Meet Jana Bonderman Wininger of Jana Bee Photography

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jana Bonderman Wininger.

Jana, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Of course!  I’m happy to share my roller coaster of a journey.  I think at the end, it will all make sense.  I grew up in Southern California, and as a little girl, I was always looking through family photos.  Like, obsessively.  We actually have multiple photos of me looking at photos.  My dad was a hobbyist photographer and videographer.  He schlepped around this huge, unwieldy VCR/camera combo back in the day and documented everything.  My mom died when I was 9 from ovarian cancer, so these images are priceless to me.  I have a horrible memory, so as my real memories fade, these images spark what was otherwise long forgotten.  They weave and intertwine and start to become my memories.  I’m extremely grateful that my dad was a prolific family documentarian.

I was always interested in art, but I started getting serious about film photography in high school – we were very fortunate to have a full darkroom and studio and I made good use of it.  I often spent entire lunchtimes in the darkroom, developing and printing my own photos.  I was one of those all-black wearing kids, and I found great comfort and solace in this isolated creativity.  I had to work, and luckily I was able to get a job as a photographer at a portrait studio.  I was also a yearbook photographer and editor.  At some point, our photo teacher encouraged me to enter an international competition sponsored by Canon, and I actually ended up being one of 150 award winners out of over 25,000 entries.  I mean, my mind was blown.  It felt really, really good to have that recognition.  My photo toured museums worldwide, starting in Japan, and I was only 17. (Fun fact – that same photo is currently framed and hanging in our bathroom!)  Deep down though, I still never thought I could actually be an “artist” – I placed more importance on academics.  I was a smart kid, I got into every college I applied to, and art school just didn’t seem like the wisest life decision.  Now, looking back, this was one of those major life crossroads that I still wonder about.  Deep down, I really, really wanted to go to art school.  Strangely, I don’t remember anyone pressuring me not to go to art school.  Something intrinsically risk-averse and very Capricorn within me said to take the academic route.  I would always have photography on the side, right?  And I did, for the first year.

I ended up going to UCLA and I majored in communications with a business minor.  I had my heart set on working at an advertising agency, although at the time, I didn’t understand how agency jobs were actually organized, so although I now know that I would’ve liked to be a creative director, I was actually setting myself up to become an account executive.  This is a huge difference in terms of artistic influence at an ad agency.  You basically have little-to-none as an account executive.  So anyway, during my first year at UCLA, I worked as a photojournalist for the Daily Bruin (one of the biggest dailies in West LA at the time), and I also worked for a sports photography business.  At some point after that first year, I set my sights on working in the advertising department of the Daily Bruin instead.  It was great money for a college student, and it was within my chosen field.  Photography sort of started to fade away.  I was entirely too busy working at the paper, plus an additional 20 hour per week internship at TBWA Chiat/Day while still managing a full course load.  It was also around that time that I met a boy.  He worked at a coffee shop near campus and I went in to study and buy some coffee, likely a mocha at that point in my coffee newbie life – forgive me.  The boy asked for my number – his name was Matt – we moved in together six months later and the trajectory of my life was once again changed forever.

When I graduated, we moved to the Washington DC area so Matt could go to law school.  I took a job as a marketer at Time Inc, in the wildly exciting non-rock division.  By that time, I was only taking photos on vacation and besides, I wanted no part of those newfangled digital cameras.  We eventually moved to NYC when Matt graduated and got a job at a top law firm.  I managed to transfer to Time Inc New York and continue working in marketing.  After a couple more years, we got engaged and planned to eventually move back to California.  I wanted to return to ad agency life, we wanted to have kids as soon as we got married, and things were pretty damn near-perfect. And then, exactly one week before we were supposed to fly to Napa and get married, Matt died.  In an instant, my life was shattered into a million pieces.  My 31 year-old, perfectly healthy, ex-marine fiancé had a fatal brain aneurysm, and I came home late after working on our rehearsal dinner invitations, to find him on our futon couch.  I was a widow at 27.

At some point early on, I consciously chose to survive.  My thoughts turned quickly to photography, which seemed very natural.  The photo project about grief that I meticulously envisioned existed only in my mind, but it helped to process the unexplainable and unimaginable grief that I was experiencing.  I realized how healing art could be and I was able to team up with an amazing artist, Elizabeth Titus, to help in the creation of a documentary called, Young Widow: Naked in the Memorial Playground.  It was extremely cathartic and continues to help young widows who feel isolated and stigmatized.

Ok, let’s fast forward.  I moved back to California, lived by the ocean, contemplated grad school, started working at ad agencies again, met my second soulmate, (a mohawk-sporting drummer named Kelly), joined a band, burnt out completely on corporate life, trained as a yoga teacher, married Kelly, and had the most beautiful little girl I could ever imagine.  Life was life again.  But life is short, I was turning 40 and photography was calling me again.  I finally allowed Kelly to buy me a professional digital camera and I started making photos again.  Friends started asking me to take their photos, people were referring me, and I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to actually be a full-time photographer.  When I discovered that documentary family photography was an actual genre that actually existed, I knew I had found my specialty.  This was the type of photography that I had always been drawn to, but didn’t know how to classify.  I finally decided to quit my job to focus on my very own photography business, and Jana Bee Photography was born.

