P is for My Favorite Photographer
I’m not going to beat around the bush. Our daughter, Wendy Young, is my favorite photographer. She’s excellent in her field, but I want you to know what she went through to get to the point that other photographers, some very well known, also consider her excellent . . . ever so talented.
Wendy’s dad gave her her first camera, a Kodak Instamatic, when she was five or six years old. She had heard Frank talk about his loving photography and how he had learned to develop his own film; therefore, our Daddy’s Girl wanted to follow in his footsteps. So . . . the Christmas gift in 1968 or 1969, and Wendy was on a roll (pun intended). She went through lots of rolls of film during her childhood, most of it black and white because it was very expensive to purchase and develop color film back then. I’m sure that Wendy has some of those photos in a box somewhere or at least the negatives, but I don’t have any. If I did, I’d insert them right here!
Throughout her public school years, she continued to make images, as photographers call taking pictures. We knew that she loved photography, but it wasn’t until 1982 that we discovered how much she loved it and that she’d be a “real” photographer one day. A little explanation . . .
When she graduated from high school, she went to Southern Miss (the University of Southern Mississippi) to major in French horn. I must brag a bit: she was an excellent French horn player, and I could write a whole piece about that talent. We thought everything was going fine over there in Hattiesburg until her final grade report came, and she had failed everything except band and private French horn lessons. Since she had a music scholarship, it was obvious that she wouldn’t be able to keep it. We were very much disappointed, and she felt terrible about disappointing us. We wanted her to have a college education, but all we could afford was a year or two at Pensacola Junior College.
She was happy to be at home attending college, mainly because her boyfriend (whom we didn’t approve of) was in Pensacola. And so she enrolled for core curriculum courses, including music, of course. She was also taking a photography course. As far as we knew, she was doing fine in her all of her classes.
During my spring break in 1983, I decided to surprise our darlin’ daughter by waiting for her outside her English class and taking her to lunch. The surprise was on me! When class was over, all of the students filed out, but there was no Wendy. I knew her English teacher and approached him. “Rick, I came to meet Wendy, but she’s not here.”
“Wendy? Oh, yes. She’s your daughter. Oh, my, I haven’t seen Wendy since sometime in January.”
This was the same thing that she had done at Southern . . . skipped classes. I felt sure that I knew where she was. Rick told me how to get to the photography department.
Sure enough, there was Wendy, just as happy as could be. I told her that there would be a family conference that evening and that she had better head for home as soon as she finished in the lab. Wendy hated family conferences, so I know that her afternoon was miserable . . . as it should have been.
To make a long story short, we had our conference. Wendy told us that she wanted to major in photography instead of music. We said, “Fine, but there will be no more money for tuition. You’re on your own.” We did agree to help with the purchase of textbooks, but that was all.
Because she had signed up for and then dropped so many courses, she was on academic probation for years. During those years, she married, had our precious Corey, and divorced the man she never should have married, except that because of that marriage, we have Corey and a great barbecue recipe from her ex-husband’s father, who at one time was a cook at the prison. That’s probably more information than you really needed, but it makes for a good story.
Anyway, Wendy went on to take all of the photography courses offered in the excellent department at PJC. The professors that she had and the fellow students that she met are some of her best friends to this day. And they all admire Wendy’s work because she is a photographer of the “toppest notch” (I made that expression up, as you probably know. Just couldn’t think of anything better!).
In 1996, fifteen years after she started college, she finally almost graduated. You see, we aren’t super good in math in our family. Frank is good in geometry, and I did well in algebra because I kept my nose in a book all the time; however, math just didn’t interest Wendy. I shouldn’t say that. She loved working with the graphing calculator, mainly because she could almost draw pictures with it. In fact, she taught one of her adjunct professors to use it. But she just couldn’t pass College Algebra, and that course was necessary for getting her AA degree. She failed the course once, got a D once, and still had to take it again and make at least a C to graduate. Her problem wasn’t that she didn’t understand; she just couldn’t do well on tests.
She was teetering on passing and failing just before the final exam in 1996. Several of the students in her class gathered at our house the night before the exam, and Wendy was the teacher. She knew the material; she helped the other students.
But when the test was over and the students reported to class for the last time, they all received their grade slips, and Wendy’s had either a D or an F on it. I don’t remember. All I know is that she didn’t get a C, and she absolutely had to have at least that grade to get credit for College Algebra and graduate. When the other students learned that she wouldn’t graduate, they literally begged the teacher, an adjunct, to give her a C. Her reply was that giving her a passing grade wouldn’t be fair to all of them. They didn’t care, but she didn’t budge.
But did our photographer daughter get upset? Not on your life! Her response was that the College of Santa Fe, where she had already been accepted, didn’t require any math as a prerequisite for a Fine Arts in Photography degree. She “shook the dust of PJC from her sandals,” so to speak and started getting ready for her move to New Mexico. But let me tell you something else about graduation.
All she wanted was to wear a cap and gown and have her picture taken with her professors. She actually walked with the graduates, but she didn’t receive her diploma. Getting that was contingent on her getting an acceptable grade in algebra. But she got her photo! I wish I had a copy of it to show you.
I’ve told you all of that about Wendy, one of the smartest young women I’ve ever known (in lots of respects, not just photography) to tell you about her photography.
Because I’m not good at introducing you to the various stages in her photography career, I’ll give you links to her work. For each link, she has a narrative written. If you’d like to go to her website to see everything there, just put http://boxcarstudionm.comin your search slot. Here are some of my favorite places to check out on her website:
Early Work: http://boxcarstudionm.com/early-work
Teenagers: http://boxcarstudionm.com/teenagers
Free, White, and Twenty-one: http://boxcarstudionm.com/free-white-and-twenty-one
A Long and Slow Surrender: http://boxcarstudionm.com/a-long-and-slow-surrender
Our Wendy is a super talented photographer, and we are ever so proud of her. She has come a long way in her journey, a journey that has taken her to the point that she’s well known in her profession. She’s the Girl Friday and more to Gay Block, a professional photographer; she has worked as an adjunct at her alma mater here in New Mexico (The College of Santa Fe, now known as the Santa Fe University of Art and Design); she now tutors in digital several professional photographers, who are famous in print photography. She has become well known in Santa Fe, and I can’t tell you how proud Frank and I are when we’re introduced as Wendy Young’s parents and then have the pleasure of listening to photographers and artists inform us about how good she is in her profession and what a wonderful person she is. We beam!
But I can’t close in my piece about Wendy without saying that in addition to being such a good photographer, she’s a wonderful wife, mother, and daughter. I see another piece in the making someday when I can introduce you to Wendy’s husband, Todd; her daughter, Corey; and her and Todd’s son, Jackson. Maybe I’ll write a book!
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