I finally got around to interviewing one of my favorite people in the photo community. I can easily say this, due to the fact that from the get-go, she was a willing participant in learning as much about me, as I was of her. There is an ease to the collaborations we’ve shared, and one that is rooted not just in the promotion of photographic images and ideas, but in the act of celebrating the educational aspects of our endeavors. It was through a wonderful online portal called Light Leaked that I first encountered the intelligent, thoughtful, and lovely Ashley Kauschinger. Side note: I get to heap on some praise here because she can’t oppose anything I say, due to her own humbleness, and because this is my space to direct the narrative. <insert maniacal laughter here> Seriously though, there is a common goal here, and certainly one that many people also share. It’s a symptom of creating and engaging in our community that drives us all. Shared ideas, problems, processes, and an overwhelming need to be a part of the greater good. That’s where this educational aspect rears up and devours those ready to take the plunge.

I guess my main thought here was that collaboration and education really go hand in hand. Isn’t the teacher/student combination really a collaboration? One’s in the driver’s seat while the other rides shotgun - and hopefully along the way to their destination there is a shared experience that both learn from. I know that Ashley would be the first to tell you that she learns from her students all the time. And that is where this interview comes in. Through all of my rambling in this intro, there follows a calm, but eager tone that Ashley shows us in her words and images. It’s also something that you’d get to experience with her latest educational project, Lensclass, but I’ll let her fill you in on that. She is an educator of the highest power and one that I feel honored to help present to you with this interview. Humble thanks, Ashley.

Bio -

Ashley Kauschinger is an artist that explores identity, social structures, and women's voices. She received her BFA from Savannah College of Art and Design and her MFA from Texas Woman's University. Her photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally in venues such as the Light Factory and the Chiang Mai Art Museum. She has been published in Chinese Photography Magazine, PDN Photo Annual, and Lenscratch, among others. Her work is in the collections of Vanderbilt University and the Sir Elton John Collection.
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Ashley is also the Founder of the online fine art photography education platform, Lensclass, and the online photo magazine, Light Leaked. Ashley has previously taught photography at University of South Carolina and Maine Media Workshops + College. She currently lives and works in Atlanta, GA.

Interview -

Michael Kirchoff: Thanks for joining me here, Ashley, I’m really happy to have a chance to get to know more about you and your process. In full disclosure, we have had the opportunity to work together on a couple of things in the past, but I realize that I don’t know how you got started in the visual arts. Can you tell us a bit of what inspired you to take the plunge?

Ashley Kauschinger: Thank you Michael, I’m honored to be interviewed by you! 

Well, I didn’t connect with school very much when I was younger. I was anorexic and an athlete for most of my teenage years. Two things that kept me busy and unfocused at the time. In my junior year of high school, I took a photo class. We learned to make pinhole cameras, and use the darkroom. We kept sketchbooks of our daily experiences. I found a connection and a way to express my inner life. I became obsessed. 

MK: I’m also wondering what some of your earliest influences were and how they may have manifested in your work. In addition, do you think that over time those earliest inspirations are still with you today, or maybe that you have moved on once you developed your own voice?

AK: Two of my earliest influences were Francesca Woodman and Claude Cahun. Almost all of my earlier work is self-portraits. I think you learn a lot through self-portraiture. Your subject is always around, so you can always work out your ideas, you don’t have to try to explain them to anyone, and you can make a lot of work. I also love the performance and use of the body to act out thoughts and experiences. It’s the ultimate diary. 

I also was obsessed with Tracey Baran and Sally Mann for years, and started using large format because of them. I learned how to make subtle and complicated implied narratives in a still image from studying the two of them. I’ve also always been interested in photo history, especially in early photo history. I love the pictorialist... Emerson, Robinson, Julia Margaret Cameron… the dreamy constructed narratives of that time. I went through a big Anna Atkins cyanotype phrase in college. 

I think all of my influences are still with me. Idiosyncratic style does emerge through study and practice. In a lot of ways, it is taking a tiny seed from a hundred influences you see something of yourself in, and piecing that together. 

MK: Let’s discuss a couple of bodies of work, both of which I believe are still ongoing. While much of your past work touched upon themes of memory, relationships, and family, it is clear that your latest works involve women’s issues and female identity. In Her Own Right is one such collection, and interesting in its use of combining writing, audio, and photos to tell the story you wish to convey. What brought about expanding the narrative to include more than simply photographs? This also lends itself to more of a multimedia type of installation when showing the work, and I’m wondering if there are plans to do just that?

