The Visual Student

Julia Robinson graduated from The University of Texas with a degree in psychology and studied photojournalism at San Francisco State University.  Robinson interned at the Oakland Tribune, the Daily Herald and was a fellow at the Poynter Institute before becoming a staff photographer at the Columbia Daily Tribune.  After being laid off earlier this year, Robinson is a freelance photographer and multimedia producer in central Texas.

The Missouri Photo Workshop has always seemed to me to be the holy grail of photo workshops.  As a staff photographer at a mid-sized daily newspaper, it was everything you could ever want - the opportunity to spend a solid week (we never got that amount of time at the paper) on your own story (not a ‘photo request’ from the reporters) and get edited by the best and brightest in the industry (doesn’t everyone wish NatGeo would just give them a chance?).

Pediatric nurses search for a vein, left, as Kade Bauman’s mother Annette, right, comforts him in the emergency room of Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Festus, Missouri.  After his early morning appointment with Dr. Nagireddi, Kade went into respiratory distress. At three months, Kade Bauman couldn’t hold his head up on his own. The doctors said to wait.  He just might need a little more time. Then the seizures started.  At one and a half years, Kade has been hospitalized six times in the last year.  Diagnosed with epilepsy, cortical vision impairment, and hypotonia, Kade’s parents and grandparents, therapists and friends work together to give him the care he needs. (Julia Robinson)

Of course, there were intimidating things about it.  Mainly that you had a solid week to work on a story of your choosing and get edited by the best and brightest in the industry.  This was a chance to stretch visually and (potentially) shine, but it was also an invitation to the most demanding critique ev-ar.

With only 400 frames to shoot the entire week and no self-editing, you are naked before your faculty.  Every bad composition, every exposure mistake, every moment missed is recorded and reviewed.  All of our closely held weaknesses are laid bare.  Hadn’t some people broken down in tears at this workshop?  What was I thinking signing up for this again?

Ah yes, I remember.  No pain, no gain.

After being accepted to MPW61, I got to work.  As a recovering perfectionist and control-freak, I talked to as many former participants as I could, reviewed the work from previous workshops, read through municipal websites, community newsletters, and exhausted the Post-Dispatch archives.  If I could make some in-roads with gatekeepers, arrive early, make a million phone calls, and pray to the photo gods, I could find a good story.

Then I decided I was missing the point.

Part of the spirit of MPW is the serendipity of discovery, pounding the pavement, and old-fashioned knocking on doors.  I closed out all my search engines, bookmarks and lists.  I took a deep breath, several actually, and embraced the unknown.

Kade holds his hands at rest on his chest during a bath.  His neurologists see this gesture as a developmental sign of hope for improvement and recovery. Kade’s three medical conditions, epilepsy, vision impairment and hypotonia, contribute to a global delay in his development.  At one and a half, Kade cannot support his head, crawl or talk.  (Julia Robinson)

My first stop when I got to the Twin Cities was the oldest tavern I could find.  Not the hotel, not city hall.  I wanted the real scoop.  The kind only tavern regulars know.

I ordered a burger.  I made friends with the bartender.  Within an hour I had more information than weeks of internet research had produced.  One of the locals even left his bar stool and took me on a tour of the town.

This small foothold in the tavern generated several story ideas.  I wandered around the different neighborhoods of Crystal City, stopping to chat with people.  I pet a lot of dogs, listened to a lot of stories, and answered a lot of questions.  I didn’t take that many pictures.

By the first night of the workshop I had two pitches ready.  At the opening dinner with local community members, I talked with the editor of the weekly newspaper and gained a solid lead for my third pitch.  A few phone calls later and I knew this was going to be my story.

When I met with my faculty for the first approval session, I used the soft sell.  I started with my least interesting story, a profile on a local woman, and ended with ‘my story,’ a family struggling with a local company over lead poisoning and pollution.  Amazingly, it was approved.

Now, who knows what the other faculty teams might have said to my pitch.  This is part of the unknown of the workshop.  Some of my peers pitched up to nine stories over two days before being approved.  The process is different team to team, photographer to photographer.

Maybe going through the ringer a few more times would have been good for me, because by Wednesday morning my story had fallen apart.  A crisis in the family I was covering effectively ended my access.  Story FAIL.

I checked back in with my faculty.  We went through my other story pitches, but they were lacking the one element I had come here to practice – intimacy.  I was starting to feel a bit panicky when one of my faculty, Maggie Steber, made a plea to the rest of the MPW newsroom.

“We’re looking for a story with heart,” she said.  Leads poured in from other teams.  I spent a few hours making phone calls and driving to meet people.  In this hurry-up mode it was easy to dismiss the stories that wouldn’t work.  Can’t meet me today?  Denied.  Not answering the phone?  Denied.  Want me to come back tonight?  Denied.  I was down to my last lead when I called Josh Bauman.

He had written to the workshop about his son Kade, who suffered from epilepsy.  Josh picked up immediately and gave me directions to his house where his mother was taking care of Kade for the day.  I started shooting within 15 minutes.  And just like that, I was back on track.

With three days of sleep deprivation and the clock ticking down on the week, I felt a sense of urgency.  When the Bauman family welcomed me without limitations, I felt a sense of purpose.  Purposeful urgency.  That felt good.

On Thursday, the Bauman’s had their own family crisis with Kade going into the Emergency Room.  This time though, the story continued.  The family let me follow their journey to St. Louis Children’s Hospital where I made my most intimate photos.

Joshua Bauman, center, and wife Annette, right, sit in the emergency room with Kade as doctors coordinate his transfer to St. Louis Children’s Hospital for overnight observation.  (Julia Robinson)

Each night at workshop headquarters, we looked at work in progress.  The faculty would discuss a story, critique the work so far, and make suggestions for the following day.  We witnessed the evolution of the stories, learning by proxy and inspiring each other.

At the end of the workshop, Festus and Crystal City were invited to see over 300 prints at the local library.  Never before had I witnessed a community interacting with their stories in this way.  Friends and neighbors met in the aisles and walked each other to photos they must see.  They lingered for hours looking at the images and talking about the town and each other.

Occasionally someone would pick up a print and hold it, looking a bit harder, a bit longer.  There’s something about that I found immensely satisfying.  After all the early mornings and late nights, the hard work, endless story pitches, and critique, this community could see itself reflected in the photographs.

When the Bauman’s came to look at their story, I was nervous.  They had opened themselves so completely.  I didn’t want to let them down.  Josh looked over the prints, told me I did a good job and gave me a big hug.  That will stick with me forever.

I don’t think I’d do anything differently, but there’s always more to learn, which is why I hope to go to another MPW soon.

Photographer Julia Robinson, top right, reads to the Kade Bauman, in stroller, and Kade’s brother, Jackson, right, during the Missouri Photo Workshop print-show at the Festus Public Library.  Annette Bauman, mother of Kade and Jackson, is in the foreground.  (Joshua Bickel)

To visit the Missouri Photo Workshop website, go here.