Ep 010: Meredith Jenks
A SHOT: So to start, can you describe the photo that we’re going to be talking about?
MEREDITH JENKS: Yes, I shot it in a personal fashion test, and it was for a magazine called The Fall [with] stylist Julie Brooke Williams, model Zoe Takala, and hair and makeup Agata Helena. It’s a shot of Zoe looking through a car window, and her hair, her bangs are over the top of the window. Her hand is on the window, and she’s kind of gazing at me.
Where is this? Where was this taken?
One of my favorite ways of shooting is just driving to some place and then exploring and being very loose. We were supposed to go somewhere in Long Island, but we decided it was too late in the day because the model was running late, so I remembered going to Spa Castle in Queens and liking that neighborhood, literally three or four years ago, and I said, “Why don’t we go over there?” So I just looked up Spa Castle in Queens, and we drove there and pulled over and started walking around.
How does a shoot like this come together?
In this case, Julie, who I’ve done these types of fashion tests with before, reached out and said she had clothes from another shoot and [asked] if I wanted to do something. I like her style, so I said yes. From the beginning we wanted it very loose. I generally like less people on set when I’m doing personal work because it just flows better, less voices to be heard. So we just got Agata to do hair and makeup — light, nothing too heavy, very natural. Then the next is finding the model. That’s always the worst part because trying to find a model and dealing with [model] reps, they send you people, and then you say you want someone, and they’re like, “Oh, no, never mind. Those people aren’t available.” And you’re like, “Why’d you send this to me in the first place?” But we really lucked out with Zoe. Usually it ends up that the planets align and you find the perfect person for the shoot. It just is a very stressful week or two leading up to it where there’s yeses and noes and back and forth.
So I know what a test shoot is, but can you give an explanation of what a test shoot is and how it’s a part of your process in just developing and shooting things as a photographer?
I’m a commercial photographer. I do a lot of jobs that I never show anyone. But that’s what pays my bills. So the personal work is what drives the images I show on my Web site and Instagram. Obviously sometimes I’m doing a paid job that it’s all my style and they give me creative freedom, and that’s the ideal world, but I find a lot of times the personal shoots that I do is what I see in the mood boards when they’re hiring me for ad jobs. So the personal work is what inspires people to kind of copy what I’ve done already, I guess, and then pay me a lot of money for a bigger company. That’s not why I do it obviously. The other side of it is being able to be creative and not having someone tell me how to shoot a photo and letting myself do whatever I want and pushing myself creatively.
In that sense of being able to do whatever you want, how much do you plan for something like this?
It depends. This shoot, there really was no agenda in terms of what type of shots we were getting. In general, I’m very loose. I don’t like to say, “This is shot number one; this is shot number two.” The only time I worked that way on a personal shoot was when I did a collaboration with Leta Sobierajski. She creative directed it, and she was so organized. She had the mood board, the PDF and like “These are the shots.” It was very successful, but I personally don’t work that way. I like to leave myself open to creating on the fly instead of pigeonholing me into these concepts that may not work out when you come to the day of.
What’s your setup for when you’re taking a photo like this?
So the other side of my creative work is since I don’t want bodies on set, I just use natural light or flash-on-camera a lot of the time. (Unless I’m in studio: I have my own space, and I’ll light that.) I find that allows me to move around fast, and my style of shooting in general is about moving around, and if I brought a bunch of equipment, it would slow me down. It’s literally just me and my camera. Not an assistant or anything.
Before you take any frames on the day, what do you hope to capture, specifically with something like this?
The dream is always to capture images that inspire other people, potentially make other people jealous of those images, which is something I feel sometimes when I see other people’s shots. I want to create images that I love, I wanna use for my portfolio, that I can show to other people and potentially get work from or… I want them to be useable, basically is the baseline. Beyond that, obviously the dream is always to create images that are fresh and people haven’t necessarily seen before. And I think that’s really hard to do because we’re just inundated with imagery so much these days with Instagram and the Internet. Sometimes even when I create even this image, I’m like, “Did I see that somewhere? I don’t know.” There’s always that feeling of where did this come from?
I recently said on a job, which I probably shouldn’t have said… It was a studio shoot, and I said to the art director, “Do you ever feel like you’re just taking the same photos every day?” Because it gets to this point where how can you take a photo that’s never been taken before? It’s always kind of trying to avoid replicating something you’ve seen. I don’t like having mood boards on personal shoots because that immediately lends itself to jumping off someone else’s work. Sometimes if there’s a makeup or hair look, you have to provide that to give someone a sense of what you’re feeling, but I just like to keep it as open as possible.
