Autumn Jordan shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Autumn, we’re thrilled to have you with us today. Before we jump into your intro and the heart of the interview, let’s start with a bit of an ice breaker: Have you ever been glad you didn’t act fast?
I think most of what I do is slow, sometimes *very* slow. From how I sip my coffee, the amount of time I spend on most emails, to the cameras I choose to pick up and shoot with on any given day. I’ve come to think of my snail’s pace as my superpower.
Deciding to devote myself to taking pictures as my full-time job was a very slow decision for me, years in the making. Building this dream behind the scenes assured me how much I wanted this life. I think about that anytime I brush up against burnout. How lucky I am to be doing the thing I yearned for for so long.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m a photographer working primarily on medium and large format film, photographing people in love and doing what they love. When I’m not taking pictures, I’ve been slowly dipping my toes into the photography education space, teaching other photographers how to use large format cameras and see the world more slowly.
My work is inherently nostalgic and documentary in nature. It’s important to me that my clients love the work as much today and they do in ten or twenty years, which is part of why film and physical prints are paramount to my process.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
Grief is a really strange thing. Throughout my years studying film photography at Bennington College, I lost several people in my life that I loved dearly. Whether through my own photos or others’, it really hit me just how precious a photograph can be and how it can keep someone with you after they are gone. Not to be macabre, but that is something I am constantly thinking about when photographing, how lucky it is to have the opportunity to make a record of someone on any given day.
If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
That my softness is my superpower, I spent so many years trying to be someone I am not, and have only recently come to realize how I can still be loud and make loud work in my own ways.
Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. How do you differentiate between fads and real foundational shifts?
I think it is so important to be in touch with your own north star, but to also be kind in never “yucking someone’s yum”. I think fads play an important role in guiding our industry towards foundational shifts, but remembering the true north of it all is what will always prevail. I feel like the wedding industry undergoes about a dozen new fads each season, and it’s always interesting to see what sticks.
Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. Are you doing what you were born to do—or what you were told to do?
I think I was absolutely born to make photographs. While the road to here was long, it all truly makes sense to me. There were a lot of things I had to check off on the “what I was told to do” list before I could arrive at this point in my life and career, but the moment I stopped fighting what I knew I really wanted and just gave myself to my art entirely, things fell into place. Isn’t it funny how that always happens?
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.autumn-jordan.com
- Instagram: @atmnjrdn
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