AK: In Her Own Right evolved from the connective spirit and desire to learn more about other artists that Light Leaked is rooted in. That spilled over into my photographic work with this series. Part of the point of the project is how women’s voices can be sidelined and talked over. I wanted the series to be collaborative and to find a way to include the voices of the women I was photographing. I also like the visual element of how everyone’s handwriting looks different, what paper they each chose to write on, and to be able to hear what their voices sound like. I don’t feel this project is done, and it is difficult to continue to make because it needs a lot of time and money to travel, and a lot of film. But I am proud of what I have made with it so far, and we will see what happens in the future. 

MK: Your most recent body of work, Cycles, states that “This series explores the history of events, female figures, violence, and depictions of women in art and culture“, and seems to be your most direct and vocal work concerning these issues, particularly through the use of projections and shadows. From my perspective, it appears that the emotional tone of the photographs has increased the urgency of the work as a whole, and is a big reason for making it so successful. Do you feel that as you’ve grown as a visual artist you begin to feel more outspoken and emboldened to ensure that viewers are getting the full picture of what you are saying? You’ve always been great at telling the story, but this time it feels to hit home that much stronger and with no apologies.

AK: I do think I have grown as an artist, and I think I can see a new complexity in this work -- in its construction and its ideas. But I also think I’m more conflicted as an artist than I have ever been. This work scares me, it exhausts me. I don’t always enjoy making it. It pisses me off, it haunts me. It’s never good enough, never finished enough. It takes strength I don’t always know if I have. This work isn’t always fun like In Her Own Right, and it's not really a cathartic personal reflection like my past self-portraiture work. It does inspire me in many ways, makes me feel connected to the history of women. And I feel like it pokes a hole through history and I can see the connections between the contemporary lives of women and the underpinning structures that women have lived in for thousands of years. That is powerful to me.

MK: Switching gears a bit into another aspect of your life as a creative individual brings me to ask about your process as an educator. It seems as though you identify as much as an instructor as an artist. Do you feel that’s a fair assessment, and what about teaching is it that draws you in? Is there a philosophy you have as an educator?

AK: I do see a connection between being an artist and being an educator. I’ve been grateful to have been both over the years, and I learned a lot about each role through the other. I think I really developed further as an artist, and got a new level of mastery over my craft through teaching. I also have always loved the creative endeavor of teaching. Curating lectures, researching history, coming up with assignment concepts, having dialogue with students, being asked unexpected questions, having to help solve unexpected issues. Being engaged in that process I think has always inspired my own work. 

MK: In 2012, when I first caught wind of you and your work, you'd started an online resource called Light Leaked. You still continue this project today I should add, but how did it start and why? Do you feel it is yet another extension of who you are as a creator and educator?

AK: Yes, I started Light Leaked when I was in grad school, which I guess was 8 years ago now, yikes. I wanted to connect and build community. I think it has been an inspiring and empowering endeavor, I hope for a lot of people. It has definitely always been connected to my interests as an educator and an artist… to be a community leader and to participate in creating opportunities for other artists. I also love collaborating, exchanging creative energy, and having accountability in projects with others. 

MK: An exciting new venture for you, and once again a brilliant foray into education, is your latest project, Lensclass. Give us the full picture of what, how and why. What can we expect and how will it grow over time? 

AK: Lenclass is online education for fine art photography. Students can watch self-paced lessons, do assignments, ask questions, and interact with me and the other students. I started by taking some of my most popular assignments and lectures from my time teaching at the University of South Carolina to create the first three offerings: Breaking Artist Block, Titling Photographs, and Photography Foundations. You can read more about them here: https://www.lens-class.com/pages/courses 

For now, I have left traditional teaching in the university system. But I do love to teach. I have so many lectures, assignments, research, education, and passion for teaching photography. I wanted to create an outlet for that, while also creating a way for folks that can’t go to college for studio art or can’t go to an expensive fine art workshop, to get that information online. I feel like a lot of information online in regard to photography is mostly technical, and taught from a commercial standpoint. There aren't a lot of resources that take a real contemporary studio art approach to photography, both conceptually and technically, available online. I hope that Lensclass will be able to provide that. In the future, I really want to partner with contemporary photographers to create workshops in their specialties and create an online destination for fine art photography education. 

Now through the end of April, I created the coupon code COVID for photo educators and their students to get 100% off all Lensclass courses to help with the sudden transition to online teaching. Thanks in large part to the fantastic Lauren Greenwald and Sara Fields, the admin fees for the Lensclass platform have been covered through the end of April. During which I can have unlimited sign-ups for educators and students. If you sign up for a course and would like to help support Lensclass, you can donate $5 on Venmo to @Ashley-Kauschinger.

