photo: Steven Meckler
Photographer: Steven Meckler
Years Downtown: 26
Specialty: Commericial
Favorite Subject: Environmental Protraits
Steven Meckler’s soft Brooklyn accent comes through even after 28 years of living and working in downtown Tucson. “My father ran a business here and offered me a job,” he explains while giving a visitor a tour of his Armory Park home studio.
A photographer with a deep appreciation for fellow Tucson artists in all mediums, Meckler enthusiastically fields questions about the works adorning his studio walls, his take on digital versus film and generally, how he does what he does.
“I do general commercial photography – everything from people to food to architecture,” Meckler continues. “But my favorite stuff to shoot is environmental portraits.”
His book, Tucson Artists, is full of prime examples. Published in 1995 by Black Spring Books, its pages contain portraits of photographers, painters, sculptors and more in their unique working and living spaces.
Meckler’s state of the art studio sees about 50% of his overall business.
“I’m international now, you know,” he offers with a wink. He recently was contracted by Louis Vuitton of Istanbul to shoot an exotic-looking female astrophysicist for an ad.
“I work for agencies, design firms, magazines … It can be a challenge sometimes to keep it interesting if there’s a set idea in a designer’s mind. That’s where the art of collaboration comes in.”
An avid community participant, Meckler juggles his busy career with involvement in a few Tucson non-profits and teaching digital photography at PCC.
“Whether you’re shooting film or shooting digitally, what makes a good photo is still exactly the same thing,” he says about the digital medium. “With digital, the level of control you have is amazing.”
Meckler moved to his current location on 4th Avenue south of Broadway in 1990. Before that, he was just around the corner, near the old Pioneer building. He’s seen lots of changes to Tucson and is grateful to have photographed places and people that have since vanished.
“The Rialto building had these funky apartments upstairs,” he recalls while flipping through some photos from a new personal project he’s been working on for the past few years.
The project is a collection of photographs of Tucson musicians, some were shot in those Rialto apartments, another in the old waiting room at the train station. Is there anything he hasn’t shot yet that he really wants to?
Meckler grins. “I know she dissed us, but I’d love to get Linda Ronstadt for the book.”
Meckler’s online home is MecklerPhotography.com.
