Luke Wynne is an adjunct professor of photography at Moravian University. He graduated with honors from the New England School of Photography in Boston and has taught at Moravian for 11 years.
What inspired you to go into your field of study?
When I was a little kid, my father worked in advertising, so I was around creative people a lot. We also had a lot of books and magazines in my house, and around the age of 6 or 7 I remember finding a Life magazine retrospective on photography. One of those photographs was taken by Robert Capa, a Hungarian photographer with a strong personality who produced incredible photographs.
One of those photographs showed a Spanish loyalist soldier at the moment he was shot, falling backward with a rifle still in hand. As a kid, I thought he was dancing. As I got older, I saw the photograph again, read about it, and realized it was a seminal image that changed photography in general — not just war photography. I found him to be an incredibly poetic photographer, so that’s what started it.
What projects are you currently working on?
Every year my wife and I plan a couple weeks of vacation where we drive around and take photographs. There are so many people who have made their careers on beautiful landscapes. So instead of only capturing landscapes, in recent years I’ve been working on a photographic essay during these trips that explores how man and nature are entwined, not always to the benefit of each other.
What do you think is the most recent important development in your field of study?
Without a doubt, it’s AI. Not only in the field of photography, but photography is going to be the stepchild who gets out there first and fast just because you can implement it so quickly.
What job would you have if you couldn’t be a professor, regardless of salary and job outcome? Why?
I used to joke that before I got this job at Moravian I never had a job because I always worked freelance. So, I’d want to keep doing that. I think I just like to take pictures.
What do you know now that you wished you knew when you were in college?
That being a professional photographer takes more than just taking great pictures. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. I learned in Hollywood pretty quickly that getting a job was half the work — whether it was a reference from a makeup artist or some other way of getting in the door. You can’t take the pictures until you get the job.
What is your biggest student pet peeve?
I think all professors should hammer home the importance of time management. In photography, the more you do, the better you get. So, I try to tell students not to do things at the last minute. Some of you listen to me, some of you don’t.
What should students expect from your classes? What is the secret to succeeding in your classes?
I don’t take myself very seriously, but I take photography seriously. So, my students will sometimes hear about their photographs, and sometimes they don’t agree. Disagreements are fine.
There’s an old story — I believe it was one of the Bauhaus architects during the 1930s. He emigrated to the United States and started teaching at the New School in New York. His first lesson was that he picked up a piece of chalk and walked across a 50-foot-long blackboard and drew a perfectly straight line. Then, he turned to the class and said in a thick German accent: “When you can do that, then you can start breaking the rules.”
I want my students’ creativity to come first — but also to show them empirically when a photograph works better in a different way. I’m not doing that to hype myself up, but to impart knowledge. Hopefully they’ll see what makes sense.
What was the last streaming show that you binge-watched or the last good book that you read?
For books, I actually do a lot more reading of magazines now than books. For shows, “Bosch” — good camera work.
What is something interesting about you that most people don’t know?
I’m left-handed, and it’s not natural left-handedness. When I was little, my brothers accidentally chopped off my finger.
What led you to live in both Los Angeles and Italy?
My wife and I actually lived in New York, where she had her own fashion business, and she decided to pivot to working in film and needed to move to Los Angeles. I had just finished a big project, so I joined her, and we worked our way up in LA. I became an editorial photographer, and she advanced quickly in production.
When several of my art directors left town, I picked up freelance work shooting models and lighting gigs, and now-famous photographer Greg Gorman passed me some of his jobs. Soon after, I was offered my first film gig in Seattle, which gave me the portfolio I needed to break into film photography. From there, I spent about 20 years in film while my wife became a TV producer.
After years of long hours—she was working 60-hour weeks and I was often traveling—we finally decided to move to Italy when the chance came.
