JONATHAN CHERRY: What did you want to be growing up?
RACHEL RINEHART: A journalist. A scientist. A crime scene investigator (once I realized that the TV show CSI was a very poor representation of how that job would go I gave up on that one). A graphic designer. I changed my mind a lot. I have always been interested in a lot of things and I think photography was always what I knew I wanted to do from a very young age, but I also wanted to incorporate it in to all the other jobs I thought would be fun to have. I always knew I didn’t want to sit at a desk and do the same thing day in and day out.
JC: Who or what is inspiring you at the moment?
RR: Anything and anyone who isn’t blindly moving through life.
JC: What are you up to right now?
RR: I’m thinking about my next move while I edit some photos from a trip I just took across country.
JC: Have you had mentors along the way?
RR: My first photo teacher, Sean McFarland made me want to take more thoughtful photos and introduced me to a lot of inspiring photographers. (Namely Jim Goldberg who continues to astound me). I think that every photographer I’ve ever worked for or had a conversation with has been a mentor to me in some way, specifically Clinton Perry. He told me a very long time ago to never stop shooting, and as simple as that sounds, it has always stuck with me. Shoot more than you think you’ll need to. Shoot everything.
JC: Where are you based right now and how is it shaping you?
RR: I moved from Brooklyn back to the Bay Area about a year ago. It’s really interesting because I hadn’t lived here in seven years so I didn’t really have a lot friends here anymore. My relationship with photography has changed drastically as a result. In New York I relied a lot on my friends and their energy and creative collaborations and not having that has made my process much slower and more thoughtful. I spend a lot of time alone. I also consider who I surround myself with a lot more. Being somewhat isolated from shooting portraits all the time has made me more aware of subtle nuances in light and shadows and reflections. I think it has refined the way I look at things a lot.
JC: One piece of advice to photography graduates?
RR: Don’t graduate? Stay hungry. Keep shooting.
JC: If all else fails - what is your plan B?
RR: Plan A is - this is all a means to an end. I’m just going to keep going in a positive direction. I don’t believe in Plan B’s.
JC: Is it important to you to be a part of a creative community?
RR: The people that I generally gravitate toward are creatives, that doesn’t necessarily mean we are a community, but it is important for me to bounce ideas off of them or collaborate with them individually. I’m very lucky to have been friends with a lot of people whose work or style I respect and am able to watch evolve. When you can be open and honest with someone and give and receive constructive criticism it allows you to grow as an artist. Sometimes it’s not that what you’re doing is good or bad, it’s that you could be doing more with it or moving in in a different direction- and sometimes that’s hard to convince yourself of.
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