Nadia Sablin

Assistant Professor | Photography

State University of New York at New Paltz

Personal Narrative

Introduction | Philosophy

Photography for me has been a medium through which I understand and engage with the world.  It is also a form of storytelling, through which I share my explorations with others, encouraging understanding of remote cultures and empathy for the human experience.  My creative research takes me to difficult-to-reach places across the planet, where I return again and again to witness and record the personal histories which shape world history.  Shorter local projects give me the chance to keep up my connection with the editorial side of photography.

Since became a faculty member of SUNY New Paltz in 2016, my engagement with photography has been profoundly influenced by my teaching practice.  The anxiety with which my students anticipate the future makes clear the urgency with which a contemporary artist must respond to our reality.  Photography, being an indexical medium, can be used to complicate generalities, to provoke curiosity, and to spur involvement and hope.  My goal as an educator is to model and inspire in my students a depth of commitment to their artistic research and to encourage full participation in a creative community.

Becoming an established professional in my field and an engaged educator have been intertwined, as my artistic and pedagogical goals are the same.  I strive to be a worthy storyteller, a curious and kind teacher, and an attentive, ethical participant in public discourse. 

Mastery of Subject Matter | Creative Practice | Scholarly Ability

My MFA thesis project, Together and Alone was an exhibition of forty large environmental portraits of girls from the former Soviet Union and American women.  This series explored cultural displacement and gender expectations through the lens of personal identity.  I was utilizing photography’s capability to be simultaneously representative and highly subjective: in my project, I blurred the boundary between documentary and fictional storytelling through elaborate set-ups, digital manipulation, and deliberate misdirection of the viewer’s attention in images that appeared spontaneous and “truthful.”

Some of the people I photographed for that project became long-term collaborators and photographic subjects in my subsequent projects.  One of them, Years Like Water is a decade-long visual narrative about life in rural Russia, its everyday realities and changes caused by intensifying political tensions.  It’s also a meditation on memory, small town mythology and loss of innocence.  The project has been supported by fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation and it will be published as a book of the same name by Dewi Lewis in the spring of 2023. 

Another long-term project I have been working on, Last Day in Eden, has taken me to the northern Ural Mountains, where Nenets, Khanty and Komi tribes follow their reindeer for hundreds of kilometers, leading the same migratory existence as their ancestors have for thousands of years.  Working with one family since 2014, I have returned to the arctic in multiple seasons to learn about their life and challenges, especially with climate change affecting ancestral routes and daily life.   This series, as does most of my work, uses personal stories as a key to larger truths about global forces affecting us every day.  This approach allows for people to recognize elements of themselves in very different cultures, to relate and therefore to care.  I hope that by interpreting the world with a loving eye, I can encourage others to practice empathy.  Last Day in Eden series has been supported by SUNY’s Creative Research and UUP Individual Development grants, and I have presented the work in artist lectures at multiple universities as well as the Society for Photographic Education annual conference in 2018.

In 2021, I began photographing for the Washington Post on a freelance basis.  Working on editorial stories keeps me sharp, challenging me to create visually stimulating photographs on a subject chosen by someone else.  How does one portray a mid-size post-industrial city or a veteran trying to redeem himself after a misdeed?  How does one do it in under 10 hours on budget and on time without losing quality?  The skills I’m acquiring from this intensified way of working are especially relevant for my students, whom I encourage to make work quickly, bravely and to spec. 

In all my work, whether it’s a decades-long engagement or a two-hour shoot, I strive to represent others in a compassionate, empowering, complex, and honest way.  I have exhibited and presented my work internationally, including most recently in a group show at the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal, a Panel on Russian Photography at Social Documentary Network, an artist talk about Years Like Water at the School of Visual Art, and a panel on ethics in documentary work at Vassar College, among others.

Teaching Effectiveness

My goal as an educator is to inspire my students to create a meaningful path for themselves within the arts, and to provide them with the tools necessary for building a thriving photographic practice while engaging with their community.  These skills are invaluable in their future lives, sustaining them on multiple levels, including professional, intellectual, creative, and personal. 

