Images by Jack Dykinga, Interview by Miriam Stein Battles
With a heartrending portrayal of life inside state-run facilities for people with developmental disabilities, Jack Dykinga won a Pulitzer Prize for feature photography in 1971 at just 28 years old. For most, that would be a career-defining achievement.
For Dykinga, then a photographer with the Chicago Sun-Times, it was merely the end of the first chapter.
Not long after receiving the award, he and his wife traded the urban grit of Chicago for the open horizons of the Southwest, which would bring him peace after photographing difficult subjects for years.
Settling in Tucson, where he and his wife still live today, Dykinga turned to large-format nature photography. His landscapes — violent yet serene, meditative yet mind- bending, monumental yet delicate — radiate with stories and enlist viewers as witnesses to nature’s beauty. Dykinga’s work is celebrated as much for its ability to inspire and educate as it is for its artistic and technical excellence.
Wild Eye’s Miriam Stein Battles spoke with Dykinga about the intersection of art and photojournalism, the movie in his mind’s eye, and why photographing cranes isn’t all that different from covering ice hockey.
MIRIAM STEIN BATTLES: What first drew you to photography? And when did you realize it could be your life’s work?
JACK DYKINGA: You probably are all too young to remember Arthur Rothstein at Look magazine, but I won the high school photo contest when I was a sophomore, and he was one of the judges. That, plus being dyslexic and left-handed, I’ve always been a visual person. While other kids were reading, I was watching pictures.
MSB: How do you feel dyslexia affected your choice to be an artist?
JD: I hate the word “artist.” I think art is something that the next generation decides. I would consider myself a recorder, a documentarian of the times. And if I do that honestly and well, then I’ve succeeded.
Some people are born with a certain way of seeing. You see things, and your mind automatically is arranging a composition. I cannot turn off the movie. It’s the way I look at the world.
MSB: I hate to break it to you, but most of your colleagues would probably call your work art.
JD: Well, it’s nice.
MSB: It’s a compliment.
JB: I think that some people are born with a certain way of seeing. You see things, and your mind automatically is arranging a composition. I cannot turn off the movie. It’s the way I look at the world. If I’m going for a hike, I’m seeing all these juxtapositions as I walk.
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