249 - Dina Litovsky

Dina Litovsky is a Ukrainian-born photographer living in New York City since 1991. Dina's imagery can be described as visual sociology. Her work explores the idea of leisure, often focusing on subcultures and social gatherings.

Dina is a regular contributor to National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, TIME, New Yorker, GQ and New York Magazine. In 2020 Dina won the Nannen Prize, Germany's foremost award for documentary photography. Other awards include the PDN 30, New and Emerging Photographers to Watch; POYi; NPPA Best of Photojournalism, International Photography Awards and American Photography.

Selected exhibitions include group and solo shows at the Museum of the City of New York; Noordelicht Festival, Netherlands; Annenberg Space for Photography, LA and the Anastasia Photo Gallery, NYC.

In 2022 she started writing the Substack newsletter In The Flash, an ongoing dialogue about the art and craft of creating and thinking about images. In her weekly posts, she discuses the creative process, focusing on the WHY of photography — intent, meaning, and inspiration. She shares her insights into the world of a professional photographer as well as all the things that make her tick and inspire her to create, from photography to art to music.

Dina holds a bachelor in psychology from NYU and an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts, NY.
 

In episode 248, Dina discusses, among other things:

• Moving to the U.S. from Ukraine at 12 years old
• The immigrant dream of her parents for her to study medicine
• The formative experience of earning her first $40 for shooting a portrait
• Why she couldn’t hold down a job in her early life
• Coming out of wedding photography retirement to write a piece about it
• How working on personal work was the key to getting good editorial clients
• Untag This Photo and Bacherolette being the projects that got her attention
• How her background in psychology plays into the way she approaches shooting her projects
• Her experience of being questioned in a classroom setting - why she does the newsletter
• Her post about why photographers should stop calling themselves artists
• Her approach to Instagram and how she set out to build a huge audience
• How her Substack newsletter began with an invitation from Meta
• Her strategy around building community rather than earning income
• Why working for exposure is photography’s bigges Ponzi scheme
• The importance of pursuing personal work
• Her projects Fashion Week and Meatpacking

Website | Instagram

“I’m an introvert with a social phobia. So I would never draw attention to myself. But with a camera I could actually go where I wanted to go and photograph and confront people, with a shield. And so I think I was using it more as my own self therapy, like I wanted to be in the middle of the party, and I wanted to be on this dancefloor with the young women, but I couldn’t. And so with a camera I was there just photographing it.”

 

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