Jenny Lewis Talk
Jenny Lewis came in to talk to us about her photography career. She is an editorial photographer who's worked with the like of the telegraph and the guardian. She has also produced two books with Hoxton Mini Press.
One Day Young
One Day Young is a book containing portraits of mothers with their child on the day it was born. Jenny took 150 portraits of mothers and their children over a 5 year period. Jenny explained how this originally began as a personal project as she wanted to portray a positive light on child birth rather than the pain and struggles that it is normally associated with by showing the beauty of the connection between a mother and her new born child. However, once seeing the interest that this project gained, Jenny decided to approach some publishers to see if they would be willing to publish a book of the photos. Eventually Jenny came across Hoxton Mini Press who were willing to publish the book containing 40 of the portraits Jenny had taken.
Jenny explained how having this project published in a book was amazing but she did not gain from it financially. Jenny made an agreement with the publisher that after 2000 books had sold she would earn £1 per book. However, Jenny ended up hiring a designer to layout the book which cost her £1000 out of her own pocket and as the publisher only printed 2500 books, Jenny didn't even receive enough to cover the cost of the designer.
Hackney Studio
Jenny's second book was called Hackney studio in which she went around small studios owned by up and coming creatives and took environmental portraits of the creatives. The interesting part of this book is how Jenny found artists to take photos of. Once finding her first artist she then asked that artist to recommend another artist they knew. She continued to do this with each artist until she had formed a 'family tree' of artists she had taken photos of. By the end she had 140 portraits of these artists.
This project was then also published in to a book by Hoxton Mini Press. Jenny explained how in this book she chose to add a fold out page at the front containing the family tree of the artists. Despite this costing Jenny money out of her own pocket, she said that she felt it was necessary in order to give each artist the credit they deserve even if their portrait didn't make it in to the book.
Jenny highlighted the fact that despite not directly earning much from her books, it was very worthwhile because she now gets approached by clients due to them having seen these books. This means that the client chooses Jenny due to her style and often asks her to shoot the images in the style of one of the books. This makes this work much more enjoyable for her as she is able to shoot in the style that she mosts enjoys shooting and she is also given more creative freedom in order to be able to get images in her style.
For this reason, Jenny recommended continuing to shoot personal projects that we're passionate about even if they're not going to pay the bills straight away as they could eventually lead to more paid work which will be more enjoyable as the clients will want images in your own personal style.
Jenny gave a great talk and it was very interesting to hear about her career. The images she has taken told amazing stories and the way she makes a connection with the subjects of these images was great to hear about as it is what makes these portraits what they are. Jenny also gave a lot of useful advice, much of which I will bear in mind for my own career.