MK: I’d like to ask a few additional questions about your creative process as an artist. Once you’ve achieved finding your particular style or voice, do you ever feel the need to break out and follow a different path?

AK: Definitely! I get bored easily. I am always starting new projects. Some see the light of day and some don’t. I think also for a lot of artists, there is so much that no one else sees. I have a style that I think represents my most evolved work, but I’ve also made a lot of work that isn’t cohesive with that style. I definitely believe in doing whatever comes to mind, looking at it, and trying to not censor myself. Maybe the first few ways a new idea comes out isn’t right or looks totally different than past work. But I find if I keep pushing everything comes together. 

MK: Does a body of work ever begin to form strictly through the editing process? Have you ever changed the direction of a body of work midstream?

AK: The editing and the reshooting process is definitely an important step to how work is formed, but I wouldn’t say a series of mine has ever been created solely from that process because most of my work is so constructed and is usually made concept first. 

I will go through periods of experimentation and research, where I am making anything that comes to mind, researching topics that I am curious about and making work about them… to find the concept I want to explore deeper. Then I will make that work, concept first, experimenting as I go with the technical ways it can manifest. 

MK: If such a concept exists, what does a typical creative day consist of for you? Do you consider yourself a workaholic, or do you keep a schedule of time for family, socializing, vacation, etc?

AK: I tend to work on a lot of things at once. This can be a good thing and a bad thing for me in my practice. It can really divide attention, and is something I am working on. While I’ve obviously finished a lot of things to fruition, there are also a lot of things I’ve run out of energy for and haven’t. I think it can be difficult when you take your passion and make it your job and your life and your identity… to suss out what you actually want to do and what do you feel like you have to do. Everyone has to figure out what works best for them. I’m also always figuring out that what works, continues to change over time. A schedule that worked for me 3 years ago, doesn’t anymore. 

I talk about this in-depth in the Breaking Artist Block workshop on Lensclass. That workshop is based on what I taught my thesis students on how to build an artist practice, including how to manage time, money, etc. 

MK: Was there a specific point in time where you felt that you had found your voice in photography and became satisfied with the direction of your work? Do you ever truly find yourself in a good place with your images, or are you always searching for more?

AK: I think I’ve had moments. I love that feeling, when something clicks and I create a piece that really feels like me… or really represents what I’m trying to communicate. And it all comes together. It feels like being really present, alive, aware of yourself, something in the chest and eyes. I think I’m always searching for that feeling. 

MK: I’d like to know what some of your more general advice is towards your students starting out in this field. What are the important aspects of the visual arts that you want to drive home?

AK: The first is to have a creative approach to your career. For most of us, it won’t be easy, and it won’t be a straight line. There isn’t one answer or an easy answer to how to make money being an artist. You can go a commercial route, you can go a teaching route, you can do both, you can make money doing something completely different and use it to support your art. I think Elizabeth Gilbert says it well in Big Magic that you can’t yell at your art to support you and expect it to grow. I continue to make this mistake all the time. So, be kind to yourself, forgive yourself, do the best that you can, not the best you think someone else is doing. Let yourself enjoy creating. It helps make your life worth living. 

MK: With so much going on in a well-rounded career such as yours, what can we expect to see from you in the near future? Exhibitions, writing, lectures?

First I plan to expand the offerings at Lensclass, and hopefully have more students! 

Other than that, I have realized in the last few years especially that overcommitting to so many projects at once can really lead to burn out. I have been working on, and plan on to continue working on, how to find more balance in my life. And I am trying to take some time to decide what is really important to me at this time in my life, and what I want to commit my time to. Because it can’t keep being everything. 

MK: My sincere thanks and appreciation for not just your time and effort here, but for everything you do to move the photographic conversation forward, Ashley. I for one will always be honored to stay in contact and have continued opportunities to collaborate. Thank you for your wisdom, energy, and quite especially, your voice.

AK: Thank you so much. I also really appreciate everything you do to inspire the photo community, and for the opportunities you create! This was such a fantastic and thoughtful interview, definitely one of the best I’ve ever had! These questions really got me to reflect deeply about years of work, and I really appreciate the time you spent creating them.

You can find more of Ashley’s work on her website here.

You can view Ashley’s ongoing project Light Leaked here.

And you can learn more about Lensclass here.

All photographs, ©Ashley Kauschinger.