Meet Corinne Bowen

We recently connected with Corinne Bowen and have shared our conversation below.

Corinne, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

I don’t think imposter syndrome ever fully disappears, but it quiets when I stay focused on my creative practice, show up even when I’m scared, and surround myself with supportive community.

A turning point was my first gallery show with Behind the Glass Gallery in Rochester, NY. One of the organizers contacted me and invited me to be one of three featured artists for the May 2025 show. The opportunity included a podcast interview, public reception, and social media promotion.

This was the first time I was curating, printing, framing, and hanging my work for public exhibition. The process helped me clarify my perspective as a photographer—I notice the sacred in the ordinary and I try to capture it through film.

The reception was filled with friends, family, and community. Standing in that gallery space, watching people pause in front of my work, I felt something shift. Hearing viewers describe their connection and insights about the photos showed me my vision was translating. That validation didn’t eliminate imposter syndrome, but it gave me evidence that my perspective as an artist has value—not only for myself, but for others too.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I’m a film photographer and creative facilitator based in Rochester, NY—the birthplace of Kodak and a city with deep photographic roots. My work explores the gifts our daily lives possess if we pause to notice.

I shoot exclusively on film because the analog process demands presence. There’s no instant preview, no delete button—just intention, patience, and trust. At the end of 2025, I shifted from color to black and white so I could develop my own film at home. Being hands-on from capture to print has deepened my relationship with the work and given me creative freedom I didn’t have before.

Beyond my personal practice, I lead creative spaces for women through The Focus Circle, an online community and co-working group exploring creativity and inner life, and I co-facilitate in-person retreats combining film photography, tarot, and devotional practice. I have one coming up in March focused on the tarot and one in May dedicated to film photography.

My work has been featured in Create! Magazine and exhibited at Behind the Glass Gallery, The Yards, and Rochester Contemporary Art Center. In early 2026, I was part of a show at Gallery 31, and I was recently accepted into the Kinhouse Gallery Cohort program, which includes a residency and a group show in Fort Wayne, IN.

I share my process openly through my Substack, Notes from Corinne, where I write about film photography, the tarot, and living an intentional life. I also post daily on Instagram @corinnebowencreates and offer limited edition prints through my website.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Devotion to the practice itself. Reading memoirs and listening to artist interviews taught me that meaningful work requires time, humility, and consistent showing up. Progress and momentum come from the daily commitment, not waiting for perfect conditions.

Building and nurturing creative community. Community has been essential to my growth—whether through my local photo lab, Scott’s Photo, online groups like O Circle (created by Emily McElwreath and Lauren Cohen) and Focus Circle (created by myself and Tammi Salas), or the hundreds of photographers I’ve connected with in Rochester, NY and on Instagram. These relationships provide support, knowledge-sharing, and accountability.

Willingness to step outside your comfort zone. Despite lifelong anxiety, I’ve learned to say yes to opportunities that terrify me—being filmed for features, showing my work in galleries, connecting with strangers and asking for help at Scott’s Photo. Photography itself asks me to be brave, to capture what I’m drawn to capture even when it feels vulnerable.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

I read On Writing by Stephen King in my early twenties, and it shaped how I approach my creative practice—then as a writer, and now as a photographer. His autobiography gave me the advice I needed most: stay committed to the craft, rejection is normal, and there’s no shortcut to getting where you want to go. It may not be inspiring or fun sometimes, but that doesn’t matter—show up anyway and do the work.

These quotes have stayed with me for years:

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

“Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”

“By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”

King’s perspective helps me when I’m nervous about going to a gallery opening where my work is on the wall or when I receive another rejection for a grant or open call I’ve applied to. The rejection slips are part of the practice. What matters is that I keep shooting film, keep developing in my darkroom, keep applying. The work itself is the point.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.corinnemakesart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/corinnebowencreates/
• Other: Substack: https://corinnebowen.substack.com/

Image Credits

Corinne Bowen