Angela Wyant finds herself drawn to “things that have stories to tell, but no people to tell them.” She keeps an eye out for vacant gas stations, diners, barbershops, and farms, as well as industrial settings. She finds meaning in public and personal spaces, and in open landscapes.
Wyant’s interest in photography began almost grudgingly during her college years in the San Francisco Bay area, when she took some photo classes and began exploring her talent for photography. The exploration led her to The Art Center of Pasadena, where she honed her skills and developed her style in black-and-white and documentary photography.
Angela’s clients include Fast Company, Sunset, Los Angeles Magazine, MCA Records, and Nike. Her work as been most recently featured in “Thirty Under Thirty,” a Photo District News article featuring outstanding twenty-something photographers. Angela signed with Stone in 1999, where more than 100 of her images can be found.
creativepro.com: How did you become a professional photographer?
Angela Wyant: After high school I wasn’t planning to go to college, but my parents insisted. Even though I had never owned a camera before, I said, “OK, I’ll study photography.” I totally fell in love with photography when I printed my first black-and-white print. One of my fellow students got accepted to The Art Center, a college of design in Pasadena [California]. I’d never heard of it, but I applied anyway and got accepted. I got a few jobs while I was in school, and it just snowballed from there.
creativepro.com: What was your inspiration for your early work?
Angela Wyant: The first photos I ever saw that really stopped me in my tracks — I was emotionally moved by them — are the photos from U2’s Joshua Tree album. That was my first inspiration even though I’d never owned a camera. My inspirations to keep going were Walker Evans and Robert Frank. My personal work reflects that [inspiration] — my personal work is really all black and white, while my professional portfolio contains the color work that I’ve been assigned.
creativepro.com: Your current work is often stark and impersonal — there are very few people in your pictures; why is that?
Angela Wyant: People to me cause chaos. I love composition, but you put a person in the picture and that totally throws off the composition. (Laughs) Something about the human form… I don’t know. I’ll do portraits of people, but for me, when you get too many things in the photograph it causes chaos. I prefer clean lines.
creativepro.com: Your diner series seems to be telling a melancholy story. Is it?
Angela Wyant: When I shoot something, I simply capture what happens. What I see is what you get. I could have changed the lighting, I could have printed it different, but I don’t do that. I’m not going to alter the final product. I think the diner was just so strange. It’s like people just locked the door and left one day. I don’t think Robin Wallace, the art director I work with, was going for a melancholy feel, but she definitely knows how I shoot. She said, “Just go in there and do what you do.”
creativepro.com: I guess it’s safe to say that you don’t do digital enhancement?
Angela Wyant: Not at all. It’s horrible! I print all of my work myself. I love being in the darkroom.
creativepro.com: Do you always work with an art director or only on special assignments?
Angela Wyant: When I do assignments, such as for Stone, I always use Robin Wallace [as an art director].
creativepro.com: So none of your work that we see at Stone is spontaneous?
Angela Wyant: Some of it is. For instance, the Man & Woman Walking and the Jetty are personal works that I did from college and when I was just out of Art Center.
creativepro.com: Your Stone collection features a lot of airplanes, some cars, a cargo ship. What is it about these things that draws you?
Angela Wyant: Oh, I love industrial stuff, shooting airplanes and cars and stuff. Again it’s the clean lines you find there. I love graphic elements. Stuff like that is easy to shoot, it’s fun to shoot, and you can do so much with it. I just love the silence all around me when I’m shooting stuff like that.
creativepro.com: How did you come to photograph jumbo jets? How do you gain access to a commercial airliner and the hangar?
Angela Wyant: My father works for United Airlines. It’s usually very hard to get into these kinds of places, but I just called my dad up and he got the ball rolling. So that’s how that happened. Very lucky!
creativepro.com: Another segment of your Stone images seems to have moved indoors, into a more personal space, such as an apartment or home. What is your inspiration here?
Angela Wyant: When I first started with Robin we did a shoot called Household Mishaps — spilling coffee, dropping pizza. Before that my work had no human element in it, it was just objects. So Robin said, just put a person in it and shoot. Then we did another one called Home Exercise, part of a series of things that happen at home.
creativepro.com: Among nearly 100 images on the Stone site, there’s only one landscape — a wheat field. Apparently nature isn’t a big inspiration for you.
Angela Wyant: Oh, but I have tons of that stuff. I guess that’s just not represented in the Stone collection. I’m really proud of that particular picture. My grandmother grew up right near that wheat field in Bakersfield, so it means a lot to me.
creativepro.com: Who do you think your audience is?
Angela Wyant: I think my work is really for everybody. They’re very simple to read — even though I’ve been told that that’s really a horrible thing. You don’t have to wonder, “What was she thinking?” The assigned work is definitely trying to target a specific audience. For instance, the exercise series is geared toward a health magazine.
creativepro.com: How do you expect your work to evolve in the next few years?
Angela Wyant: For me it’s just growing and improving that I look forward to. I’m not an idea person; I don’t conceptualize. All my life I’ve just driven around and said, “Ooh, that’s cool!” and I jump out and shoot it. With the work I do for Stone, Robin and the stylist will find a location and set everything up. I just walk in and start shooting.
creativepro.com: So it seems that art direction is a critical element for you.
Angela Wyant: Definitely, when it comes to the work I do for Stone. But otherwise I’ll just be somewhere and shoot what I see.
creativepro.com: So where would you be out shooting now if you weren’t doing assigned work?
Angela Wyant: Probably down in Gilroy (California) shooting the garlic harvest. I mean, I have hundreds of cow photographs. (Laughs) I just have this romanticized vision of farming. I’d probably drop dead after one day of actually working a farm, but there’s something I just love about Americana.
Read more by Marty Beaudet.
This article was last modified on March 12, 2022
This article was first published on June 13, 2000
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