Kristy Bianchi – Flower City Arts Center

Interview with Kristy Bianchi

Last week we launched our second online exhibition: Public Market by Kristy Bianchi. I initially reached out to Kristy after viewing her photographs from Arleen Thaler’s ROC Photo Map project. The way she captured color and form, her attention to detail, the stories she told – I wanted to see more!

Megan Charland: I was surprised to learn that you only recently started working in photography. What made you decide to pick up a camera? Can you talk a little about your training?

Kristy Bianchi: In the past I’ve played around with point and shoot cameras, but never got the photography bug until about a year and a half ago. I’ve spent years curating and incorporating other peoples images for graphic design projects, but not my own. That’s probably what made me realize it was time to learn how to use a camera and expand my skill set. Taking Karl Heinz Kremer’s beginner Digital SLR class at Flower City Arts Center was one of the best decisions I ever made. Ever since then I’ve been working on learning as much as I can, taking different classes at the Arts Center, and just going out shooting. It’ll be a life long process, and its been enjoyable every step of the way.

MC: With your background in graphic design, how do you think that work influences your photography?

KB: It definitely helped train my eye, giving me a good grasp on composition. Teaching me the value of negative space, the rule of thirds, directing and capturing how the eye flows when looking at images, and how to focus on what the main message or subject is in an artful way.

MC: Browsing your website it looks like you primarily take a photo-journalistic approach to your subjects, can you talk about how you approach your subjects?

KB: I like to sit back and see what unfolds, but also dive in and take a 360 degree approach with my subjects, lighting, and environment. Sort of moving around until I see what works, trying to blend the three into a nice image.

MC: What’s next? Do you have any exciting projects coming up that you want to share?

KB: I’d like to work on some more complex photo composite projects. Some elaborate surreal/fantasy style portraits incorporating models, make-up, costumes, scouted locations, then edited in photoshop.

Going on photo walks with Arleen Thaler really opened up my eyes and taught me a lot, making me discover my love of street documentary style photography. There will be more of that in my future for sure.

I’m kind of obsessed with macro nature photography, and I want to get into commercial, editorial and video work.

So I’m kind of all over the place! Right now I’m dabbling in as many areas as I can, as time goes on I’ll have a better idea on what I want to focus on, so far I love all of it :).

Q: Do you have any advice for photographers just starting out?

A: Bring your camera everywhere you can, you never know what might catch your eye.

Take some classes learn the basics, don’t get overwhelmed with all the equipment out there.

Instagram is a great way to see whats going on and get your work seen. Most of all practice, experiment and have fun with it!

The Sign Project

One night I received a text from my friend Jon, a homeless young man who lives in a tent in Rochester New York. Jon sent me a link to a project done by Rethink Homelessness, an initiative of the Central Florida Regional Commission on Homelessness. They asked homeless people to write down something about themselves they wanted others to know, and then were photographed holding the sign. Inspired by the images that gave people a voice, Jon suggested I take on the project which led me to introduce the idea to the students of my social reportage class at the Flower City Arts Center. While this session has been dedicated to documenting the Open Door Mission’s soon to open women and children’s shelter and the families that will be living there, the class incorporated what we now call, The Sign Project.

*A man of peace by Kristy Bianchi* @blackdiamondcreative

Starting out on the fieldwork all roads seemed to lead to St. Joseph’s House of Hospitality, a homeless shelter and soup kitchen in the South Wedge neighborhood of Rochester. There students immersed themselves in the lives of the patrons, enjoying dinner and conversation with some pretty cool characters. I once read the quote,

“How do you take pictures of somebody in a way that brings them to the table instead of putting them on the menu?” – Sharita Towne

I’ve since pondered that and with The Sign Project, I have seen it in action. Through this project the people we encountered had a voice. They were not just a subject in a photo, but instead they made a statement through their written words combined with the images created by the student photographers.

In May, Flower City Arts Center will be hosting an exhibition of images from The Sign Project celebrating the diverse men and women we worked with. This exhibit will be held at St. Joseph’s House of Hospitality with more info to come…stay tuned!

Photographing the same thing as everyone else

Something I have struggled with as a photographer before facilitating photography classes at the Genesee Center for the Arts and Education is photographing the same thing as everyone else. Be it a social event, festival, protest, etc., if there were others with a camera capturing images, I didn’t want to be one of them. Then I found myself instructing small groups of people in photo field trips, street photography and social reportage classes. Through this I learned to let go and jumped in, realizing each person sees the world through their own unique lens and though sometimes photos of the same subject by multiple photographers may look alike, they are very different.

An example can be seen on Canon’s The Lab: Decoy. Canon Australia devised The Lab, a series of experiments that are designed to take you out of your comfort zone, and get you thinking and shooting in a different way. Their first experiment involves having six photographers shoot the same man, but they are each told a different story about the actor’s background.

Each photographer having a different background history of the subject, who is an actor, may have helped the images to be different…more so than if each participant had met the subject and told nothing.

The Photo Field Trips are much the same way, we happen upon strangers around each corner, students engage while the story unfolds, each capturing different views of the same subject. Getting to know the person or persons you are photographing and listening to leaves very little room for judgement. Images become a part of the story, a gift to the socially engaged photographer, their subject and the viewer.