Winter 2017 EditionAlumni & Friends Magazine
Exposures and touchstones: Athens from behind a camera
“OHIO Photo Renga” unfolds as a series of interrelated portraits of Athens, Ohio, the campus and/or the city. This six-part photo essay is inspired by the ancient Japanese linked verse, renga, in which two or more poets alternate penning sections of a poem.
By Staff Reports | December 22, 2016
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“I think of Athens as surrounded by the hills and trees of Southeast Ohio. I hope this photograph draws viewers in because of its familiarity and surprises them with its diversity. I took this photograph with a specially adapted camera that blocks most visible light and captures infrared light.”—Marcy Nighswander, professor of photojournalism, School of Visual Communication, OHIO
“Springtime in Athens and the dandelions are in my daughter’s hair.” —Laura Larson, associate professor of photography + integrated media and director of studies of the studio art program at the Honors Tutorial College, OHIO
“There are clues to our past all over Athens, like this paint-splattered floor in Seigfred Hall. Athens is where I learned to appreciate moments and the power of a good story.” —Martha Rial, BFA ’98, independent photographer, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
“After graduating from OHIO, I returned to Athens in 2004 with my wife, Jasmine, en route from Chicago to our next move, in this case, to Miami. She was pregnant with our son, Levi-Joseph. In 2014, while on a cross-country road trip with our children, we made a quick stop in Athens. We had no idea that less than two years later, we would move to Athens County and buy a home (pictured, with Jasmine) on 13 acres in the beautiful foothills of Appalachia, completing a full circle.”—Rich-Joseph Facun, BSVC ’01, photographic resources supervisor at OHIO’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine
“Sense of place for me is a psychological phenomenon, driven by my own biases, stimuli, and dreams. When thinking of my home, of dear Athens, I feel warm and fuzzy, comforted and kept—illuminated. Hills usher in a chance to see life around me constantly buzzing and growing.” —Josh Birnbaum, MA ’10, visiting professional at OHIO’s School of Visual Communication
“As an OHIO undergraduate, I often relaxed under the giant sycamores on College Green, an intersection where old and new collide. At midnight in early August, I commemorated the spot amid crisscrossing students through this 90-minute time exposure. Upon returning to the University in 2011 as an employee after a decade away, I noticed many changes in Bobcat landscapes. Yet on this shoot, things felt very much the same.”—Ben Siegel, BSVC ’02, photography supervisor at OHIO’s University Communications and Marketing
The sextet—in order, Marcy Nighswander, Laura Larson, Martha Rial, Rich-Joseph Facun, Josh Birnbaum, and Ben Siegel, who came up with the idea for this visual feature—are OHIO alumni, faculty, and staff.
They represent a fraction of notable colleagues from the School of Visual Communication—which between 2006 and 2013, won six of eight College Photographer of the Year awards. In 2010, it was ranked one of the top three photojournalism programs in the country by PDNedu magazine. The Photography + Integrated Media program graduates scores of top-notch professionals and hosts significant visiting artists and scholars through the Clarence White, Jr. (EMERT ’72) Fund for Photography Lecture Series.
Pulitzer Prizes, White House assignments, prestigious grants, museum exhibits, gigs with leading media outlets: OHIO photojournalists and commercial and fine-art photographers do the University proud.
Marcy Nighswander, professor of photojournalism in the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University, shared a 1993 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography with Associated Press colleagues for coverage of the 1992 American presidential campaign. During seven years at the Washington, D.C. bureau of the Associated Press , Nighswander traveled to more than 30 countries while on the White House beat. Her work has been published in hundreds of newspapers, books, and magazines including Life , People , Time , Fortune , Newsweek , and the National Press Photographers Association’s Best of Photojournalism . Early in her career, she was a staff photographer at the Review Times in Fostoria, Ohio, the Akron Beacon Journal , and The Cincinnati Post . In 1977, Nighswander became the first woman to be named Ohio News Photographer of the Year. She earned a B.S. in journalism from Bowling Green State University. Nighswander joined OHIO in 1995 and won a 1999-2000 University Professor Award. She serves as faculty advisor to the OHIO chapter of the National Press Photographers Association.