So if you’re not looking at images, where are you finding inspiration for something like this?
For this photo in particular, I literally thought of the idea of having the bangs coming out over the top of the window as I was falling asleep the night before, and I woke up and wrote it down. And that happens here and there. Sometimes I’ll draw a little sketch. But rarely does it actually work. Whereas this photo I feel like, I had that idea, I actually remembered to do it, and I really was pleased with how it turned out. But other than that, I really want to just get there. A lot of times, even on jobs if it allows me to, I like just walking around and being like, “Oh, I like the light over there. Let’s take that photo. Look, there’s that tree. Can you hang from that branch?” Just like rapid-fire things that I feel like there’s no way to predict how you’re going to feel or what the environment’s gonna be beforehand. I like to keep it open so I can have those thoughts on the fly and try ’em out as I go.
What did you like about this idea?
Part of it is it felt like something I hadn’t seen before, and I was renting a car for this shoot. In LA I was doing car shots all the time, but in New York that’s hard to do. I think taking advantage of this thing that I had that I normally didn’t have access to was part of it. And just, it’s a little bit bizarre that the bangs are over the top. That definitely doesn’t happen naturally obviously. So that kind of quirkiness is appealing to me. When I edit photos in general, I like to have things just a little bit off, or that will give you a slight pause.
So how quickly do you take this shot?
I think I only shot like five frames of that. I’m very decisive when I shoot, and I do like to kind of move on. I like keeping models feeling fresh. I can see the life going out of people’s faces sometimes on set when there’s someone, the creative director saying, “Oh, we haven’t quite gotten it yet.” So especially when I’m doing my personal work, if I feel like I have the shot, I move on, sometimes honestly too fast, where I was like, “Oh, I wish I would have cropped that a little differently,” but I think that’s just my process. When I don’t have someone holding the reins, I tend to push through and try and get as many different angles and options as possible.
Entering a shoot with such a specific idea for an image, does that create any difficulties when there’s something so particular that you’re looking to capture?
With that type of an idea, which I do have sometimes, if it’s not working, I’ll let it go because I think those ideas, they work or they don’t work, and it’s not the end of the world. If you’re stuck on it, then you’re holding yourself back from discovering something else that’s interesting about the model or the place you’re in.
I do feel like something like this, just trying it out has an effect on the rest of the shoot because everyone sees that this is something different that you wanted to try. The model gets an idea of what the shoot is, and it informs the rest of the shots after, possibly. A lot of times I’ll tell someone to do something weird or uncomfortable in order to get what comes after that.
Yeah, and I’m very much a believer when it comes to fashion specifically that me and the model are collaborating together to create images. So I’m very interested in finding a model that I think gets it. I go onto their Instagram, see who their friends are, what they wear. You know, those things are very important to me because it could have been another model who would have thought that was totally stupid and would have fought the whole idea, and then it just wouldn’t have turned out.
That shot was done later in the day, so we’d already been doing all these other wacky things like climbing trees. Like, one of the shots I did on that shoot, we found a plastic skeleton hand at a dollar store, and we used it as her hand instead of her hand, and she was like, “Alright.” But she was game for it, and I think that part of the casting process — it doesn’t always work out, obviously; sometimes you get a dud — [is] finding that model who will just play and have fun and not take themselves too seriously.
What direction did you give for this photo?
In general, in this shoot, it was the mix between very kind of serious, emotionless expressions and super laughter goofiness. But I felt like for this shot, it felt a little wistful, like a kid’s waiting for their mom. So it felt kind of like the things you do when you’re just killing time. And I think her expression feels that way too. And who knows? Maybe the model was super bored, and that’s why it came across. She’s like, “When do I get to go home?” But the expression works very well for it, as well.
Your perspective on an image is definitely your own, and especially with a photo like this, it’s the sort of thing other people might be like, “Okay, but why?” even though the end result looks very cool. Do you ever need to put in work to bring the people that you’re working with — whether it’s the model or the stylist or whoever — into your world?
