(more photos below)
This month’s MKE Creatives meetup at Anodyne Coffee featured a talk with Erik Ljung, a Milwaukee-based, independent, multi-media journalist/artist. He’s been working independent for about 5 years and had lots to share with us…
-“I’m been doing freelance for about 5 yr. My job title depends on the work I’ve been trying to get.” “Have done work with New York Times, Al Jazeera USA, VICE.”
-When he was younger, Erik “was making skate videos with my friends – we were terrible skaters, but we made good videos.”
-“Went to school for business, but that didn’t work out. Ended up with a degree in graphic design.”
-An early photo-job was “doing school portraits…I had this long hair and beard, and all the kindergarteners would be scared of me..”
-“Came to MKE and worked at Pabst Theater doing stills and videos…I did a week-long tour with Juniper Tar…did a documentary piece – was more of a poetic/docu experience and I thought >THIS< is what I want to do. Came back from that tour and my mind was made up. Left my job and was all in…”
-“Took a job stocking shelves for $10/hour to pay bills…”
-“Took at Kodachrome Road trip – posted the pics on Flickr…OnMilwaukee wrote a story about it, then Portrait Society did a show about it, … got a message from New York Times, regarding a photo of a rural post office. (they wanted to do a story on rural post offices) Got tips on building portfolio…was way out of my league, but really helped build some confidence.”
-“You will just keep getting the work that you’re doing…and I was doing wedding work and assisting and that wasn’t what I >wanted< to be doing. So, just like with the Pabst, I quit doing that and now have been doing my own stuff on my own for about 2yrs now.”
And a lot of that work has been centered around social justice issues, including…
Corey Stingley, the Detroit Water Crisis, and the Dontre Hamilton case (been following the last year, started following it as an independent, and then got accepted by family, and did work for NYT on the case). He’s currently working on a “Mothers of Justice” piece for Al Jazeera USA.
-Erik works hard to capture objective, impartial views … “can’t get too close, gotta remain truthful – maintain that wall a little. Gotta politely decline inviatations sometimes. ‘I’m just here to document.’ ”
-“You’re taking personal story, and you’re putting a camera in their face. I don’t always go home feeling good myself…but you hope you’re making a difference.”
-“You hope they like the end-product you release, but… I can’t pre-share my story with the subject.”
-“You don’t want to violate people’s trust…but you just hope you tell the story accurately.”
-On the topic of finding work, “You gotta be persistent…I’ll send somebody an email every week until I get a reply…”
-“You have to do the work you want to do…even as a passion-project”…to get to the place where people will pay you to do that work.”
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In attendance today were Paul Henning, Mark Bradford, Johnny Marszalkowski, Kristine Hansen, Paul Akert, David Szymanski, Michelle Owczarski, Rosie Hartmann, Michael Dimilo, Sarah Schwab, Deni Storm, Shaku Mays, and Jennifer Fink.
June 10, 2015 is the next meetup and will feature Beth Handle of the Milwaukee Kayak Co.! I’ve gone kayaking with her company a bunch!
