For Giancarlos Kunhardt, his job is more than just work — it’s a glimpse into the industry he hopes to someday be a part of.

The sophomore art photography major works at Light Work, a community gallery and photography studio. Though it’s located on Syracuse University’s campus at the back end of Watson Hall, the non-profit community lab is an independent organization and is a resource for artists both on and off campus.

Kunhardt’s day-to-day responsibilities vary between shifts, but most of the time he’s managing the lab’s printers, ensuring that they’re in good condition for those who come in and use them.

“You would think printing is very easy. It’s not, especially when it comes to fine art printing,” Kunhardt said. “Presentation is really important … This is a staff that spends hours, days and months just trying to perfect one image — and that’s just for the color of a skin tone.”

As an aspiring fashion photographer, Kunhardt also gets experience by working as the director of photography for “Zipped” magazine. But being at Light Work since the beginning of this school year has allowed him to network with local artists and caused him to view fashion photography as less commercial and instead, more conceptual.

Once, Kunhardt said, he met an artist at a Light Work-hosted event who brought a 3-D image for submission. The artist also created the tool needed to view the image in 3-D, as opposed to, as Kunhardt said, “the red and blue things you’d get at a toy store.”

“I had never seen something like that before, and that actually inspired me,” he said. “There was something about that image that had a sense of fashion to it, but it wasn’t really a fashion image.”

Since then, Kunhardt has been trying to find the right balance between what he considers commercial fashion photography and fine arts fashion photography. He said his job has taught him the value and importance of presentation, allowed him to network with artists and observe how those artists critique their own work.

“As an artist, you can’t just look at your own work and say it’s perfect, because you did it. You need to learn ways that other people assess their work. It’s a way of acquiring other ways of critiquing your own art, because that’s how you get better.”

Published on February 24, 2016 at 12:01 am

Contact Clare: clramire@syr.edu