Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeffrey Robins.
Jeffrey, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I started thinking seriously about art while I was in community college, I was really inspired by one of my professors Brian Goeltzenleuchter. I transferred to UCSD thinking I would be drawing, painting, and sculpting but after years of practice I realized I had nothing I wanted to say with those mediums; but all the while I had been taking photographs.
I started using photography as a means to cope with social anxiety and depression, taking pictures whenever I felt uncomfortable. The camera acted as a tool to create distance between me and the situation while also allowing me to engage with it.
After acknowledging my medium, I tacked on an extra year to my studies and spent most of it in the library buried in photobooks. I became obsessed; every waking moment devoted to photography. I graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2013 and decided it was time to enter the world and found jobs in retail, marketing, and social media; all the while making pictures.
It wasn’t until this past year when I decided it was time to pursue my passion again and make photography a full-time endeavor. Now I work on commercial sets assisting photographers on high-end fashion and lifestyle productions while I develop my own work and pursue the publication of a photobook of my own.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
Invariably my artwork is about my perspective of topic, I try to interpret my experience of a situation, a thought, or a feeling. My biggest aspirations with my work are to provoke thought, evoke feelings, and inspire empathy.
My most significant work to date has been about my Grandpa passing away in 2017. We had a very close relationship and making photographs has helped me cope with his loss greatly. It’s been a very challenging project to work on for obvious reasons, but it’s been a remarkably humbling and poignant experience.
How can artists connect with other artists?
Meditation has been huge for me learning how to cope with loneliness as well as music, books, and films. But also recontextualizing the idea of loneliness as Carl Jung described:
“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself.”
This feeling comes from our deep-rooted need to connect, and art is how I try to communicate.
I try to make a habit of reaching out to those whom are inspiring to me though, and they’re usually pretty responsive to a friendly e-mail.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
Right now I’m trying to publish my first photobook on my this project about my Grandpa and was recently selected as a finalist for the Charcoal Book Club Publishing prize. So hopefully you’ll be able to see my work through them soon, but in the meantime, it’s available on my website and social media accounts.
I’m also pursuing relationships with prominent publications and am very interested in showing my work in a gallery setting.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jeffreyrobins.us
- Email: robins.jeffrey@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeffrey_robins
Image Credit:
Images of: My Grandpa Clay, Kehanna Krumme, Juan Zuazo, and Brian Goeltzenleuchter
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