Community Magazine August 2016

60 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE Style SPIRIT & FORTHEWOMANOFTODAY KELLY JEMAL MASSRY AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWWITH SUSAN MENASHE “Photography is like an onion,” says famed community portraitist Susan Menashe. “You never get to the core of the onion; you’re always peeling away at it.” Perhaps that is why Susan is so good with a camera. She has an innate respect for the medium itself – for how multilayered it is. One doesn’t just glance at a Susan Menashe picture – one studies it, pulled in to its depths. To Susan, there truly is something soulful about photography and it’s what drives her work. She takes every picture with a sense of gratitude for what she, as a photographer, has the power to do – freeze time, makememories, capture spontaneity, document legacies. “Whatever you decide to pursue, make sure it’s something lasting,” Susan advises. “And what’s more lasting than photography?” Indeed, pictures hold such a sense of permanence for us that, often, after a loved one has passed from this world, it’s the framed picture on the mantel that serves as homage, a reminder of the once vibrant past. Susan prides herself on preserving people as they once were, with photographs that are so true to form that they substitute our memories of that person. “I’ve been photographing the elderly for at least 20 years,” says Susan. “These people aren’t going to be here forever, and when they’re gone, the picture of them almost becomes the memory.” Because after all, “You forget your memories – but you remember your pictures.” Viewed often enough, photographs become something not just taken in with the eyes but imprinted on the heart. No wonder Susan feels so blessed to be in this career. Susan has been conducting photo shoots for over 30 years and she is widely regarded as one of the best in our community. When she first started out in 1986, she photographed exclusively in black and white and carried a large 35-millimeter camera. She then went on to a two and a quarter Hasselblad. She’d spend hours and hours in her darkroom, laboriously developing the film and printing the pictures. Now? “Now I see the light of day!” she says. “And now everyone’s a photographer!” Of course, there’s a difference between snapping a picture with an IPhone and setting up behind a camera to take a lasting professional picture. When asked about her “process,” Susan stresses the technical aspect of photography. “Learn your craft and then focus on the person,” she advises. “Today,” she says, “I don’t even think about it. I just do it. If you get so bogged down in technique, you miss the moment.” And sometimes, she does miss it – either because the subject is not cooperative or because none of the photos come from that place deep inside that Susan tries to target. But she is nothing if not persistent. “I go back again and again until I get it,” Susan says. There’s a purity to her method, a suggestion that she does it for the sake of what’s being captured, rather than for the money or for her own sense of ego. This explains Susan’s decision to step away fromcommercial accounts andmagazinework. For a time, she photographed for various magazines and the New York Times, but she found herself perennially dissatisfied. “At first you think it’s so prestigious,” she says, “but then the magazine comes out and a month later it ends up in the garbage. I’m not leaving anything behind.” For