The goal is to have a team that doesn’t ask those questions. But it does happen obviously. Some models it takes all day to kind of break them down from what they think they should be doing in a photo versus what I want them to be doing in a photo. One of the main things I do is actually do what I want them to do for them. So it shows them that it’s not that weird. “Look, l’m doing it too. I can bend my body this way. So can you. You’re like 20 years younger than me.” Thankfully this model from the get-go, it took very little warm up. Maybe the first couple setups, she was like, “What? What are we doing here?” But by the third or fourth outfit, she was like, “Okay, this is what Meredith wants from me.” And I’d still push her in one direction or another and give her direction, but she was down, and that’s kind of the dream.
How much do you think your perspective affects the way the subject presents themselves to you?
I’m also someone who loves talking to people and asking them questions, and I’ve been told sometimes I have no filter. Probably a good example is me asking the art director if she feels like she’s taking the same photo every day. In general, I find that it works well where people feel comfortable around me and will open up because if I ask someone a question, I generally want to know. I’m not just making chit-chat. So even if it’s a girl or a guy who just arrived from middle America in New York, I can make anyone feel comfortable. Part of what’s helped me get there in terms of just working with models— which, obviously, models are the easiest people to shoot compared to the gamut of, like, a CEO or… But still, they all come with their own hangups and backgrounds and their ideas of what a model is. But I’ve been doing go-sees at my studio for years now: once or twice a month having a couple models come through. So that’s given me a very good way to kind of understand how to get something out of someone within 10, 15 minutes.
What do you think you learned from that that maybe would have affected this image?
There’s kind of a balance between letting someone be themself and seeing what they’re doing, what they’ll do, and if it’s interesting, capturing it. And then on top of that guiding them toward something that you want if they’re not quite there. In terms of the go-sees, they come in; I usually say, “Did you grow up in New York?” because that’s kind of the best way of asking where they’re from without implying they’re not from here. And I think that question in important because it makes that connection of “Do we have a similar experience?” Like, I’m trying to pull that out of people. Where do we see the world in the same way? And that’s kind of where these questions lead.
How important is play to your work? And where can we see that in this photo?
I think it’s very important. Obviously not every single photo on my Web site is funny or quirky. There are some shots of people that are just deadpan staring into the camera, but I want something in every photo to catch someone’s eye. And in this case, the playful part is the hair coming over the window. She’s looking very forlorn, I think. Or I dunno. She looks like she’s kind of gazing out at the sky, but the part that’s interesting is that, you know, she’s doing this weird thing. I’m not someone who can self-critique my work that well, but when people write about my work, that’s something they call out. I know it’s something that people see in my work, and I think it is something that I’m interested in. Even if I do feel like I’m taking the same photo over and over again in a studio, I still wanna see if there’s a way to have the hair flipping in a funny way, playing with the clothes in a funny way, just to make it different than the standard photo that… Like, I feel like that photo, if her bangs weren’t over the side of the window, I’ve seen that photo before: a sad model in a car looking out a window. I’ve taken that photo before. So it was just pushing that idea into something different.
Let’s talk some more about casting, which I feel like is a pretty significant element to this photo. What do you think the model herself specifically adds to this image?
I like the shape of her face. I like that she has somewhat of an androgynous look. Her haircut, she has like a mullet. And I think she was pretty young, but she was very mature. That makes a difference. She looks like she’s seen things. She doesn’t look young and innocent. She looks like she’s lived a life. Not like a sad life or anything, but she’s just seen stuff. She’s traveled. I don’t know if you get that from that photo, and I obviously am saying this because I know that’s a fact, but I think that matters in terms of when you look at her face, it’s not just a blank stare. There is some emotion in there. She looks like, “Save me from this hot car” — my first read on this photo, you know? But it’s not just boredom. And her eyes are kind of looking down a little bit [which] is interesting, too, because then you’re like, “What is the perspective of this person viewing her?” I mean, obviously this person is me. I’m the photographer. But it’s nice to think outside the photo that this was just a random… Like, this was an interaction not a photographer taking a picture of a model.
Do you look at your work in that way? I’m talking to a range of people, and a lot of people clearly see themselves on the other end of the camera, whereas, I mean, the way you just described it, it’s almost as if you’re trying to create something in which you’re not there.
Yeah, I would say it’s more like that. If I create something like that, it allows every viewer who sees it to feel like they’re there. But if it’s clearly me taking this photo and it’s my perspective, then it becomes “Meredith took this photo.” Obviously I took this photo, but I want the gaze — and I think this is why I like this photo so much — to be a gaze that anyone could look back at, any viewer could say, “This girl is looking at me.”
