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Matinee: 'Drew Gurian -- A Photographer’s Journey'
20 July 2024
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 562nd in our series of Saturday matinees today: Drew Gurian -- A Photographer’s Journey.
This 4:13 video from Dreamscape Media Labs follows Drew Gurian as he describes his early interest in photography that he turned into a livelihood.
The name may be familiar.
In college, Gurian interned for Joe McNally and Danny Clinch after working as a photo assistant at Kraft Foods. After college, he spent five years as McNally's first assistant before going out on his own.
Since then he has photographed some of the world's most famous figures including Yo-Yo Ma, Alicia Keys, Sir Richard Branson and Quincy Jones.
But he begins his story with a simple statement. "Nobody ever told me how hard this would be."
As he points out, nobody really wants to be a starving artist. But there's no clear path to making photography a paying profession.
So why cut through the thick undergrowth to blaze your own path?
Ah, well, you know why. After an uncle gave him a 1970s Pentax, Gurian fell in love with capturing an image that excited him. "And for no other reason than self-fulfillment," he says.
Enter Mom. She not only encouraged him but she paid for developing "countless rolls of film," not all of which were, um, correctly exposed.
But he persisted, giving himself assignments like shooting the bands whose concerts he was attending. It gave him a sense of purpose, he says.
His mother encouraged him to pursue a degree in photography. And she told him to take that job with McNally.
Two weeks into that gig, his mother died suddenly. "Everything was different from that point on," he says.
He says he didn't "have the tools to process it, so I just kept pushing forward."
We'll let him tell the rest of the story but you get the idea. Nobody said it would be easy.