Meet Fred Leavitt | Photographer and musician

We had the good fortune of connecting with Fred Leavitt and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Fred, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
For me it was a no-brainer. I am in the creative fields of photography
and hand drumming. I have never been on a salary. In photography. I made a portfolio and presented it to potential clients. I got assignment work built clientele; I then formed a business and incorporated.

In hand drumming, I created a N-F-P Primal Connection Inc. world rhythm percussion ensemble and educational organization. We got grants and paying gigs.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Nothing was easy in building a successful buisness. Persestence is required.

Fred Leavitt is a distinguished photographer and digital artist whose work is represented in museums across the country and the Vatican Collection in Rome. He has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, is in Kodak’s Encyclopedia of Photography and travelled the world on assignment for numerous magazines including National Geographic, Look and Life.

I have been a photographer for over 35 years. In that time I have photographed everything from Countess Albertini in a bathtub full of beer to Eskimos on the Arctic Slope. But no matter what I photographed I would strive for the full frame un-manipulated image. I would live for the rush I got when everything came together in the viewfinder and I heard the click of the shutter. If I had to crop, burn, dodge or make any alterations to the photograph I was never really happy with it.

Photography was an art form that had certain credibility to it, after all it used to be admissible as evidence in a court of law. It was important to me to keep the integrity of my subjects in the photographs. Timing and working with the realities of a physical world is what makes photography unique as an art.

The computer changed that. Photographs that I have made when all the elements fell in place to make a perfect moment have lost their integrity and half of their charm. They can now be suspect to digital manipulation.

This was no small loss to me. But as I started to learn digital technology I saw it as the next step in the photographic medium. I was no longer shackled to reality. I could wander my imagination (which I always rather enjoyed doing) and apply it to my photography.

Now I embrace the technology. It takes me a lot longer to create an image, as photography is only the first step (I use film and scan the negatives), and there is often more emotional turmoil involved. Take for example, The Seven Days of Creation, which involved shooting hundreds of rolls of film, 25,000 miles of travel, over 2,000 hours on the computer and a year to complete. The wrestling with concepts, going through the hundreds of rolls of film to find parts of photographs, manipulating and merging elements from as many as 68 different photographs to create one image, this was all new to me. And then there was the part of tearing the image up and starting over because it didn’t meet my expectations.

The old way was easier. I had the picture or I didn’t, there was no after-the fact-manipulation. Be that as it may, I can not go back to straight photography. Digital imaging is a new art form. Its traditions are being made today and I like that. But more than that, it offers the freedom to explore my unreality and apply it to my work. It enables the joy I experience when inspiration hits

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Onos and Dous Pitza resturants, View from Sears Tower, Lincoln Parl Lakefront, Field Museum, Museum of Science and Industry, a cruise up the Chicago River, The rest of the iterny would be decided by the interests of guest.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Heartland Cultural Alliance

Website: https://www.fredleavitt.com

Image Credits
Fred Leavitt