Not Just Ladies Who Lunch: Emily Jewer
Getting to know some fabulous ladies who work in the arts!
Welcome to the Monday series Not Just Ladies Who Lunch. This will be an ongoing addition to the blog, meant to introduce you to some arts professionals. Their jobs will vary from freelance graphic designers to music composers, auction house specialists to cake decorators. Be sure to check back every Monday for a new profile. If you would like to be featured, please do send me a note! I am opened to suggestions as this piece evolves. Here goes week seven:
Meet Emily!
Emily and I met in an art history class at Mount Allison University in 2006 [I think]. She had cool green glasses and a BFF called Francesca who she treats like a sister. We recently reconnected in London many years later over tea in the rain and fended off seagulls from our fish and chips on the Brighton sea shore. She loves her cat, Smudge and is a brilliant portrait photographer. Check out her website here, follow her on facebook here, or keep tabs on her via twitter here [personal] or here [professional].
I am a photographer and theatre artist based in Halifax, NS though I was born in Vancouver, grew up between there and Toronto and went to school in New Brunswick so I like to just consider all of those places home. I did my Bachelor of Fine Arts at Mount Allison University mainly focusing on photography and also doing a lot of work in the theatre there both on and off stage. Eventually after studying acting at Neptune Theatre School in Halifax for a year I decided to combine photography and theatre together and launched MJ Photographics. The company mostly focusses on production and promo shoots for theatre companies and headshots for actors and other performers. However, every once in a while you can catch be out from behind the lens, appearing on stage, as I haven’t been able to leave some of my showoff tendencies behind.
1. What did you want to be when you were growing up?
As a young kid I remember being really interested in science and animals, so for a while I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian or a surgeon. But as I got older I realized people actually had jobs as painters and art gallery owners and such. I guess I just hadn’t though that those were actual things you could do for a living. Even though I’d been to art galleries and museums a lot, maybe I thought people just did them on the side for fun, which is true as well, but when I found out you could be an artist for life I knew that’s what I wanted to do.
2. What is the best piece of advice you were ever given?
My grandmother (and my parents) always told me to do/be what makes me happy. Which is probably the best advice you can give someone interested in the arts. It gave me the freedom to be comfortable with my decision to pursue photography and theatre without feeling like I wasn’t conforming to someone else’s expectations of what a “real” job is.
3. Can you name your biggest success and/or failure in your career so far?
Right now I feel my biggest success would be just the existence of my company as it stands right now. I spent a long time just letting work come to me instead of being proactive about it, so when I finally got it together and started my website and began reaching out to those I wanted to work with it felt like a huge step in the right direction. Basically I learned that you won’t get what you want by just sitting around doing nothing.
As for failure. Early on I got some work with a local company in the fashion/beauty industry who wanted me to work on a variety of projects with them. It wasn’t the kind of work I had very much experience in but I thought it would give me a good idea of how this part of the industry worked and they seemed keen to give a chance to someone still very green. But it was awful. There was so much focus put on looks and attractiveness, which makes sense of course for them, but I was so uncomfortable with the amount of photoshopping they wanted done and the way they talked about other people’s bodies. After the first couple projects I think both myself and the company could tell it wasn’t a good fit and we went our separate ways. I learned a lot about my personal ethics in relation to this industry and what I’m willing and not willing to do, especially in the post-production process, I definitely learned that fashion and beauty work is not for me. I also realized that it’s not worth it to compromise your morals for your work. If I hadn’t said anything and just followed exactly what the company had wanted despite my icky feelings I, frankly, would most likely getting a lot of work and money right now, but I would be miserable. And like I said in question two, I want to do what makes me happy.
4. Name a tool you can’t live without.
My cameras, plural. I need all 4 of them and possibly more in the future! I’m still dreaming about the Rolleiflex I borrowed constantly from the photo lab at school, maybe one day we’ll meet again.
5. Do you have a mentor/Who would your dream mentor be?
I wouldn’t say I’ve ever had an outright mentor, but I’ve had several people who have definitely influenced me, the first and most important to me being my parents. They were photography hobbyists when I was growing up so I probably gained a lot of unconscious knowledge from them. And my favourite camera I own, my 35mm Nikon FM10, is actually my mum’s that I “borrowed” from her almost 8 years ago and she graciously has never asked for it back.
My dream mentor, that I feel could actually, maybe, possibly happen in real life some day, would be Joan Marcus. She’s basically THE theatre/production photographer for all things Broadway. She’s shot musicals and plays with Bernadette Peters, Idina Menzel, Hugh Jackman, Sutton Foster, etc etc, basically all the big names on Broadway and all these incredible shows and she’s amazing at it. I would love to learn from her, especially because I don’t know a lot of other photographers who do theatre photography so it would even just be nice to have a conversation about it with someone who has managed to devote her entire career to it.
Now if we’re talking pipe dream mentor here, I’ve had a recurring dream that I hang out with Meryl Streep on my birthday (because we have the same birthday) and we have lunch and tea and talk about acting and art and it’s all very grand and lovely. But I think if it happened in real life I would probably cry and then melt into a puddle on the floor……
6. Tell us about your favourite picture/photograph/sculpture/etc.
There are so many it’s hard to choose but I thought I would go with something close to home.
This painting is by an artist and friend of my parents, Christopher Estridge. I believe it was a wedding or anniversary gift of some kind. My parents have a lot of art but I think this is my favourite piece. It has so much movement within the piece that you can just feel and hear the waves of the ocean when you look at it. I’ve spent hours just staring at it. Having met Christopher once, I can really see him in the piece, he was a very vivacious and colourful person.
Sadly, Christopher passed away a few years ago but he left a mark on the Toronto art community and in my parent’s house where several pieces of his work live.
