Two seniors — Anastasie Prokhorova and Louisa Stephens — recently were awarded Watson Fellowships for a year of study abroad. Following is a profile of Stephens; Prokhorova will be featured in an upcoming issue.
While a freshman at Union, Louisa Stephens '01 read an article about Zane Riester '97, who won a Watson Fellowship to photograph similarities between train stations and cathedrals. “I'd like to do that someday,” she remembers thinking.
Someday is now for Stephens, who was awarded a Watson for a proposal titled “Photographic Explorations: Pursuing the Sun.” The one-year, self-directed travel fellowship carries a $22,000 stipend.
Stephens plans to take photographs during maximum summer sunlight in five countries: Peru, Argentina, Greece, Sweden and Portugal. “In my portfolio, there is a strong element of sunlight,” she says. “Any photographer will tell you that light is important. It enlivens every picture. But it may be even more so with me.”
Stephens, a native of Framingham, Mass., grew up in a darkroom, so to speak. Her father, an accomplished hobby photographer, would let her sit on a stool in the corner of his darkroom (“as long as I was still”). She further cultivated her love for photography as a student at Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Mass.
But the economics major and computer science minor didn't take any photography classes at Union until just this year, when she took Photo II and the history of photography (which she is taking this term). And it was Prof. Martin Benjamin who encouraged her to include a portfolio of her works with her written proposal for the Watson.
Stephens brings two cameras when she travels: a “point-and-shoot” with color film for the “normal tourist pictures,” and a manual camera with black and white film for her artistic work.
“Other tourists ask me, `Why do you have your camera pointed at the ground when there is this amazing landmark in front of you?'” she says. “Often, you can't even really tell what country they are in. But it's about little details: pebbles in a road, part of a fence. I'm often more interested in details than the broad picture. It's cool that you can find things that people overlook.”
Stephens favors abstracts over photos of people and landscapes. Of her work, she says, “You have to look twice to know what you are looking at … you have to say, `what is that exactly?'”
Describing her Watson as “open-ended,” Stephens says she wants to give herself some flexibility. “I don't want to close myself into a box and then get there and find out I can't do it.”
Stephens has traveled to England, where her grandparents live, and to Canada. But it was a term abroad in Belgium last year and the travel she did by herself and with friends that most impressed the Watson committee, she said. “I wouldn't have applied for (the Watson) if I didn't have that experience,” she says. “It was a real confidence booster.”
After the Watson, she hopes to do consulting work with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Boston. She did an internship and training program with the firm (arranged through Ron Kinghorn '90), but deferred an employment offer to do the Watson.
Of her career plans, she is sure about one thing: she doesn't want to be a professional photographer. “I don't like people telling me what to shoot.”