GOAL
* Gain new insights into your work.
* Delve into your past and current bodies of work.
* Clarify your purpose, edit and create sequences, and consider your next steps.
* Start or continue a photographic series.
BIOGRAPHY
Mark Steinmetz is a photographer who resides in Athens, Georgia (USA). He has published several books with the Nazraeli Press (Paso Robles, CA): South Central, South East, Greater Atlanta, Summertime, Italia, The Ancient Tigers of my Neighborhood, Paris in my time, The Players, Summer Camp, and a three-volume set, Angel City West. Stanley/Barker (London) has published 15 Miles to K-ville, Past K-ville, Carnival and Rivers & Towns. Kominek Books (Berlin) released Berlin Pictures in 2021 and Nazraeli will publish ATL, on the Atlanta airport, in 2023.
Steinmetz’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and others. He has taught photography at Harvard University, Yale University, Sarah Lawrence College, Emory University, and The University of Hartford MFA Program. Steinmetz is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe.
Steinmetz had one-person shows at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans) in 2015, and at the Yancey Richardson Gallery (New York) and Lothringer13 Halle (Munich) in 2017. His work on the Atlanta airport, Terminus, was shown at the High Museum of Art (Atlanta) in the spring of 2018, and he had a one-person show at Fotohof in Salzburg, Austria in 2019 and Murkudis Gallery, Berlin in 2022.
Mark Steinmetz is co-director of The Humid, a photographic workshop and gathering space, with his wife, Irina Rozovksy. He is represented by Claxton Projects in Brooklyn.
If you want to be kept informed about Mark Steinmetz, you can follow us on Instagram.
“Photograph somewhere you are very uncomfortable.
There are all kinds of successful photographic approaches where the photographer is quite comfortable when taking his or her pictures. I don’t think André Kértesz, for example, ever felt uncomfortable when taking a photograph. Someone like Brassaï, however, had a bodyguard with him at various times. So much of good photography happens when one begins to overcome one’s personal limitations. Students tend to be very shy, particularly when photographing people they don’t know. They often retreat to photograph in empty, abandoned places where no one will bother them.
To do photography for the most part one must maneuver one’s body around to actually be in the right spot to take a picture. The photographer must be physically in front of something. So often it seems that students are not getting themselves in front of the things that really interest them because they aren’t quite brave enough. I try to remind them that passion can’t really exist in the absence of risk, the feeling of risk. Over the years a few of my students have gone to dangerous neighborhoods and clubs, to slaughterhouses, or visited their estranged parents, but most of them never really address this assignment directly or fully — many find clever ways to avoid it. But perhaps this assignment gives them something to think about.” Mark Steinmetz.
Normal Vision: A conversation with Mark Steinmetz. This is a 24 minutes video about the photographic world of Mark Steinmetz and his links with other photographers and filmmakers. Video for educational purposes only (non commercial) produced by LENS Escuela de Artes Visuales (Madrid, Spain): https://vimeo.com/115117159