#melissa lyttle

[fliegender]

Melissa Lyttle, Dr. Odile Madden, of the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles, holding a piece of degrading plastic for use in trying out new methods of preservation, 2018, for the NYT story These Cultural Treasures Are Made of Plastic. Now They’re Falling Apart.

[apadblog]

5 Questions for Melissa Lyttle

Melissa Lyttle is a photojournalist at the Tampa Bay Times newspaper in St. Petersburg, Fla. She started APhotoADay nearly 15 years ago, as a conversation between two friends; APAD now has over 2,500 members on its listserv and inspirational annual get-togethers for its members. She believes in the power of community journalism and of the importance of community amongst fellow photographers. (She was interviewed by Eve Edelheit, whom she first met when Eve was one of her students at the Eddie Adams Workshop. She mentored Eve during her internship at the TBTimes, and is proud to call Eve the newest TBTimes staffer.)

She can be found: on the WEB | on twitter | on Instagram | on tumblr.

1. You originally went to school to become a veterinarian. Why did you decide to study photography and ultimately become a photographer? How have those original principles transformed over your career or stayed the same?

I love animals, and always thought that’s what I wanted to do. I went to community college for two years to save up money so I could transfer to Auburn, which has a great large animal vet school. But that last semester of my second year, I was up to my eyeballs in upper-level math and science classes, and I needed a break. The only elective that fit my schedule was a black-and-white-photo class and it did something for me that biology and calculus weren’t doing. It opened up some part of my brain that had been dormant.

I didn’t know what to do with it, other than to keep pursuing it. I had no idea how to make a living at it, but I did have some idea that newspapers needed photographers, and I knew that the University of Florida (right down the road from where I grew up in Jacksonville, Fla.) had a great journalism school. Figured I’d start there.

The cool thing about UF was their emphasis on internships -- you have to do a practicum, or a one-week internship, for credit almost immediately. And then you have to have a 3-month internship for college credit to graduate. Once I got into an actual newsroom and, more importantly, out into the community, I was hooked. I just remember thinking, wow, you can get paid for this…?!

Sometimes you have to listen to that whisper and just hope it puts enough wind in your sails to carry you somewhere cool.

Ever since then I've been guided by idea of community: Covering the one I serve to the best of my ability, in hopes of making a difference in it, and also trying to gather a bigger, better photo community around me for support. 

2. What drives you to be a community storyteller? Is there a story (or two) that sticks out in your mind as a defining moment in your career that helped you focus your passion for stories in your community? 

As soon as I realized that my pictures were being used to champion causes and bring attention to the underprivileged and underserved — as cliche as it sounds, being a voice for the voiceless is pretty empowering. 

The Girl in the Window is the obvious choice. When that story went viral, we learned that not only were people offering to support the family, but they were also calling adoption centers in greater numbers, and they were deluging the newspaper with letters to the editor about changes the story had made. It was overwhelming.

3. Beyond the hours you put in at the Tampa Bay Times, you spent a lot of time strengthening the photojournalism community. Why is the APAD community important and how has it evolved over the years? How have you used social media to bring photographers together?

I started APAD about 15 years ago, when I was fresh out of college and desperate to reconnect with classmates and recreate the community we had in school. Pretty quickly, it evolved from a daily email exchange between two friends, to five, to ten... From there it spread to friends at the University of Missouri, and Ohio University, and University of Georgia… Then I started getting emails from people I’d never met saying they'd heard about this thing and asking if they could join. There are about 2,000 people on the listserv now, from all over the world, and from all walks of life.

As the listserv grew, I wanted to get to know the people I was having conversations with, but had never actually met. So one Fourth of July weekend, about a dozen of us gathered in D.C. and camped out in David Holloway's basement, where we spent many caffeine-fueled late nights talking about photography and pushing each other to think bigger. We went out en masse and made pictures and pushed each other to take risks. Finding that family of like-minded folks was life-changing. Since then, we've been getting together for ten years, each time in a different city and with different speakers. By now, we have roughly 100 people attend. It's pretty awesome to see how it's grown. 