Do you think you have a type when you’re casting models?
It obviously depends on the shoot. Sometimes you want someone who’s green, and you can mold them like clay and be the one to teach them how to do things. But in general it’s someone who’s fun, who’s not afraid to look silly is number one. I don’t want someone who’s like, “Oh, no, I’m gonna look weird if I do that.” I’m like, “It doesn’t matter if you look weird. You’re a model. You’re supposed to look however I want you to.” It sounds super bitchy, but it’s true. And obviously you can’t tell if someone’s going to be like that when you’re looking at their book, but I do really look at books. I try to determine whether their book is bad because they’ve only worked with bad photographers or if their book is bad because they’re cheesy. But yeah, it’s kind of just avoiding that cheese factor of people who would want to be on America’s Next Top Model. And I honestly think anyone can be a model, as long as they’re confident and are down to just do whatever in front of the camera. I don’t need someone to have a super-banging body. I just want someone who’s down to collaborate.
Someone whose career I admire is Cass Bird — obviously, she has a great career; I love her work — but what’s great about her work, and it’s something that I strive for in shoots, is her photos make it look like, and I’m sure it’s true, that she’s friends with these girls. And these girls, they’re just hanging out doing stupid shit, and she’s taking those pictures. And obviously that’s hard to do with someone you meet for the first time to do a random photo shoot. But there are models that get into that mode way faster that others. And I think you can tell that in, yes, Instagram is a godsend for that because looking at books sometimes, they’re so stiff. They’ve been in a Prada campaign, cool, but like, will they do a backbend? Those things are important to me.
When making a fashion photograph, specifically, what are you looking to create, not necessarily with this image?
I’ve come a long way with my view of how I take fashion photographs. When I first moved to New York, which was almost 10 years ago now, I was very much in the mindset of “I’m not a fashion photographer. I don’t really have any interest in it.” That kind of came from my parents didn’t want me to be a fashion photographer, and it took me a long time to be like, “It’s okay. I can do this. I don’t need my parents’ permission.” Which sounds very weird because I’m a fully grown woman, but it took time.
In the beginning, I was very much into this lifestyle, happy, jumping around, super-poppy [style of images] and you can look at my images now, and that still exists, but I’m way more into doing weird things with clothes now than I was before. Before, if someone put something on that I didn’t quite understand — like, “Why would you do that? That’s weird” — I would be annoyed by it if a stylist did that, like styled something really weird. But now I’m kind of like, “That is what makes something a fashion photograph,” otherwise it’s a portrait of a cool person.
So the fashion for me is what drives my fashion shoots. Beyond that, I treat it like a portrait session. Like, I would shoot a model the same way I’d shoot a celebrity, the same way I’d shoot a friend. I approach every shoot with that same energy of what can I get this person to do. And obviously with models it’s just a little easier because their job is to do stuff. So that also lends itself… When I say I’m doing a fashion shoot, it’s about the clothes and that I’m able to be way more creative because I have a subject that’s willing.
Does this exist as a fashion photograph for you?
This is a fashion photo because it’s part of a series that is definitely a fashion shoot because there’s 10 or 12 shots, and she’s wearing a different outfit in each shot, and that’s what makes it a fashion series. If you pull this out of the series, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a fashion shot. I think it can live as a portrait.
In fashion photos, there’s a lot of fun that you can embrace in shooting something that isn’t real, like it lets you play in a fantasy. Does any of that exist here?
It feels constructed, to me, in a good way. I don’t think if I saw this photo and I hadn’t taken it I would would say this is, like, a real person in the world that a photographer stumbled upon and asked to take a photo. I definitely think this is something where I’d be like, “This was set up.” This is definitely a model. Models are real people too, but the way that her hand is up, all the components I do think it feels, to me, obvious that she was directed to do this. It is a balance of letting the person I’m shooting play and be themself. If a model has an idea, go for it. I wanna see what you think is funny or cool. And then on the other side, you know, directing them to something I think is funny or cool. That being said, sometimes those photos can look like they were totally natural. One of the things that people have said about my work is that it looks like I’m just capturing someone in a moment that wasn’t directed.
But then I also think, it’s weird, like, there’s a level of natural honesty that you get by making someone do something.