 My strategy is to intertwine study of processes and technologies with the critical examination of how images function on a conceptual level.  Projects are designed to encourage self-discovery, problem-solving and critical thinking, as each student learns to express their ideas through the medium of photography and to position themselves in the context of current artistic discourse.  With a deep reverence for craftsmanship, I encourage each student to develop an individual voice within the field, whether they are more drawn to traditional approaches or to pushing the boundaries of the medium.  By having the concept drive the research, exploration of new methods becomes an intrinsic part of the process.  By exposing students to the history and the most recent evolutions of photography and engaging them in discussions on current issues in contemporary art, I foster an appreciation for the breadth of the photographic discipline and provide a strong foundation on which students can build their own creative practice. 

For the last five years, I have been teaching a 3/3 load to photo majors, art majors, and non-art majors in our Liberal Arts comprehensive university setting.  I’ve taught a gamut of photography classes, including Intro to Darkroom, Constructed Image, Advanced Digital Printing, Large Format, The Document, Undergraduate and Graduate Thesis courses among others.  In Independent Studies and graduate sections of courses, I have guided MFA candidates working in multiple disciplines, including performance, social practice, and video.   I have mentored students as my teaching assistants (TA) and through field work experiences, which often led to them gaining jobs after college.  Recent examples include Nicole Leonardo, who graduated in the first months of the pandemic and went from being an intern at Center for Photography in Woodstock that semester to becoming their current Operations Coordinator, and Leah Monsour, who was a TA in my first year of teaching, and is now a lecturer at Parsons School of Design.  Both continue to be practicing artists, releasing zines and exhibiting their work.

 My goal is to cultivate a curiosity about the world, which will motivate students to see their art practice as a life-long mutable process.  There can be no complacency in an artist’s life, and I make every effort to provide my students with tools to thrive in our transforming world.  As constantly changing technology is such a vital part of our medium, it’s essential that we develop an evolving relationship with how we engage it.  As students lost access to facilities during the first months of the pandemic, we switched to polaroid, camera obscura, and home-made film developers to continue working together.  Some of the methods we used then have altered long-term project and set the students on different trajectories within their creative work.  Often challenges encourage us to change entrenched thinking patterns and expand our worldview.  I encourage a risk-supportive space, in which experimentation and inclusivity creates a rich ground for innovative thought.

I have worked with students to plan, print, and install exhibitions of their photographs in such spaces as the GAMU gallery in Prague, the Dorsky Gallery in New York City, and SpacePlace gallery in the Siberian city of Tagil.  Locally, our students make their own opportunities for exhibiting their work online, on campus, and in the Hudson Valley community.  I encourage their independence, taking a background supportive role.

As an educator, I feel it is my responsibility to increase diversity in the field of photography.  I work toward that goal through opening dialogues on issues of social justice within the classroom, and mentoring artists from underrepresented groups.  Within my current job (and my current capabilities), I have changed the demographics of the voices our students encounter in the classroom.  Our adjuncts, guest speakers, and visiting artists now represent a much more varied group.  I have been striving to increase and support diversity within our student populations as well.  Only when we are inclusive of divergent perspectives can there be progress. 

Effectiveness of Service

Being an active member of art community on local, national and international levels is an important part of my teaching and my research.  At the program level, I work to provide opportunities for my students to become familiar with the contemporary art scene as well as exhibit their own work.  Together with my colleague, I plan and organize a semiannual photography program field trip to New York to see galleries, museums and visit artist studios.  I maintain a deadline calendar and post jobs, internship opportunities and links to interesting events on our program’s social media accounts as well as using those platforms to advertise our program.  I have acted as an advisor on multiple curatorial projects our students have undertaken regionally and internationally and liaised with the Solitary Watch organization to pair my students with prisoners in solitary confinement, who make image requests through the non-profit.  An exhibit of these works was on view at Photoville, an NYC annual photo festival that draws international attention.  I have brought numerous guest speakers and critics on campus, sometimes working with other departments to do so.

