We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Marc J. Franklin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Marc J. below.
Marc J., thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I’ve always been a strong proponent of creating personal projects. As artists, we each have our own superpower—the alchemy that comes from the combination of our interests and our craft—and I’m a big believer in the practice of using that power for us
I developed as a photographer in 2012 – 2017 during the development of the version internet as we know it. Social media platforms gave every day people the access to publish work freely, and I saw artists using platforms like tumblr and instagram alongside self-created websites on Squarespace and Wix to explore ideas in longform creative projects. It was before the era of influencers and monetization and looking back on it, I still view those projects as pure form of creative expression—the act of making, simply for the sake of making.
In that vein, in 2017, I published my first longform perosnal project called “Mad Extravagant City.” As a new New Yorker at the time, I was inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem “City of Ships,” from which my project’s title was derived. The poem is a love letter to New York and in that vein, I wanted to capture my experience of falling in love with the city that I was planting roots in. I photographed New York in a collection of 100 images, 25 for each season.
Although the project’s website doesn’t exist anymore, the artwork I made during that ended up shaping my career. A lot of the photographs comprised the portfolio I used to get my first full-time job as a staff photographer for Playbill magazine. Others were sold as prints. And some are currently hung in my apartment. All of those results were the additional bonus of my simple desire to explore New York thoughtfully, with open and curious eyes, and document my experience creatively.
Marc J., love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am a New York City-based photographer and photojournalist, specializing in editorial, arts, and lifestyle photography. I recently went full-time freelance after working for NBC News as a photo editor for two years and prior to that, as the staff photographer/photo editor for Playbill magazine for five years.
Working in editorial photography, arts photography, and journalism may seem like disparate subject matter but for me, they are all unified in the art of visual storytelling. A core goal of my artwork is to immerse the viewer into world of the photograph in a viscerally focused and visually compelling manner.
Among my varied projects as a photographer, I’ve found myself working in the Broadway industry extensively, making branded key art, capturing official production photos, and behind the scenes imagery. And nothing is more ephemeral than theatre. Each singular performance is unique and can vary day to day. In addition to the fleeting nature of a performance, a photograph’s viewer is not experiencing that theatre with the energy, movement, and sound that exists for the in-person audience. For me as a photographer, I use the tools that photography has to offer to allow the viewer to experience the soul of a production, image by image.
And that mentality extends to the focus of photography practice as a whole. Rather than simply documenting a portrait or event with a detached sensibility, It’s important for me to feel like I’m creating a photographic experience for a viewer in a way that only photography can, with insight, understanding, and soul.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
In a world of polished branding and curated Instagram feeds, it has taken me a longtime to unlearn the myth of perfection.
Early in my career, I spent so much of my time trying to perfectly concept an idea and execute it flawlessly. But often times, that impossible standard would prevent me from rolling up my sleeves and just making work. Like many artists, my creative journey is full of good ideas that never came to fruition, and with experience, I’ve learned that sometimes, the best option is to just dive in.
I can still set my ambition and strive for excellence, but the act of making is not a singular event. The step afterward is revising. Sometimes, I think of the initial phase of a project as the rough draft, just to get me to take begin. I can finesse, curate, and even begin again if I need to. But the first step to making something I’m proud of is simply just beginning.
As the saying goes, “‘Done’ is better than ‘perfect.’”
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
Project management tools like Asana or Monday are a gift for an artist, especially a freelancer. For me, I find the best way to keep my creative career moving forward is to create an infrastructure for myself. I treat my photography business as such: a business. It is important for me to have an organized way to track the status of client projects, set growth goals and deadlines for myself, and key performance indicators.
By keeping myself organized with project management tools, I’m able to have a tangible place for my daily structure to exist, freeing up the space in my brain for creativity and ideating.
Contact Info:
- Website: marcjfranklin.com
- Instagram: @marcjfranklin
Image Credits
Marc J. Franklin