with the camera” again and to experiment and create ART. They groan when I send them out to make their own portfolio boxes, but the process is really key to freeing them up and pushing their thinking in fresh directions,

JB: What’s next for you?