Every time I think about walking away from it… taking a break… doing something new… not being tied to it (because it is work, sometimes)… I get an email like this:

I wanted to thank you for what you do here. Seeing my photo out front today was a needed boost. I have been going through a lot the last week or so and it meant a lot to feel some support from this community today. I'm glad this place exists, and I hope it continues for a long time.

...reminding me that it’s doing for others what it did for me. And reinforcing why it's important and needs to exist.

As far as social media goes, I guess listservs were the original social media, right? So we were ahead of the curve. Now we’ve got a pretty solid twitter following @apadtweets and a tumblr devoted to sharing and promoting the great work that’s out there. 

4. You've helped launch countless careers within our community through mentorship. Why is having a mentor important for younger photographers? And what have you learned about yourself as a mentor? You use the hashtag #dearyoungphotographer to alert up-and-comers to some of the common missteps they should take pains to avoid.  What are some of those and did you learn any of them from personal experience?

I see where the industry has been heading over last decade or so and it's a time of huge uncertainty. I think a lot of times newspapers are so desperate to get cheap help (interns), that they throw them to the wolves and expect them to figure everything out on their own. There's a point in a photographer’s life — when you’re finishing school and finding your first job — that's crucial to your development, and I want to support people through that. 

We get a ton of great young photographers through our doors at the Times, and a lot is asked of them. But because of time constraints and daily demands, etc, they don't get a lot of answers. So I see it as my role to take what they've learned in school and help them apply it to real world scenarios, but also to push and prod them a bit and say, great you graduated… you got yourself here… but you’re not done. Now what? And more importantly, why?

I’ve learned over the years that I’m a decent mentor, mainly because I give a shit. But I’ve also learned that mentoring is a two-way street. I’m busy with my own work and life… the best mentor-mentee relationships happen when there’s desire on both sides to see improvement. And the push is certainly greater and the growth more evident when the mentee wants it as badly as I do. The general philosophy I have on mentoring is that it’s not my goal to shape everyone into a version of myself, but to help push them to be the best versions of themselves.

The Dear Young Photographer posts started almost as a joke - and a way to vent on twitter. I’m involved in enough conferences and workshops and photo-related things that I feel like I have a steady stream of material to draw from. Sometimes I hear young photographers say things like “I only shoot pictures to win contests” and I just want to shake them. That would definitely be one method of reaching them, so too is public humiliation and biting honesty. That way others can learn from it, too, because I know if one is thinking it, others are as well. 

5. When someone looks at your work, what do you hope they take away from it? 

A sense of empathy, wonder, outrage, curiosity… Really good photos touch the heart and the mind. And hopefully, if a photo is successful, it raises a few more questions than it answers. I think my best photos all have a piece of me hidden somewhere in them. Regardless, of what they teach you, there’s no such thing as objectivity. So I secretly hope someone will take away a sense of who I am as a human being by looking at my work.

[thewhyproject]

The best camera is the one that you have with you.

Melissa Lyttle

[mills]

Dani Lierow was so severely neglected for the first seven years of her life that some consider her a feral child; the original story of her rescue, recovery, and adoption was both shattering and arresting; it is impossible not to wonder at the silent interior world of an unsocialized mind, a mind both human and not:

She wouldn't make eye contact. She didn't react to heat or cold — or pain. The insertion of an IV needle elicited no reaction. She never cried. With a nurse holding her hands, she could stand and walk sideways on her toes, like a crab. She couldn't talk, didn't know how to nod yes or no. Once in a while she grunted …

[T]he scene at the house, along with Danielle's almost comatose condition, led [doctors] to believe she had never been cared for beyond basic sustenance. Hard as it was to imagine, they doubted she had ever been taken out in the sun, sung to sleep, even hugged or held. She was fragile and beautiful, but whatever makes a person human seemed somehow missing…

The most extraordinary thing about Danielle… was her lack of engagement with people, with anything. "There was no light in her eye, no response or recognition… We saw a little girl who didn't even respond to hugs or affection. Even a child with the most severe autism responds to those."

A follow-up report by Melissa Lyttle, who took the photo above, details her progress with her extraordinary adoptive parents:

Three years later, Dani, now 12, has grown physically and emotionally. She's a foot taller and clearly responsive to her dad's affection. She hugs him back, kisses him and playfully bites his nose.

The photographs are quite moving; the Lierows seem like heroes.