Laura Larson , associate professor of photography and integrated media at OHIO, has exhibited her photography at Art in General; Bronx Museum of the Arts; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; SF Camerawork; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; and Wexner Center for the Arts, among other sites nationally and internationally. Reviews of her exhibitions have appeared in Artforum , The New York Times , The New Yorker , and Time Out New York , and she has published artist projects in Cabinet , Documents , and The Literary Review . Larson has earned grants from Ohio Arts Council and the New York Foundation of the Arts and residency fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Ucross Foundation. She is represented by Lennon, Weinberg Gallery in New York City. Larson received a BA in English from Oberlin College and an MFA in visual art from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program.
Rich-Joseph Facun , BSVC ’01, born to an Otomi Indian mother and a Filipino father, specializes in documentary projects that investigate history through fringe cultures and societal trends. His photography explores the phenomena of personal independence, the pursuit of dreams, the discovery of self-identity, and the existential relationships between people and place. He is the photographic resources supervisor at OHIO’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine and a contributing photographer to arabianEye and Magnet Photo Production in Dubai. Facun previously was a staff photographer at The Virginian-Pilot , Arizona Daily Star , and The National in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Awards include first place from the Pictures of the Year International Competition, Virginia News Photographer Association, Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, and Landmark Communications, among dozens of other honors. He and his spouse, Jasmine Facun, who calls herself a “wife, roller skater, and student of wildlife and conservation biology,” have two children, Levi-Joseph, 11, and Opal, 5. His oldest child, Amber, works in real estate in Virginia.
Josh Birnbaum , MA ’10, is a visiting professional at OHIO’s School of Visual Communication in the Scripps College of Communication, teaching photography, picture editing, digital imaging, and multimedia storytelling. He also teaches expressive photography classes with the Athens Photographic Project and Circle Round the Square in Nelsonville, Ohio. His photos have appeared in The Wall Street Journal , The Columbus Dispatch , and the Chicago Tribune . He is working on publishing a photographic book, Uphill Battle , which documents a wheelchair basketball team’s journey to a national title, to be released by the University of Illinois Press in 2017. Another current project explores bluegrass music culture and was recently supported with an Ohio University Research Council grant. He earned a B.S. in aerospace engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has published photographs for his undergraduate alma mater’s alumni association. Birnbaum likes fluid mechanics, unicorns, cheese, and strange people.
Ben Siegel , BSVC ’02, is the photography supervisor at Ohio University Communications and Marketing. He came up with the idea for this photo essay about Athens the campus and the city by Bobcat photographers for this “teamwork” edition of Ohio Today . Siegel has worked at newspapers in Michigan, New York, and Ohio and taken pictures on a freelance basis across the Middle East, Europe, and Central America. His art has been exhibited at galleries and museums across the Midwest. Commercial clients include Agfa, Frontier Airlines, KTM North America, The Trust for Public Land, and Case Western Reserve University. Prior to joining OHIO in December 2011, Siegel taught art and photojournalism as an adjunct at four Cleveland, Ohio-area colleges. He and his wife, Rachel Siegel, a licensed professional counselor, have two children, Talia, 6, and Evelyn, 2.
Martha Rial , BFA ’98, won a 1998 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography “for her life-affirming portraits of survivors of the conflicts in Rwanda and Burundi,” as the judges put it. She works as an independent photographer based in her hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Rial previously was a staff photographer for the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times ) and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . Other honors include the Scripps Howard Foundation Award for Photojournalism, National Headliner Award, Yvonne Zanos Excellence in Media Award, and Distinguished Visual Award from the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors. She also has been named Pennsylvania News Photographer of the Year. Her photographs are in the permanent collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Bank of New York Mellon, and the Newseum, among others. Rial’s most recent photography essay, In Uganda, Finding a Home at School , debuted this fall at Trust Gallery 937 in Pittsburgh.
