Today we’d like to introduce you to justin rightsell.
justin, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
my interest in photography and art really took off after leaving high school when i began taking courses at el camino college located in torrance. my journey as an artist has taken on numerous paths and guises since then. it wasn’t until my acceptance into grad school where i began a full return, so to speak, to my roots in analog photography. in 2017, i began to fully immerse my practise into the realm of cameraless, experimental photography where i began challenging historical, as well as my own, notions, and rules of what constitues a photograph.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
i truly believe that real progress is rarely a steady upward trajectory. i’ve had my share of successes and failures, both in and out of the studio sphere. failure can be a good thing, but it must go hand in hand with perseverance. during my first year or two of grad school, almost everything i attempted to make was met with failure. it was getting to the point where as soon as i started to work on something i told myself that it was going to fail in the sense that the inherent ideas or concept would struggle to become fully realised and interpreted. however, i always reminded myself that that was exactly one of the freedoms afforded to me as an mfa candidate- the freedom to fail. and then, as if by serendipity, i discovered an unrelenting drive towards the experimental photographic process.
n/a – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
with over twenty years experience working in and through photography, i have inadvertently developed a deep and rich understanding of the process and materials. this has personally allowed me to push the medium in ways that would have drastically failed before. for example, i’ve learned how to work with chromogenic materials not only outside of the light resticting darkroom
environment but literally, in the open, outside in broad daylight. through experimentation i’m constantly generating my own unique relationship and understanding of the photographic material. it’s through this unique experience that i’m simultaneously generating not only a language of my own but a dialog of process as well.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
i think that moment came during my first year of grad school. i won an award for work i entered into the annual UAM Insights exhibition. in a surreal kind of moment, through recognition and placement of my work, i remember saying to myself that i had finally arrived as a professional artist. it was a small victory, but for a person who’s relatively private and modest it was a proud and defining moment.
Contact Info:
- Phone: 3104978644
- Email: justinterference@gmail.com
- Instagram: homes_for_america
Image Credit:
all images are exclusively my own.
