Jenny Graham is trying to go unnoticed. Semi-camouflaged in the darkness by her typically dark clothes, she steps gingerly around the stage, crouching below sightlines when possible and subtly pulling her beanie-shrouded head and hefty camera back as an actor passes within inches of her lens.
Graham is doing what she loves most about her work as OSF’s staff photographer: shooting a dress rehearsal—for Pericles, in this case—in the Festival’s most challenging and intimate performance space, the Thomas Theatre.
“It’s a small space,” she says, “so it’s nerve-wracking, because the actors are aware of me in a way that they’re not [in the Angus Bowmer and the outdoor Allen Elizabethan Theatres]. I did King Lear, and I was on the floor with the actors. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, but at the same time it’s super-fun because you’re right there with them—you’re in their faces. And they’re pros here, so they totally just do what they’re doing, and you’re just in the mix.”
Once she’s finished shooting, she culls down and edits images, the ultimate fate of which lies in the hands of a show’s director and design team, who must decide which photos best represent the look and feel of the production and which reveal, on the other hand, secrets or are unflattering.
“I guess I’ve been shooting long enough that I know what I like, what I think looks good,” Graham says. “Obviously, I look for interesting connections, emotional energy, beauty—the lights and the sets and the costumes and the actors—it all fits together. I go by feel a lot; there’s not a lot of thinking, but I follow the show, I follow the action.”
According to T. Charles Erickson, who has also photographed for shows in the Allen Elizabethan Theatre, the challenges of theatre photography are both technical—such as adjusting to ever-changing light and movement—and artistic, as one grapples with conveying the multilayered theatrical experience in a silent, two-dimensional image.
“The technical problems can be solved through application and experience, but the ability to listen to a play and to edit among all of its moments and find a visual equivalent within the viewfinder of your camera is a gift,” Erickson says. “The arrangement in space of all of these elements is what makes it art. Jenny is a sensitive theatre artist, and she became that through incredible dedication to her craft.”
Falling in love with the shutter
Before she became a theatre artist, Graham was a Southern Oregon University student and single mom to 3-year-old Morgan when she was hired as an OSF usher 15 years ago. Though she’d inherited her grandfather’s passion for amateur photography, Graham didn’t take her first class on the subject until her senior year in college. There she “fell deeply in love with the darkroom. I was skipping my science class and any other classes just to stay in the darkroom and work.”
Graham began assisting the Festival’s staff photographer and became interim photographer/marketing assistant when that photographer moved on in 2004. The “interim” tag was eventually dropped and Graham spent a couple of low-pressure years providing backup for the more experienced individuals OSF would bring in to shoot production photos.
Today, Graham is the primary photographer for the two indoor theatres. She has worked with Erickson in the Allen Elizabethan; he focusing more on the wider angles, she on the close-up action of the actors.
“Both of us move like stealthy animals while running miles through the aisles trying to capture every important moment and perspective,” Erickson says. “Of course, I think we are lithe cats hunting our prey, but to the designers, directors and invited audience we may seem more like duck hunters with shotguns.”
“He’s great out there because he doesn’t hold back,” Graham says of Erickson. “He gets right in there. I’ve learned so much from that guy.”
This season, for the first time, Graham has been tasked with passing on her own knowledge by mentoring FAIR intern Katy Bentz, an aspiring photographer fresh out of college.
“My intern’s awesome. I didn’t go to school for photography, so everything I’ve learned I’ve learned while I’ve been doing it, so I never felt like I knew a lot. So it feels good to have enough years behind me to say, ‘Okay, I’ve collected a certain amount of knowledge and now I can share it.’ ”