Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Wang.
Emily, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I think I’ve always had a preference for certain aesthetics and documenting my surroundings. Growing up with technology definitely challenged me with a medium that was constantly evolving. I asked for a Polaroid camera around age seven and it eventually expanded to external computer webcams, cell phones, point and shoots and DSLRs. Throughout grade school, I constantly had my camera on me. Documenting things almost felt like I was giving my future self-something to look back on. I loved making my reality fit into a frame in a way that served it justice. Eventually, I began to visualize certain shots I wanted to execute and used my friends as models, and that turned into paying gigs for an array of photography jobs. I went to art school at UGA on a whim, got into their photography school and was introduced to the fine art greats and a variety of mediums to work with (including large and medium format film that I completely fell in love with). It definitely exposed me to how art can be profoundly impactful to any degree and pushed me toward making thematic work. After I graduated in 2015, I’m currently a contractor for a creative agency and do freelance work in and around Atlanta with mostly clothing brands, musical artists and other creators.
Has it been a smooth road?
Hm, where do I start?
I think there’s a certain type of pressure an artist of any kind feels when there is so much content that already exists. Especially in art school, I didn’t just learn about the photography gods, but also painters, sculptors, mixed media artists, printmakers, etc. across all genres and time periods. Expanding my knowledge in the world of fine art, while making my own work was incredibly challenging. Lots of all-nighters. They were probably all all-nighters. Naturally, I wanted my work to live up to the greats, but there is a gigantic and constant evolution of work and style that I needed/need to be patient with. Even in this current world, it’s too easy to submit to the endless scrolling on social media that seems paralyzing on some days, despite knowing I should probably be posting every day for IG’s algorithm or whatever. It feels like it’s the new American game we have to play to succeed with this medium. I just want to make work that resonates.
Trusting my own taste and understanding, there’s no right way of doing things was a big one. Again, it’s easy to get lost in all the content out, but making work that aligns with your taste was harder than I thought it’d be. Adding pricing on top of that was another struggle, but I think that’s just something I had to learn along the way through many years of having clients and trusting in my own skills.
I sometimes feel split in half when I feel like I’m making commercial work for other people and not focusing on my personal projects that can exist in galleries… it’s a constant juggle.
Juggling is currently a huge one. I work a 9-5 and any off time I have, I dedicate to freelancing. Weekends are usually packed with shoots, meetings and editing, but it feels good to be busy. I definitely want to be busy during this time in my life, and I definitely want to keep learning. After finishing school, it was important to me to continue my growth and adjust to the lack of resources I used to have, like equipment and my art community. There’s just so much I want to accomplish, and now that I’m 25, I’m finally approaching the other end of the self-doubt tunnel and am ready to just get stuff done with the right people.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
As a freelancer, I’ve worked with an array of clients with different needs, including product photography, fashion lookbooks, social media content, portrait sessions, events, documentary photography, videography and so forth. I think creating trusting bonds between myself and my clients proves to be the most productive and impactful. As I collect all the standards they have in mind, they can trust me with taking that knowledge and creating something out of it through my own vision.
I like to bring a sense of softness and storytelling to my imagery, allowing it to feel like an actual moment in time. My brain is also wired to think in series mode, so even if the work may not be thematic, I believe having a cohesiveness to a vision is a priority. Coming from a fine art scope and working with clients who have current clothing brands or are musical artists, gives me a platform to connect the bridge between the two cultures. Often times, working with people who are not part of the fine art world allows the conversation to continue and stretch, which makes creating work that much more rewarding. It’s important to me that I can find all the worlds in which the work can exist in, or even create one for it, because of, all in all, I believe artists have a responsibility to not only contribute to the culture but to push it.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I believe so. Especially now, I think ATL is a great city to invest in. It’s almost like a city that doesn’t know what it wants to be yet and that can create a lot of lee-way for up and coming artists. What Atlanta is currently known for is pretty 2-dimensional, not that we haven’t pushed out some of the greats in our time, but there is so much rich content to be made about the diverse people and landscape here.
As of now, I feel like there are a lot of creatives making work on their own, but the overall creative community hasn’t really banded together, and I definitely want to help pioneer that movement. It just has so much potential, especially with our civil rights history and the current culture that was cultivated by it.
With that in mind, Atlanta is also diverse in a way where artists can get involved in the commercial and fine art world (and everything in between), so depending on what you want to focus on, this city can probably foster that growth.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ewangphotography.com
- Phone: 678.462.3790
- Email: ewang115@gmail.com
- Instagram: _ewang
Image Credit:
EWANG
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