Profile of John Willis:
The Challenge Being an Artist Today

(The following interview is the result of a 90 minute conversation between John Willis and Scott Kilborn in April 1996.)

John Willis is a talented 38 year-old New England photographer who has spent most of his adult life trying to balance his creative pursuits with the need to raise a family and earn a living, not an easy task given the economic uncertainties of the last twenty years.

Photography first caught his attention in high school. "All my friends were doing photography; it got to where I either needed to learn about it or make new friends." Once bitten, Willis stuck with it. Ironically, he now recalls most of his friends lost their interest in photography rather quickly. He graduated in 1975.

"Then I went to college. My major for the first three years was psychology, but every semester I'd take one or two photography classes for fun, for myself." He began at Franconia, an alternative college in New Hampshire. "It went bankrupt while I was there, a couple of days before the next semester started." Franconia provided a list of schools willing to take the stranded students immediately, and John Willis chose to travel across the United States and finish his education at Evergreen State College in Washington State.

"While I was at Evergreen, I found myself doing more work in the field of psychology and counseling and less in the classroom." He also found himself being pulled away from his goal of an occupation in psychology. "When I was doing counseling, it was for a state-run program. I liked working with people, but I didn't like the bureaucratic system that goes along with it.

"When I drifted away from psychology, what I was doing was photographing people; I spent years photographing people in the streets, portraits, and documentary work in nursing homes. To me, my photographs back then were all about issues of people that very much I would relate to psychology."

Willis returned to New England from the Pacific Northwest in 1980; he first worked as a contract photographer in Connecticut and then went to work at a studio in Vermont until 1984. "I worked for a commercial photo studio and did studio work, lighting, portraits, product photography, and also managed the darkroom." That last year he also worked at odd photography jobs, working a season at a Greyhound racetrack and doing darkroom work for a Holstein Frazien Association. He also completed an internship as a picture researcher at a New York City stock photo agency.

Pursues Personal Work on his Own Time

While working at the commercial studio he continued his personal work. "I always have to have some kind of connection to where I am. The reason I started photographing in nursing homes was because my grandfather was in one 3,000 miles away and he didn't want to be there. I wasn't ready to give up my life, my work, my school and where I was living to go be with my grandfather to help him be able to live outside of a nursing home. Instead, what I did was spend at least one day a week for four years, spending the whole day at one of five different nursing homes relating to the people that were there, trying to make their lives better.

"I started out doing portrait sessions and it would be where ever they were, in a wheelchair or whatever. At first, my subjects tended to be patients who were healthier because they were the ones I could emotionally deal with. By the end of the four years I was photographing people in all different situations, but I was using a view camera so there was a collaboration. They always knew they were being photographed. I wasn't stealing pictures."

Willis credits the decision to use a view camera as contributing to the successful outcome of his nursing home documentary work. "For me the view camera was actually good because I was uncomfortable being there; I couldn't work too quickly; I had to stick around and relate to people longer and I learned to deal with my feelings about the place and aging and death in a very different way because of that.

"I gave everybody the best portrait from their session, and I gave the institutions pictures they used in all kinds of ways, from making collages in the elevators and hallways to putting pictures of people on their doors with their names so it would be easier for visitors to come in and talk with them. Some photos ended up being used in annual reports, in posters for hospices, as PR photos, and even to illustrate medical articles about geriatrics.

"When I set out doing pictures in nursing homes I really thought I was going to change something for elderly people in this country and I spent four years trying to do it." Willis reflects now that his photography was secondary, "What accomplished the most change were two things: one, the time I spent with the people I was photographing, and two, when I taught classes in nursing homes and the patients got to make their own pictures. Both changed the world far more than my own pictures ever would."

In 1985, Willis found himself going back to school. He also found himself with a family. His son, now ten, was born in 1986. He stopped doing the nursing home work when he became a father. "The only way I was going to be able to spend the time I wanted to spend with my family and keep my artwork going was to photograph my family, and I became really inspired doing that." His work appeared in Lamaze Magazine, Parenting Magazine, and Mothering Magazine and in 1992 resulted in a book in collaboration with other photographers, Flesh and Blood, Photographers Photograph Their Families which resulted in a traveling exhibit sponsored by the University of Massachusetts. Willis has also done calendar photography, fine art postcards, his work has appeared twice in The Guardian newspaper in New York and was selected for Photographers Forum Best of College Annual.