At the departmental level, I have served on Admissions, Graduate Committee, CurriculumCommittee, Scholarships and Exhibitions committees and the Printmaking Search Committee, and on the college-wide Educational Technology committee.  In addition to reviewing applications to the Art Department, every semester I participate in portfolio review events and represent the photography program during Open Houses. As a Graduate Coordinator for the photography program, I am the first contact for all our MFA candidates as well as the faculty member most involved in recruitment, promotion and retention of graduate students.

 Starting in the fall of 2020, I’ve served on the ad-hoc Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. Among other initiatives, the committee secured funding and significantly increased the library collection to include more authors of color, have surveyed alumni on their experiences in our institution, organized several interdepartmental events, and are currently assessing how to make our admissions process more inclusive.  Last year I signed up to be a mentor through a program that pairs faculty with first generation and other at-risk students.  It has been a rewarding and challenging experience.

I have been advising students since my second semester at SUNY New Paltz which often requires more than the understanding of the various degree requirements and the labyrinthine online portal.  I have found that many students are struggling with trauma and mental health issues. I undertook some steps to become more effective in providing appropriate support by regularly attending on-campus training workshops for faculty and researching the current mental health crisis on my own time.

I’ve applied for and received multiple Professional Development Grants and Individual Development Awards, which allowed me to attend and participate in regional and national SPE conferences, International Photo Festivals, and our students’ curatorial endeavors abroad.  These events keep me current with educational trends, help me promote our BFA and new MFA programs, network with colleagues, recruit students and bring information about contemporary photography directions back into the classroom.

Continuing Growth

There is little that excites me more than seeing a good photograph or an opportunity to make one.  Even as my long-term projects are coming to an end, I’m already beginning a new thread of research locally.  With Years Like Water published in the coming months, a big weight is being lifted off my shoulders.  I have been constantly thinking about and working on that project since 2008.  Even though the creation portion of the work is done, a successful photo book brings with it opportunities to speak about the photographs and exhibit them.  I’m already scheduled to present the project at the 2023 Society for Photographic Education annual conference, and I’m making plans to attend Photo London and the Rencontres d'Arles festival in France together with the publisher.

In the meantime, I have begun a new project documenting the Ukrainian diaspora in Kerhonkson, New York.  In the summer of 2022, I spent several weeks photographing a Folk-Dance workshop that meets there every year and culminates in a Ukrainian Culture festival. With the war Russia is currently waging in Ukraine, it would be unsafe for me to try to continue my work in either of those countries, as I have done for two decades.  I chose to pursue a related story in the US, looking at how culture is preserved, revered, and re-interpreted by an immigrant community.  Ukrainian patriotic sentiment is very strong, especially as their homeland is under attack.  I will continue to pursue this project, expanding its scope.

I have also been offered a spot at the Cill Railag artist residency in Ireland.  I plan to spend three weeks at this residency in 2023, working on a project involving family photo albums, folk medicine, and the process of grieving.  With the loss of my home country to fascist ideology and warmongering and the loss of a peaceful Ukraine where I have beloved friends and fond memories, my mind turns to repeating history, and the pursuit of peace and healing.  I would like to explore these subjects through a new approach and attempt to turn my gaze inward, rather than outward, as I have been doing in my documentary work.  I have applied for several other residencies as well, and am waiting to hear back from the selection committees.

Several of my photographs from the Last Day in Eden series will be exhibited in the Eyes on Main Street festival in Wilson, North Carolina in the fall of 2022.  I will continue to seek opportunities to show my photographs nationally and internationally and apply for grants to continue my research.

As an educator, I am in an interesting position.  With the retirement of long-time head of the photography area at New Paltz, my remaining colleague and I are planning changes to the program he designed and successfully led for 40 years.  Now that we have become a two-faculty program instead of three, it considerably changes how the curriculum can be successfully implemented.  We are looking at the current art world trends and their relationship to history, at our own eclectic interests within photography and the needs and interests of our students.  There is still much to be done to decolonize the existing paradigm and expand our students’ skill sets to prepare them for the contemporary world.  More engagement with arts institutions both locally and nationally seems possible again, as the pandemic becomes less deadly. We are committed to expose our students to multiple possible paths within the field of photography, to motivate them to engage with the world, to question the status quo, and to become flexible, confident practitioners of art.