Reba Jenson is a student at Texas State who is originally from thesuburbs north of Dallas known as Allen, Texas. She has been in the world of photography for about ten years but has only been considering herself an actual photographer for six of those years. She started her love for photography during her highschool years. Having been influenced by two grandfathers who were photographers and a father who loves photography, it is no wonder why she’s as good as she is. However, the first time she held a DSLR camera in 9th grade is when she realized just how much she liked photography herself. She loves to use photography as a way to translate her thoughts to others in the real world. “It's a part of me now.” - Reba Jenson
Sara: Do you prefer black and white or do you sometimes play with color? What are your preferences in photography?
Reba: I play with color, it’s not anything I’m against. I used to mostly poston Instagramin color and show mostly color photographs, but then I finally admitted to myself that I love black and whiteimagery so much more than color. I don’t have anything against color it's just, for me, black and white is this abstraction of reality and it gets people to see reality differently and for me that's what it's about. When I show,edit, post, etc.in black and white I feel like I'm getting people to seehow I see better than I do in color.
S: I noticed in your photography a lot of textures and small little details pop out that probably wouldn't be there in color. And I wondered if that was a reason you used blackandwhite as opposed to color.
R: That’s one of the biggest reasons because there’s this depth to it that you get. It’s that silencing of the colors that we see everyday that I feel helps people see everything differently and helps people see what I see. I have friends that will be with me while I’m photographing and they say things like, “I didn’t even see that.” And I’m just like this is how I see. So, I feel silencing colors that everyone is so used to and that is distracting and loud to us in our daily life. Black and white helps people see all those things they are constantly missing and those small things that I do see.
S: Do you also get rid of colors to get rid of the emotions attached to certain colors?
R:Ohdefinitely.There’sforcedfeelings of emotions because we do psychologically associate colors with feelings already, like when you see red it can be anger and when you see blue it can be sad. I mean that's the whole thingwithwhite balance, you have acooler or warmer white balance and you shift the feeling oneway or another.People feel a cold winter day on one end of the spectrum and on the other it's like a warm summer day. I definitely want to rid my photos of that forced feeling.
S: Do you have a favorite photographer or a photographer you look up to?
R: One of my favorite photographers, she calls herself “The Earl of Birds,” I feel like I can’t do her justice by description. She walks around with her camera and just takes pictures of all these different scenes and it seems very influential in a natural sense. I love her photographs; she does do some editing but she keeps it very minimal and real to life. I’m very influenced by her and other photographers who shoot a lot inblack and white like Bryan Schutmaat, Matthew Genitempo, I’m very influenced by them in general. I feel weird saying that because they capture a lot of portraits and then some people say, “but you don’t shoot people really at all, what do you mean you’re influenced by them?” But you can be still influenced by people and not their subjects.
S: Moving to your photographs, in general, what do you find you take pictures of most?
R: I would say I’m more drawn to spaces and objects because I don’t want toverbally limit myself tosubjects like nature or still lives. I'm very influenced by the spaces and objects we encounter on a daily basis and how that influences our lives in a way, even if we don’t consciously acknowledge how seeing the same space or object everyday can somehow influence us. I believe there is a connection,so I photograph spaces and objects that I encounter and flow through all the time.
S: With photographs that are more common for you to take, is there a process to finding something to photograph, or does it just jump at you in the moment?
R: I havephotos Ialways want to take around my neighborhoodbecause of walking my dog everyday. I’ll go around, or with driving or being on the bus,and create in my head this mental map of “I want to take a photo of that at some point.” But I don’t do it immediately, which a lot of people tend to be the opposite. It’s more of a meditative approach.I wouldrather see the same things over and over again in different lights and see them in different waysbefore committing to them as an image. Evenseeing them in different moods, I definitely feel like we subconsciously attach moods to these things in spaces by just being around them so much. Someone’s going to feel different about the box of trash on the street that’s there everyday then you will, you know? I’ll mark these places and then sometimes I’ll just decide, “Okay, I’m going to go shoot this now.” Because I have this connection or realization to why I want to shoot it, or how it connects with my identity, or I’ll tend to just go on these day long escapades andtake photos of all these things that I’vebeen sitting on and kind of realize them. I wouldn’t say that it’s a perfect process or that there’s really anything definitive about it, but it’s just like a silly intuition thing, I guess.
S: Whenever someone else sees your photos, do you ever get nervous that they’re going to ask what it means?
R: Yeah, I do get nervous about it, because even now I’m still trying to figure how to describe what this means to me. And it's hard because in my head I’m like, “Oh yeah, this represents the different insides we can have” but I’m also like, “that’s sounds so stupid.” But it’s also about being alone in a way.I’m very influenced by literatureand so I’ll find these perfect quotes that go with my photos and all I want to do is post these pictures with a quote that describes what I felt. But I can’t just pull someone else’s writing everytime someone asks, “What does this mean?” But it does get scary because it feels like if you don’t know how to describe these abstract things that people are going to think you’re not a real artist. That’s the thing withthe mutability of my images as well, because in fifty years my photos can mean different things to me than what they originally did.It becomes difficult because I don’t want to place this exact feeling on it if I don’t know exactly what is for me. What if, in some future time, there is a better way to define this?
S: Are any past photos different to you now when you look back at them? R: I’ve been doing that a lot more recently. The photos that I was taking freshman year are so different from what I’m taking now. And even though I havealways been attracted to spaces and objects it still feels wrong of me to try and morph that too much into what I’m doing now because I wasn’t thinking about it. Not that I would never do it, but it's not something I feel like I need to do or showed interest in. Sometimes I’ll go back through my Instagram and think, “Oh, I can see why I was shooting that now, I just didn't have the words or thought process to describe it.” I was shooting a lot of commercial looking photography, posting in color and posting portraits. Posting what I thought people wanted to see. So, part of me has this tendency to separate myself from that because even if I still love the photos, even if they’re still good photos, I still felt a bit coerced by society to post these things instead of posting what I wanted to.
S: Kind of like a “What do the Tumblr teens want.”
R: Exactly. But now, probably about last year,I decided I want to only post in black and white and all my likes on Instagram went down unless it’s a portrait. But I’m fine with it now, I felt like I had to care, I felt like I had to be posting what people wanted or I would never be successful as an artist. But the thing is that now I feel like I have more respect artists and people who do care about these things, opinions I actually do want. More than I ever did before. Now I don’t care if anyonefromlike my hometown gets it. I’m at this point where all of this is for me,and if I’m not doing it mostly for me, then what’s the point?
To see more of Reba’s work you can go to her Instagram page @rebajenson.