Interview: JIM WINN

For those who don't know Jim Winn, he is an incredibly talented young photographer, who while in school at Western Kentucky University was the 2004 runner-up College Photographer of the Year and 2005 winner of the Hearst competition. Somewhere in 2006 though, after a handful of internships, Winn left the newspaper industry to forge a new path -- as a truck driver. In that time he founded the American Diversity Project, and is now preparing for a new role as a professor at the University of Kentucky. So, if you haven't heard of Jim Winn before -- don't worry -- you will.

Here's the Unofficial First-Person Bio:

For some reason writing this interview has really made fresh the memory of my first photo class, walking out afterwards feeling as if I was on fire, itching to change the world through photojournalism. After finishing school, the last couple of years seem to have been a weird journey to get back to that moment of pure joy and inspiration. I've spent some time with internships, a staff position, got married, drove an 18-wheeler for 10 months and now find myself working to inspire a new group of young photographers while I teach photojournalism at the University of Kentucky.

I am extraordinarily fortunate to be married to my best friend and favorite photographer, Carla. Together we founded the American Diversity Project two years ago to provide a home for passionate storytellers and their work. The last couple of years have been odd, especially the truck driving, but I am more excited about job of being a photographer than I ever have been in my life. I look forward to what comes next…

You were an extremely accomplished college photographer... one of the rising stars... winning Hearst and being named runner up CPOY along the way. I figured you were on the fast track of some great internships and a good first newspaper job. What happened along the way to have you declare yourself anti-newspaper?

I think newspapers and I just really want different things out of photography right now. It seems like newspapers are going through a pretty intense process of deciding how to balance the financial obligations of an industry with waning subscription rates with things like job security, story-telling and strong community journalism. The anti-newspaper thing was something that I had on my Lightstalkers profile for a while, mostly just because I was venting some frustration with being caught up in that situation.

I think a lot of newspaper photographers are pretty frustrated right now which is pretty understandable. I do, however, realize that I owe a lot knowledge and friends from all the time that I've been able to work with/around newspapers and I am really, really grateful for that. But if I am to make a living off photography I think the position of staff photographer is too intimately tied to an industry that is being overhauled, and I feel way more comfortable with papers on a freelance basis or moving to other areas of photography altogether.

A photographer I have a lot of respect for once told me that sometimes you have to feed the body, and sometimes you have to feed the soul. For Carla and I right now it seems that the best way to take care of both of those things is to see what else is out there photographically and that is really exciting.

What do you think the industry needs to do to retain and attract more young talented photographers?

I think a lot of photojournalism students will continue to start their photo careers through newspapers just because there aren't that many obvious options outside of that. I think retaining them long-term is a little harder just because of the low pay scale and the complete lack of job security that exists today. It's a little off putting to think that we're going through years of school so we can fight tooth and nail to get a job that is poorly paid, where we surrender all the rights to our photos and have the very real possibility of being laid off two years later so we can do it all over again. How to change that is difficult to answer just because those are things that are pretty ingrained and probably won't ever go away.

So you checked out for a while and got your CDL with your wife Carla and started driving 18-wheelers across the country. Can you talk about why?

The decision to drive a truck came from a combination of things. We had gotten to the point where we knew that we really wanted to leave the newspaper industry for a while and explore other aspects of photography, both in and out of photojournalism.

The biggest obstacle preventing us then from doing a lot of things like that was financial; it's hard to work on projects if you don't have the gas money to get there, or to begin freelancing while trying to pay off college and buy equipment and build a savings all at the same time. We were already working a job that wasn,t that fulfilling so that we could save to do other things, so we though the best plan was to just take that idea and run with it. We decided that we would take a year and work as much as possible so we could pay things off and start saving to build a better future for ourselves. We weren't sure if we would stay with newspapers and work a bunch of extra jobs to do that or if we would dive into another job entirely. In the end though truck driving paid so well that it was the quickest way to meet those goals, so in the end we decided that was the route we would take.

I think I'm enamored with the idealistic notion of being a trucker. Fulfilling some of the restlessness. Blazing down the open road. What's it really like? What's a normal day for you?

I think if anything it made us more restless. Spending that much time looking out at places and stories you want to explore but can't stop for made us really eager for the time when we could really focus on that stuff again. The romantic idea of driving a truck faded pretty fast. It was without a doubt one of the hardest things we’ve done.

Instead of doing local driving we took a position as cross-country team drivers, which with our company meant that we pretty much drove 24 hours a day from one side of the country to the other. I'd go from midnight to 6 a.m., Carla from 6 to 12, me from 12 to 6 p.m. and Carla would finish with 6 p.m. to midnight. We earned one day off for every seven full days we drove, and to have enough time to really enjoy being home and do some photo work on the side we typically drove for about six to eight weeks at a time. Two months of driving 20 to 24 hours a day will really wear you out after a while.

My best comparison is that it felt like running some ridiculous two month long marathon. One of the real low points for me was one night in March around 3 a.m. when I got pulled over 5 times in 45 minutes going through West Texas. Our truck's headlights took a very specific type of bulb that you just can't replace at 3 a.m. in the boonies of Texas, and since one had burned out I kept getting pulled over for it.