Because they’re trying to figure it out. That’s one of my favorite things to do is ask someone to do something that’s kind of weird and then the moment right after them kind of figuring out what I just asked them to do. That expression is always kind of like, “Wait, what did you want me to do?” Or you know, their first try at what I’m telling them sometimes is better than when I’m like, “No, this is what I meant,” and then them doing it the way I meant. If we go back to the go-sees, a lot of the times I direct the models to do the same thing every time. But every model will do that one thing very differently. And I think what makes fashion fresh at this point is a face no one’s seen before and clothing that people haven’t seen. Beyond that a lot of this stuff has been done a million times before. And what keeps it fresh is, like, the individual you’re shooting is interpreting things in a different way because they’re just different people.
What does it mean to this image that the model is not smiling? Like a lot of your other work, your models are smiling or have a big expression on their face. What does it mean that she is the way she is?
I feel like this was a still moment. I think if she was being goofy here, it would be a totally different picture. It would be like she’s goofing off for the camera. Whereas because she has this expression, it feels like it tells a different story, like it’s a little bit more mysterious, like what is happening? If she was goofing off, it would be clear that I was taking a photo of her. But this feels more voyeuristic, I think.
In general, what do hands add to an image?
I love hands. Hands can be as expressive as faces. It’s like a double portrait. The hand’s, like, doing the same thing as her face, I feel. It’s kind of just chilling, in a very like… There’s no expression there, in the hand. And she just did that. I mean, I asked her to put the hand up, but she somehow mimicked that kind of deadpan… Because it’s kind of hard to tell if she’s sad or looking at something or mad or about to roll her eyes. It’s funny because in photos of me, something I’ve noticed is my hand always looks like a claw. So it’s something I look out for, for sure. Like, every time it’s a claw. Hands tell a story. If a model is nervous or unsure, and she’s standing there, you can see it in their hands. People tend to hold their tension if they’re being photographed in their hands because their face has to look good. That’s where they can feel nervous.
So other than being a resting place for her hair and her fingers, what impact does the car window have on this image?
What I thought was successful — which I didn’t even, when I thought of the idea half a sleep the night before, I didn’t even think about — is the difference in color of her face behind the window and her hand behind the window versus her hair and her fingertips outside the window. It’s like two worlds are happening. There’s the inside-car world and the outside-car world. And you can see the reflections of the clouds of the sky in the window. Shooting through glass is always interesting that way, like what kind of reflections you can get. I’ve done the shoot through a café window for a commercial shoot, and that can be super cheesy, but I think in this case, it really works just how it kind of makes her face and everything behind the glass desaturated, and then everything outside the glass is saturated. And I think that worked for the photo really well.
What do you think color conveys in this image?
I am very color driven when it comes down to it. My photographs tend to be very bright and colorful, and this photograph is not that, so I don’t think color plays that much into why I like this photograph. I do think the planes of desaturation versus saturation is interesting. But overall this is a very neutral-colored photograph for me. But because of that, it focuses more on her face and her expression than “Look at what she’s wearing. Look at…” Like, if this car was bright red, I don’t think it would work quite as well.
What have you learned that’s given you the instinct to take this photo specifically?
I do think moving to New York was one of the best things I’ve done for my personal growth and my creative growth, just being exposed to different people and looking at art and probably Instagram has something to do with me opening up my world to what makes a good photograph in my mind. Yeah, I think it’s just about kind of accepting that being a fashion photographer is something that is okay for me to do and allowing myself to take photos like this. There was a block before where I felt like this isn’t me. I will never live in this world, whereas now I feel like I’m creating photos not for any specific world. I’m just creating photos that I like. Before I was creating photos I thought other people would like, or what other people would need or want. I’m coming more into my own about what types of photos I personally like and not worrying about what a client will think, what my agent will think, what my parents will think, just kind of doing things that are authentic to me.
So to close the conversation, what’s something unrelated to photography that’s been feeding you creatively lately?
I’ve been very into movies based in New York, in the ’90s. Something about seeing this city in a different time period, and the ’90s, and ’80s, for me is also nostalgic because that’s when I grew up. So that has been inspiring to me, kind of the color palette, the clothing, all that.
Interviewed on December 16, 2020.
(This transcript has been edited for brevity.)
Links:
Meredith Jenks
The Fall: “Zoe by Meredith Jenks and Julie Brooke Williams”