In Conversation with Andrew Cenci
Andrew Cenci originally picked up photography as a hobby. Ten years and thousands of negatives later, his work has appeared in multiple renowned publications, including The New York Times. When he’s not working or spending time with his family, Andrew is in the basement of his home, blasting music and furiously printing in his darkroom. He met us for coffee with a box of prints from his darkroom and we spent an hour geeking out about everything photo.
Who are you?
My name is Andrew Cenci, I’m 35 years old. I'm originally from Columbus, Ohio but I live in Jeffersonville, Indiana right now. But I lived in this area [Shelby Park] for the past 10 years. So this is home.
What do you do?
I currently work full time in marketing for a large tech company. I work from home and then when I'm not doing that, I’m taking pictures. I do freelance photography for a number of outlets from The New York Times, to Bloomberg, The New Yorker, stuff like that. I also make personal work, which is mostly what I do. I'd say freelance is maybe 10% of the time, like most of it is personal work and prints. And I have a darkroom in my house, so I also make prints at home.
I feel like there's an illusion that you have to pick between the nine-to-five and working on your own creative pursuits. You’re a great example of the contrary, how do you find a balance between those things?
There's nothing to it but to do it, I guess. You're either gonna make the time for it or you're not. When I started doing photography and being a little more serious about it, I set an alarm at like 7:15 PM every night. It would go off and I would be committed to doing something creative for that time. It doesn't necessarily have to be photography, it could just be something creative for anywhere from two minutes, to an hour, to two hours, three hours. The amount of time didn’t matter, it was just a matter of getting into the rhythm of having a creative practice.
Photos by Andrew Cenci.
First song you’re playing on aux?
Pink + White by Frank Ocean is probably one of my favorite songs, I can just put it on and it’ll put me in a good mood.
Top artist this year on Spotify?
My Spotify Wrapped is ruined because I have a child. We listen to the Spider-Man soundtrack from Into the Spider-Verse all the time. He [my son] likes it. So yeah, we get downstairs and we turn the music up super loud and we’ll run back and forth and he just jumps on me. He plays Spidey and I'm Rhino usually.
Favorite photographer?
Mark Steinmetz. I think he’s the best living American photographer. His black and white work is just incredible.
My Pentax is broken right now, so it’s my Leica M6. I buy Ilford HP5 by the hundred foot, so I just roll my own 35mm [film] and it saves me money.
Outside of photography, what do you do for fun?
Hanging out with my family is probably the biggest thing. I have a 4-year-old, so every night it’s, “let's wrestle.” It usually just turns into WrestleMania at our house. I play video games, I play Magic: The Gathering, I’ve recently gotten into playing D&D [Dungeons and Dragons]. So yeah, I'm just a big nerd.
Friend that inspires you?
Scotty Perry is such a huge inspiration. Actually, we're sitting across from this “Smile” mural and he has a picture of that in the body of work he did about his grandparents. The book's called Here and if he does another printing, every person in the world should pick up a copy. It's one of the most beautiful photo books I've ever seen. He's just a great friend and a huge inspiration. I probably wouldn't be doing as much photography if it wasn't for him being as honest and forthright with me as he was when we first met.
Honestly, just continuing to work on the body of work from this neighborhood [Shelby Park]. I've probably made it through like a quarter of the negatives and I'm on my fourth portfolio box full of prints. It's probably over 1700 negatives, printing that work and getting that made into something would be a dream come true. Trying to complete it has been a labor of love. I usually take off some time in December and just spend the week in the dark room and just keep chugging along. Eventually, when it's done, it'll be a lot of pictures.
I saw some of those prints at your show at the LVA, they were great. Tell me a little more about the origins of the project.
It started in 2015 or 2016, I was just taking pictures, black and white portraits, snapshots and street photography stuff. It kind of serves two purposes, it's a portrait of the neighborhood and also a time capsule of my interests in photography. I feel like you can definitely see the shifts and the changes and the growth in the images I’ve been making over the almost 10 years that I've been taking pictures in this neighborhood. It's just really special to me, it would be a dream to work with a publisher and make something of it.
You work a lot with film and physical prints and you do it all in your own darkroom. What's the importance of having the real physical things in your hand, as opposed to all the work just being shot on digital and going straight to like Instagram or a website?
For me, the print is the picture, right? When you actually can physically hold the image, that's when it becomes something. And so, for me, digital always feels so disappointing, like a digital image. It feels like a computer, and the computers do a really good job, but it's rendering what I'm seeing and it's not capturing it. When you take a picture on film, you're actually physically burning the light into the film. Whereas with a digital camera, you're allowing the computer to interpret that light. For me it feels like a facsimile of light, it's this interpretation.
That intangible element you get when working with film is really special, it’s really affirming to hear you talk about it that way because it’s something I find myself thinking about often.
