I Met Chris Hamilton

The newest face in the photo department is young, determined and on fire. I met Chris Hamilton last week when he was introduced as our three-month intern, a result of his first-place finish in last year’s College Photographer of the Year competition. One of the prizes for winning is an internship at one of four major photo newspapers. It’s our turn this year and we get Chris. We talked because I wanted to know what he was all about. I told him I wanted to write about him and he patiently answered all my questions. Chris, 23, transferred to Western Kentucky from the University of Kansas in spring 1998, barely two years after he started taking pictures. While attending the Mountain People’s Workshop sponsored by WKU, he met one of his favorite mentors, Dave LaBelle. Schools that he also considered were Missouri and Ohio University, both fine traditional schools where practical (as opposed to theoretical) photojournalism is taught. Chris felt that WKU, with its rigorous program, was a place where he could put all his effort into photojournalism.

In his four years of shooting, he has had internships at the San Jose Mercury News, the Hartford Courant, been a Hearst finalist, and captured the CPOY title. For his successes, he credits a lot of "luck, of things falling into place, of meeting the right people."

"The experiences have been perfect. Everything happened really fast," says Chris, who is now represented by the photo agency Aurora & Quanta Productions.

Chris seems like he doesn’t belong in the newspaper business. And he doesn’t want to. Not now. Not while there’s so much else that he wants to do. " I want to experience everything. I want to show the effects of war, show that war is sick to bring about change. I want to shock people into thinking about someone else besides themselves."

He wants to make money only to fund his next project and his next journey. His most recent one was in Sierra Leone where he documented the lives of human casualties in that war-ravaged land and produced an impressive compilation of photographs.

Chris grew up in what he calls the "90210 high school " in a Kansas City suburbs to upper-middle class parents who provided all the comforts of a well-nourished childhood. Chris discovered journalism through writing courses in college, a process that opened his sheltered eyes to the big world out there.

Chris pays attention to the photographers who have gone before him. He lists Nachtwey, Richards, Towell, and Perress – all battle hardened photojournalists -- as his inspiration.

Meeting Chris, I am reminded of how powerful and inspiring photojournalism can be and how one can fall in love with in. That love fuels the desires to make an impact, to challenge the norm, to defy conventionality and to brave all difficulties in doing so.

I was also reminded of my own determination when I was first pulled of the business. Though I never wanted to be in the middle of a war or armed (or unarmed) conflict, I wanted too to make a difference in people’s lives. (Irony here is that I was born in the middle of the Tet Offensive, witnessed the end of the most painful war in American history, and survived a desperate voyage on the high seas. But that’s another story) These goals are virtually universal to all photojournalists today, especially those on the street who trade their sweat for satisfaction in their heart.

What I am doing these days? Making pictures that are neither "hard core" or powerful, I am always in awe of those who are sacrificing their emotional and physical well-being to further our awareness. Often they do that with such personal commitment that it’s really impossible for me to ever think that I can do the same. This thought has gnawed at me for years since I started in this business.

I am a photographer of daily life, of the mundane, the quirky, or the simplicity of being.

Simple. The one word that can be used to sum up my style.

Bryan Moss, who runs the White Cloud workshops, is one of a few people who I always like to show my portfolio (when I was still doing that) told me a simple thought that I have found to be most comforting in times of doubt: there is a place for my work in people’s lives. Not everything has to be gutwrenching or pack an emotional wallop. I accept what he says for my reason for working.

Chris Hamilton will blow by here on his way to the big time. Three months can vanish before you know it. I told him that I hope he learns something during his months. Most of the assignments would not interest him, as are the work of most of our photographers. But there is always something to be learned when one is in a unfamiliar place, especially one with such diversity in style and vision as our staff. In his determination and resolution to make his own mark, I’m not sure he has time for his own growth.

I suspect that he will be absorbed nicely into the realm of globe-trotting, heralded photojournalists who are occasionally featured on NPR and whose work make for great black and white coffee table books.

Good luck Chris, in your quest for personal and professional achievements.

(images by Chris Hamilton)

Behind the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism
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