The Color of Light: 50 Years of Maine Media Photography
Get to know a few of the Maine Media Workshops + College photographers in connection to the exhibition, Drawn to the Light: 50 Years of Photography at Maine Media Workshops + College.
Connie Imboden
Is there a memorable moment that sticks out to you from being at Maine Media Workshops + College?
There are so many memorable moments—meeting and making lifelong friends, understanding different aspects and directions of photography. I do, however, have one moment that was super special. Many years ago I was in the line for the Friday night lobster, and to my utter amazement I was behind Arnold Newman! One of the greatest of the greats, a photographer I had admired and studied in school, was just a couple of feet away. We got up to the pot of lobsters—he turned to me—and offered me a lobster!!! And put it on my plate!!! I was served lobster by Arnold Newman!!!
Why is it important for artistic communities to have spaces like Maine Media?
I cannot express the importance of Maine Media in the photographic world. It holds a treasure of experiences and information in terms of the historical knowledge of late 20th century and (so far) early 21st-century photography. More importantly, however, is the continued impact that Maine Media has on the creative community worldwide. It provides a safe space to explore and learn, a community of like-minded people, and an opportunity to learn from top artists in their field. It has been a great privilege to be associated with Maine Media for (gasp) 30 years!
Connie Imboden has spent more than 40 years using photography to examine, distort, and redefine the human body. Using the reflective and sometimes altering qualities of water and mirrors, her images create new forms that are at once mythological, archetypal, and expressive. They are beautiful yet simultaneously disturbing, elegant though often haunting. By so deeply investigating a subject we are so familiar with- the figure -her work reveals deeper meaning and insight to the human psyche.
Imboden’s work is in the collections of many major museums including the the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum, the Bibliotheque Nationales in Paris, France, and the Ludwig Museum in Cologne Germany.
Her first book of images, Out of Darkness, won the Silver Medal in Switzerland’s “Schonste Bucher Aus Aller Welt (Most Beautiful Book in the World)” award in 1993. Her most recent book, Reflections was released in 2009.
Sarah Leen
Is there a memorable moment that sticks out to you from being at Maine Media Workshops + College?
The evening slide shows will always live large in my memory for the inspiration they gave me and the chance to see the work and meet the amazing photographers who were teaching the same week as I was. Priceless.
How did your experience at Maine Media influence your own artistic practice?
Through teaching workshops at Maine Media I had the wonderful experience of working with photographers, brainstorming story ideas and editing and sequencing their images. I absolutely loved that experience and it planted the idea and gave me the confidence to consider an alternate career as a photo editor, which I did after 25 years as an independent photographer by joining the staff at the National Geographic magazine and ultimately becoming the Director of Photography. I would say that it changed the trajectory of my life.
In 2013 Sarah Leen became the first female Director of Photography at National Geographic Partners. In 2020 she co-founded the Visual Thinking Collective, a community for independent women photo editors, teachers and curators dedicated to visual storytelling.
Leen works with individual photographers, media, and publishers consulting and editing long-term visual projects and photobooks including the 2020 FotoEvidence and World Press Photo Book Award winner HABIBI by Antonio Faccilongo, Anders Wo by Petra Barth, Like a Bird by Johanna-Fritz Maria, The Phoenician Collapse by Diego Ibarra Sanchez which won the 2022 Lucie Book Award for Independent Book, We Cry in Silence by Smita Sharma and A Troubled Home by Anush Babajanyan. She is also the photo editor of Ukraine: A War Crime by FotoEvidence which is shortlisted for the 2023 Arles Historical Book Award.
Craig Stevens
What drew you to the medium of photography?
I was drawn to the medium of photography after seeing an exhibit of the photographs of Maine photographer, Kosti Ruohomma at my alma mater, Colby College. (I wrote the foreword to Deanna Bonner-Ganter’s biography Kosti Ruohomma: The Photographer Poet. It should be on a bookshelf near you!) He made photographs in a one room schoolhouse for Life magazine. My first gig after college was teaching second grade in Dixfield, Maine. I bought my first camera to take pictures of my kids! Then a whole bunch of dominoes followed.
How did your experience at Maine Media influence your own artistic practice?
I have been at Maine Media every year from 1974. I was the first teaching assistant while in the middle of my MFA degree at Ohio University. I was half of the first full time Summer Faculty with the late Richard Procopio. Richard and I started the three-month residence program that continues to this day in 1975. I was the Assistant Director along with the late Kate Carter until I left to teach at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1987. My photographic career owes everything to my experiences at MMW. People would often say, “You know everybody in photography!” I was actually able to stay in one place and the world of photography came to me every Summer.
Craig Stevens is a photographer, printmaker, and educator. He has taught, written, and lectured extensively on the subjects of art and education and is Professor Emeritus of Photography at Savannah College of Art and Design. He has been teaching at Maine Media Workshops since 1974!
Craig is also on the faculty of the Santa Fe Workshops and the Anderson Ranch Art Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado.
In 2013 Craig was awarded the first annual Susan Carr Educator Award from ASMP (American Society of Media Professionals) at the PDN Awards in New York.