At the end of each school year, the International Center of Photography holds a career day for its graduating students to meet editors and buyers in the industry. It’s a fantastic way to see and be seen, and PhotoShelter’s fabulous Director of Photography Meagan Ziegler-Haynes bravely represented us at the event on Wednesday.

Here’s the way it works; each industry professional sits at a table, and a student slides in with their portfolio every half hour or so and tries to impress. It can be nerve-wracking for both entities, as I’m keenly aware– I’ve been to this event as a student as well as an editor, and I even organized it for two years while an administrator at ICP.

It’s a blast, and sometimes there are lemon squares.

Here’s who Meagan encountered at the cool-kids table:

A. Phil Bicker, Creative Director at The FADER
B. Amani Olu from Humble Arts Foundation
C. Stephen Schuster, Director of Photography at Mass Appeal

D. Jon Feinstein from Humble Arts Foundation

E. Katie Constans, Creative Director at TRACE
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I asked Meagan to choose the most impressive student she met so I could feature him or her on the blog, and she enthusiastically nominated Mario Valentino Tozzi. Mario just completed the one-year General Studies program, and shoots a lot of fashion. For his final project he worked to find a connection between fashion and fine art.

Mario is acquainted with a lot of folks in the fashion industry, so he chose to make large format portraits of some of these folks crying.

The idea came about because Mario wanted to humanize these people, who are so often considered glamorous due to the nature of their jobs. I questioned Mario about the similarities between this work and Sam Taylor-Wood’s Crying Men and Jill Greenberg’s Crying Babies, which was obviously something he’d heard a lot; he said “the purpose of my images is different than the others. I think my casting stands out; you do sort of expect babies to cry.”

Touché.

How do you get someone to cry on cue, anyway? Mario says his most effective question is:

How do your parents feel about what you do?

I told Mario that if his photo career doesn’t work out, maybe he could replace Barbara Walters. She must be getting tired.

 

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