"I went to graduate school in 1985 at the Rhode Island School of Design. I started teaching in graduate school as a teaching assistant, and then after graduate school started teaching on the university level."

Realities of Teaching College in the 1990's

Willis holds a regular half-time teaching position at a small liberal arts college in Marlboro, Vermont. "At Marlboro College, I am the photo program. I've been there six years now and this is the first year a student can major in photography. It's a small, unique school with a very good reputation. With only 270 students and a small endowment, it's a struggle, but Marlboro is celebrating their 50th anniversary this year." Marlboro is also the site of the well-known Marlboro Music Festival, and the location where Fred Picker's Vermont Photo Workshop will be held. Willis and Fred Usher are the two instructors collaborating with Picker on this year's week-long workshop.

"I have my Marlboro College job which I like a great deal, I wish it were more than half-time but that's all the school can handle now, and I supplement it with teaching other part-time or temporary jobs; this semester I'm at Greenfield Community College which has a great art department, and the two semesters before that I taught at Harvard driving twice a week 2 1/2 hours each way to Cambridge, Massachusetts."

In the past decade Willis has taught at colleges and universities throughout the northeastern US, including the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Princeton University, Southeastern Massachusetts University, the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Connecticut, the Community College in Brattleboro, Vermont and Greenfield Community College in Massachusetts.

A full-time tenured position has eluded him, except for a teaching stint in Pennsylvania where his family missed New England and so he declined that opportunity. Being a white male in an age of affirmative action hasn't helped. "There's some justification for this; college photo programs are 75% female students and for a long time the programs were taught almost 100% of the time by white males." Add to that the number of graduates with MFA degrees in visual arts and photography seeking work and Willis observes, "I don't know how much energy it's worth trying to search for a tenured job right now. What else is an MFA going to do? It's a great experience getting a Master's Degree, it's really good for somebody's ability and personal work and understanding of their artwork, but as far as the job market goes, the only door it really opens is teaching on the college level.

"At the same time, there are a lot of very fulfilling aspects to the life you have when you are doing something that is a creative expression of yourself. It's a funny balance. I remember once sitting at a wedding reception next to a guy who was my age and he was making a ton of money on Wall Street. He asked about my life and I asked about his. Here I was feeling poor and overworked, commuting all around to teach, but doing my artwork and feeling good about it. I learned I was doing what he had always wanted to do, but he was afraid to take the gamble. He wanted to make enough money so he could retire and do what he really wanted which was some creative form of expression, like photography. Although financially secure, he had developed ulcers, and hated many aspects of his life, and here he was envious of me who was having a hard time keeping the bills paid, but at least I was doing something I felt good about.

"I struggle with this all the time because I want to keep teaching and doing my photography, but paying a mortgage and supporting a family is incredibly hard. It's very hard because what I do and what a lot of teachers seem to do, especially those of us who don't have those tenure track jobs, is we end up having so many jobs there is oftentimes where every day of the week I am talking about image making and talking about images, but I am not making enough of my own.

"One thing I have come to realize is that I don't just teach because it's the only way I can make money. Teaching is another creative aspect of me. Added to the too many jobs I have in order to make a living, I run a community photo program, called In-Sight, and teach for free. I started it with another photographer, Bill Ledger. It's in Brattleboro, Vermont a nearby town with a population of about 15,000. We were just seeing more and more kids hanging around in the streets and parking lots trying to find things to do outside school; at first, we were just going to teach one class. Once we started, it ended up having a life of its own, and we built a six enlarger darkroom and a processing and teaching facility.; it's an all volunteer program, now in its fourth year with classes pretty much year round. My advanced college students do at least 50% of the volunteer work teaching so it's good for them too.

"A lot of young people who get into photography want to make pictures that are not just pretty pictures but about communication and using it as a visual language. They want to use photography to really explore how they feel about the world around them." John Willis believes that the world isn't a place with as much hope and faith for them in the future. "There's a sense of real despair; things just don't seem to make sense and the idea that things are really going to change, what they see is that if they are going to change they are probably going to change for the worse."

He Appreciates All Photographic Expression

Willis defines himself as a traditional "straight" photographer. "My main interest is in documentary and fine art work. I'm not really interested in personally pursuing digital or all the things people do with photographs. Most of my personal work is the way I shot it; I don't even like to crop. I still do all my own developing and printing because I haven't found a situation where I felt like somebody else was going to interpret my work the way I would want it to be interpreted. The darkroom is an important part of it. I also do platinum and palladium printing. Part of what interests me is going out into the world, finding and responding to what's there, and trying to see it in a way that will convey some kind of emotional or aesthetic sense.