Has it been a smooth road?
It’s been exactly the opposite of smooth, but it’s the stones and giant damn boulders in your path that shape you, right?  Besides losing both my mom and fiancé, I’ve also struggled with health issues, which is really shitty.  My mom died when she was only 39, which is super young for ovarian cancer, so because of my background, I was tested for the BRCA genetic mutation quite a while ago.  I tested positive and I felt like

a ticking time bomb.  A few weeks before my 40^th birthday, as a gift to my mom, myself and my daughter, I had my ovaries removed.  It’s a huge psychological weight lifted, but it comes with its own set of repercussions, which is why I waited so long to do it.  Another setback was the back surgery I had a few years ago.  Photo equipment is ridiculously heavy, and when I’m shooting for eight hours straight, I really feel it the next day.  The big one though – the one that I try to ignore because it makes me sick to my stomach – is the myopic degeneration.  It first started with a major hemorrhage in one of my retinas when I lived in NYC with Matt.  The hemorrhages are unpredictable, unpreventable and cause permanent vision damage.  I wear really thick glasses and I’m grateful the progression has been somewhat slow, but for a photographer, your eyes are kind of important.  That’s all I’ll say about that because I don’t even want to put it out in the universe.  Onward!

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Jana Bee Photography story. Tell us more about the business.
Ok, yes – let’s bring this up a bit shall we?  Let’s get to the happy ending!  I’ve just finally launched my business, Jana Bee Photography and I’m over the moon excited!  I specialize mainly in documentary style family and newborn photography.  The longer family sessions are called Day In the Life sessions and for those, I’m with you for 6-12 hours or more, while you just go about your day.  It’s hard work, but it’s also really fun and I become fast friends with my families.  I also enjoy doing family vacation photography, documentary events and small business branding stories.  My particular style of documentary photography combines photojournalism with fine art.  It’s up to me to seek out the moments of connection in your everyday, and elevate these moments so that they become art.  It’s a true time capsule of the small gestures, the family routines, the ugly wallpaper, the epic meltdowns, the connection and the endless love.  I call it the sweet stuff: the memories that are truly priceless when time passes and people move on.  Very different than a sterile, matching outfits, typical sunset-on-the-beach photo.  Don’t get me wrong, I adore portraits, but the casual portraits I make with my families tend to be in their homes and are more organic.  I don’t put babies in weird baskets or buckets.  I mean, they’re cute enough just being babies.

There’s something really transformative that happens for a family during my Day In the Life sessions.  After it happens, my families get it.  They no longer think of themselves as normal or boring.  My goal is to capture the shimmering beauty in everyday life.  Sometimes families need to see themselves through my eyes for it to click.  Then, they don’t look at things the same way, everything is better, more beautiful, more fleeting.  Even the chaos, even the hard moments – it all gets frozen in time and elevated.  I guess it’s similar to what happens when someone you love dies, in a way.  Your senses become heightened to the beauty in each moment.  You stop taking things for granted so much.  Really, the only thing my families ever regret is not doing their sessions sooner!  There are always tears and hugs and big thank yous and it is so extraordinarily fulfilling for me to give them such a special gift.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Documentary Family Photography is just a wee baby genre.  It’s so new that families don’t even know what it’s called and how to search for it.  A huge goal of mine is to merely get the images out there and to create awareness, so that those who want this style of photography for their own families can actually find a photographer.  Documentary Family Photographers Worldwide is a great organization that is helping to do this globally.  I can’t tell you how many people I’ve shown samples of my work to, who get really excited and tell me they’ve always wanted this style of photography for their families, but they had no idea what it was called or how to go about it.  I see a backlash coming in response to the unrealistic, heavily-curated portrayals of life on social media.  It makes people feel bad, and who wants to feel bad?  We become even more disconnected from ourselves and from each other.  People want to connect in meaningful ways.  They want to commiserate about their perceived lack of perfection and find strength in the fact that they are actually ok.  It all comes back to lifting that veil, and through photography, showing families the true beauty in every single day.

I’m also still really big on prints, framed art and tangible items.  Unfortunately, most modern family photographers only deliver digital images and call it a day.  I think this is a huge disservice and I hope professional prints continue to make a comeback.  All of my family sessions include at least an archival photo book and often lots of other goodies.  We all tend to hoard digital images on our electronic devices and no one ever sees them, we never get around to printing them, we don’t reminisce around them.  It becomes too much, too overwhelming and it causes unnecessary anxiety.  The digital files can quickly become unreadable, corrupt or lost, and it’s pretty devastating when that happens. I remember looking through photo books as a child, sifting through prints, seeing images on our walls every day and asking about them, starting a conversation.  I still have my parents’ wedding album, but not the negatives.  It’s the prints that survive.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.janabeephoto.com/
• Phone: 917-846-6794
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janabeephoto/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JanaBeePhoto/
• Other: https://www.documentaryfamilyphotographers.com/listing/jana-bee-photography/

Image Credit:
Photo of Jana by her husband Kelly Wininger. All other photos by Jana Bee Photography

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