I'd say that the experience was pretty lame over all, to be completely honest. But it did so much for us in so many ways, and there's a lot we'll be able to do in the future because of it, so looking back I'd say that it was worth it. And although trucking cross-country isn't quite as romantic as it seems we did get to see some absolutely amazing parts of the country, and some really incredible weather. Another aspect of it that we liked, being fairly newly married when we started, was just having the chance to spend some much time with each other. I don't think many people get a chance like that and it was really nice.

What has it done for you and your photography?

With the amount of driving we were doing we really didn't get to shoot much at all, and we worried sometimes that it would dull our relationship with photography. But driving that much gave us a lot of time to think about just what we wanted out of photography, and how we wanted to get there and that was really good for us.

I feel like my knowledge of myself as a photographer is so much greater than when we started the process and that was something completely unexpected. Also, being deprived of shooting, something that has really directed our lives for the last seven years or so, I think really made us appreciate what we do as photographers and how much we love it. I have never in my live felt as fulfilled photographically as I do right now and I really hope I can translate that to my students as I spend the next year teaching at the University of Kentucky.

There are a lot of workshops out there... what led to the founding of the American Diversity Project? What's your mission? And where do you see ADP going?

ADP was something that we started while we were still in school, and it grew out of a group of us who really love storytelling wanting to create something bigger than our own individual work. The mission of ADP has evolved a little bit over time, but in a nutshell, the mission of ADP is to support documentary photography and those who produce it.

If the stars align then ADP will be something that we can continue for several decades, and through which can be built an enormous body of documentary work looking at the fabric of America. It's a lofty goal, but inspiring. Just imagine how powerful several decades of collaborative storytelling could be. Right now ADP is very much in the growing stage, but it is growing steadily, and that is very encouraging. Today it is currently structured around the standard one-week workshop format just because of its budget, and to meet some of those lofty goals that is something that will have to slowly change over the next few years.

To help fuel those changes we created an internship of sorts this past year. Through that we paid the way for one of the photographers to stay in the Mississippi Delta for another month following ADP to work on photo stories full time. It was something that we thought was really important to create, and it was something that the truck-driving job allowed us to fund. Hopefully in the future the internship program will continue to grow in its length and the number of photographers we can fund, and they will have the opportunity to focus on a community for months at a time.

Do you think workshop's like yours are filling some niche or void that newspapers leave?

I think in this era of updating for the web and counting gallery hits, the opportunity for photographers to really focus on long term story telling has dwindled and it is a real pleasure to provide a way for photojournalists to do that. Also, just the reality of producing a newspaper seven days a week means that a lot of the coverage is necessarily directed at shorter term, news related stories. The real soul of a community, culture or part of the country isn't entirely represented through its news. Hopefully workshops or documentary projects like ADP can fill that gap and make the content accessible on a long-term basis. I think a good example of that is what Brian Storm, Chad Stevens and the others at Ohio created in the Soul of Athens project.

In an effort to be better storytellers, it looks as though the ADP has implored the use of more traditional mediums like the written word and oral histories, as well as more modern ones such as video and the web. What are you views on the changing technology and how that relates to photojournalism?

The permeation of new technology has had such an impact on the profession of still photojournalism that it's hard not to have mixed feelings about it. In terms of ADP we embrace it whole-heartedly as it just presents us with a broader brush to paint our stories with. We try to keep a wholesome approach with it though, and don't try to cram every story or photographer into the multimedia mould.

I think it's fine that the job description of photojournalist is changing to include multimedia. A lot of that change seems to be driven by the financial realties of the newspaper industry, similar to convergence a few years back and I think multimedia/video often gets a bad rap because of that. The encouraging thing about newspapers moving to the web is that the industry is, generally speaking, basing its future on a the very visual and creative medium of multimedia. This potentially opens the door for photographers to really effect how news is presented in the future as it moves from primarily text to a more interactive process.

I hear the next step for you is teaching. You've got big shoes to fill at UK -- with Dave LaBelle leaving -- and a blank slate to build a program. What are you plans? What do you hope to instill in the next generation of photojournalists? Based on your own life experiences, what do you hope to teach them?

The teaching position has been a really interesting side step in my journey with photography. I get to pick up the torch at UK from Dave LaBelle who in a very short time has taken a random collection of journalism students and built a very eager, thirsty group of young photographers. My goal is to add some fuel to that fire and provide them with the opportunities they need to broaden themselves photographically.

I think one of the best things students can do for themselves these days is have an understanding of photography both in and out of journalism and the business practices that coincide. I think as the market changes having the ability to do work outside of newspapers and have that understanding of business will become more and more important. While they are an eclectic group interested in everything from shooting weddings to commercial work, I do hope to instill in them a deep, burning appreciation for photojournalism.

As photojournalists we are given both a great gift and a great responsibility as the people charged with documenting our communities, our world events and our collective history as humanity. My experience with photography has given me so much in my life, if nothing else I hope to teach them how unique and special it is to be part of this profession.

9 September 2007 by Melissa Lyttle

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