There’s something about time in there too. Photography itself is a lie a little bit, because you are freezing a moment in time. When you take a picture, you're not getting what happened before that, you're not getting what happened after it, you're just getting that 250th of a second. That’s it. It's not the truth, but it also is telling the truth about that moment. Also, in the time it takes to develop the film, you’re distancing yourself from those moments. The photos can take on different meanings and make you feel different emotions. Film lends itself really well to that process.
It seems as if almost all of your work is in black and white, what’s the reason behind that?
There's a quote from this Japanese photographer, Daidō Moriyama, and the general gist of it is: if color film is the flesh and blood, then black and white film is the soul. That has always really resonated with me. Black and white film just feels like true to me, if that makes sense. Color film always feels interpretive, the camera, the film stock, whatever it is, is always interpreting the colors. What I'm seeing in black and white is just giving me the moment, the time, the actual thing.It also lends itself to being printed really well, I think just black and white prints are just beautiful.
So give me a little rundown of what you're doing when you're printing in the darkroom. What does that look like for you?
It's changed quite a bit, I used to have a space over here in the Germantown area that I used to rent out. I used to play music real loud and I’d be singing in there. I didn’t realize how much you could hear through the door until I was moving out. [Laughs] For a while I was doing a monthly print club, actually I have some prints for you. But yeah, I would just go in every month and make these prints and then with any extra time I’d make my personal work. I was making these little 5x7’s every month and just mailing 'em out. The first two years of the print club, I was actually printing albums. So like, I’d have an album that I was committed to and every print was a different track from that album. I would usually turn that song on and just loop it. I had this massive light table and I would throw negatives out on the table and just listen to the song on loop and see what felt the most like the song and then I would start printing.
Photo by Andrew.
When you’re walking around shooting, what makes you stop and actually take a photo?
I try not to think about it, wherever my eye goes, that's where I point the camera. Especially with 35mm, when I’m shooting medium format, I'll stop someone and have a conversation with them and then ask if they’re comfortable with me taking a portrait. I knew that I could never be a wedding photographer because I suck at making people look their best. [Laughs] Like, I don't want the fake version of you, I want you to be who you are as a person. I find that really cool and beautiful. That's why I was never attracted to weddings or family photos, ‘cause everyone wants to look their best and I'm like, “but that's not what you look like.” So, for me, it's like just really engaging with people and trying to look for people who are open to having a conversation and sharing about myself and what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.
What does success mean to you?
There's this editor for a magazine called Monocle that I heard speak, and he talked about his idea of happiness or success or whatever. It's not about getting rich quick, it's about becoming happy slowly. And that's very much my philosophy with photography, I'm in no rush. I think about somebody like Alec Soth. He put out Sleeping by the Mississippi when he was well into his thirties and people consider it one of the greatest American photo books of all time. If you're reading this and you haven’t picked it up, you need to. But, if I were to put something out and it was a super smash success at 35 and I had to keep that going for another 30 or 40 years, that sounds terrible. I'm very much okay with just being out here and making work quietly and then printing it slowly. Working full time is good, it helps me fund projects. I don't have to die trying to find a freelance gig to feed my family.
My kid’s learning how to ride a bike, he's doing a really good job. And just being a dad, I feel pride all the time. Artwork is great, and I’ve done some stuff that I’m really proud of, but, I don't know, seeing your kid do cool stuff is like, just the best.
That’s amazing, I can’t even imagine how that feels. What gets you excited?
I get excited about learning new things. I love digging into interesting things and learning new stuff. Photography started out as kind of like a random hobby. I was just interested in it and then I just bought a camera and started taking pictures. Now, 10 years and almost 2000 negatives later, I have this massive project that I’ve done.
Dream scenario in five years?
I guess it's just like continuing to make the work and hopefully people continue to resonate with it. I'm just gonna continue plugging away with printing and making more work and I have other projects that I've always wanted to do. So, I think maybe in five years having completed some of those things or moving on to those other projects and finding funding for those things would be the dream. Or, honestly, full-time photography would be unbelievable.
Sentence of advice for your younger self?
That’s hard, I like where I'm at in life. I was really into art and ceramics and painting. I was doing that in high school a lot and I just kind of quit. I gave up on that dream of doing artwork or cooking professionally, at one point I wanted to go to culinary school, and I just gave up on all that because I was like, “it's just not realistic.” So, looking back, I would encourage myself to just continue to pursue those things. I love where I'm at, so I wouldn't trade it, but who knows if I would’ve had a restaurant or what kinda cool things I’d be doing.
@andrew_cenci
andrewcenci.com
Ten of Andrew’s favorites.
Louisville, KY.
Photography & Interview by Isaac Barnett
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