"I don't know if I would call myself a purist; I like manipulated images and I teach a lot about that, and many of my students experiment with different techniques. Still, the most interesting thing to me is going out and using photography as sort of a reason to explore myself and my relationship to the world around me.

"In my own photography I used to do all people and the impetus for doing all the people pictures was a desire to create some sense of social change. I never used to do landscapes; I loved to look at them, but I never did them because I wanted to create change and I felt that landscapes were more just pretty pictures. Now I do a lot of different types of pictures.

"Over the years I have been very curious about our relationship with the earth. It's amazing how the human race speaks so frequently of having love and a desire to care for the mother earth, while as corporations, governments and individuals we use the land as if it is a possession we are unwilling to share with future generations. I find it frustrating and sad to watch. I want to believe people care enough and it is not too late to begin living with the land in a more respectful way for future generations, as opposed to using the land as if it were an endless resource available for us to abuse.

"What I've been doing recently are traditional landscape photographs of how beavers affect the land. Watching the beavers where I live, I consider their lifestyle a worthy example for humanity to learn from. Many view the beaver as a destructive animal. In reality they are an animal capable of altering their own environment for their own needs, while also contributing to nature's balance in a positive way."

Willis uses many types of equipment. "I shoot all formats. It depends on the nature of the work I'm doing as to what equipment I would use. The documentary work I did in nursing homes was all 5x7. The whole extended body of work with my family was done in 35mm because I could pretty much have the camera with me all the time; I wanted that versatility. I do a lot of landscapes with 5x7 and 8x10, and panoramic work with a half frame back I made for my 5x7.

"I got into the view camera because at the time I was doing contact printing processes; I was doing platinum printing with 5x7 and 8x10 negatives. There's a lot you get with view cameras which is unique. The whole process of using the large equipment on the tripod slows you down and the way you relate to people; you photograph people differently when using that kind of equipment, and having the movements does change a lot. I often use the zone system for exposure, and of course, the ability to develop each negative differently is another advantage with using sheet film.

"There are a lot of people that say traditional photography and in particular, black and white photography is dead. One thing which is happening, with digital and the advanced photo system and so forth, is these developments will pull the general public even further away from black and white and traditional work, as far as everybody doing it. When instamatics and simple 35mm cameras were introduced there was a resurgence of interest in 19th century processes; view cameras and all those processes like photogravure, platinum printing, gum printing, salt printing, and albumen started reappearing. It may get harder to get materials. In the long run, there may be less people doing it in educational programs, but I think in the artistic world, traditional photography will being appreciated and will continue happening.

Willis Teaches with Fred Picker in August

"A photographer friend used to teach at Fred Picker's Zone VI Workshops years ago and he introduced me to Fred Picker….I showed Fred some of my work, and we got to know each other a little bit, and about a year later they asked me to come teach at the workshop. that was back in either '84 or '85. Fred had been running the Zone VI Workshop for over 20 years and got to the point where he thought he wanted to retire, so Dave Usher and I asked if we could carry on his workshop program with the same name and the same procedures. The system of how his workshop is taught is very helpful for a lot of people. We ran it for a couple of years alone, Fred taught with us last year and this year he's going to be even more involved again.

"The thing about the workshop is we try to give a real good foundation for beginners and advanced people on technical aspects. People work with all formats and do all different types of work. So we try and cover all different kinds of stuff, from real basic knowledge through the zone system and printing. The whole time we are teaching all this technical knowledge, we are really trying to get the students to think and talk about what they can make pictures of that will be really interesting and challenging to them, so our workshop is not just a technical program; we really try to get them interested in the balance.

Information about photographs in this article. 1. "Volcanic Mountain," Copyright ©1989, John Willis. All Rights Reserved 2. "Leon" Copyright ©1983, John Willis. All Rights Reserved 3. "Mima" Copyright ©1984, John Willis. All Rights Reserved 4. "Scene from an Abandoned Mental Institution" Copyright 1994, John Willis. All Rights Reserved 5. "Beaver Lodge" State Forest Road, Copyright © 1994, John Willis. All Rights Reserved