We recently connected with Katie Shapiro and have shared our conversation below.

Katie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

My introduction and passion for using photography started in middle school at my high school in Los Angeles. I became consumed. I co–created a school photography magazine, spent my summers at photography programs, and my school lunch periods in the darkroom. I ended up going to CalArts for college to pursue photography. It was there I felt I finally belonged, that I was an artist. I learned about putting meaning and concepts into my work in deeper ways, and formed many meaningful connections with friends and faculty. Allan Sekula was one of my teachers I became close to and following graduation he asked me to be his studio assistant. Over the next seven years I spent priceless time with Allan, learning about the art world, getting to know his work closely, and about the world around us through his rigorous conceptual lens.

After graduation, a group of us from CalArts formed an art collective and we put on shows and did projects together for a few years around Los Angeles. I continued to work on various photo-based projects in my time between undergraduate and graduate school and started showing my work in Los Angeles and around the United States. After 4 years I decided to apply to graduate school, and chose UC Irvine because it was a fully funded program and I would be able to student teach. Over those three years of working, reading, and exploring in my classes and studio visits, my work completely transformed from the more conventional documentary photograph to adding interventions of abstraction in my photographs as a way to express the unseeable. I was layering photographic gels over landscape photographs to create a double image—beneath, the perfect representational image of a place, and on top, a loose array of different translucent colors to theoretically convey the invisible energy you could feel but the eye couldn’t see. I was interested in finding new ways to express this idea of the underbelly, of feeling of something invisible in a place or space. My graduate thesis focused on energy vortexes, [which are areas that are thought to be highly energetic and if you are tuned in, you can feel it, but you can’t see it] I was drawn to them as subject matter because they were a good metaphor to express the idea of feeling something you can’t see. I have continued to explore those ideas ever since.

I don’t really know what could have sped up my learning process, for me, this was my journey and the way my understanding and process unfolded, and I think it’s so personal for each person. I think the skills that were most essential were shooting lots of pictures all the time to really get to the root of my personal style and interests. Also working for the artist Allan Sekula after undergraduate was incredibly educational in terms of seeing and learning all the ins and outs of being an artist that they don’t teach you in school.

Katie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I learned about 35mm film photography and the darkroom in the 8th grade. My dad showed me how to use his manual Nikomat camera and I was just hooked. As I went on to get my BFA in photography and later my MFA in art I was able to figure out how to best express my interests through photography. My work is more mixed media than straight photography. My interest in photography is to document something invisible, which is an obvious impossibility, but that idea is what intrigues me. How do you take a medium so historically steeped in truth and reality to express something similar to what you can experience when looking at a Helen Frankenthaler or Agnes Martin painting? I often take inspiration from abstract painters for my color palette and feeling, yet my heart is in photography, so I want to continue to take it to new interdisciplinary places. The way I express these ideas is by layering transparent color photographic gels over my photographs as well as using different sculptural elements to create unique pieces.

One of the projects I’m most proud of is a commission I did for Sofi Stadium in Inglewood. I used historical photos of iconic places around Los Angeles and layered over them with photographic gels, which is a technique I started in graduate school. I created eight different works and they are permanently installed in the VIP elevators at the stadium.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I truly feel privileged to be able to pursue my art. I also teach photography to high school students, and I think that might be the most rewarding part. I love sharing my love and excitement of photography. I get to introduce them to the darkroom and using film cameras, and even if they didn’t want to take the class initially, they usually end up finding some kind of inspiration or satisfaction from their work and the process of learning about photography. It’s really special to see them find confidence and excitement about it.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I think I just really like to make things, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop. I think part of what drives me is thinking of ways to use photography combined with other mediums to express my ideas in unique ways. I really like sharing my work and get a lot of joy showing it in different places, galleries etc. and enjoy having conversations with other artists through the work.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.katieshapiro.com
• Instagram: katieshapirostudio
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-shapiro-881b6023/
• Other: https://www.klompching.com/katie-shapiro https://www.fotoforumsantafe.com/katie-shapiro

Image Credits
Jeff McLane