ON THE JOB: Jenkins has found the ‘art’ in photography

ALBANY — Photographer and business owner Adrian Jenkins doesn’t create art, he captures it. In fact, he has been capturing art on camera since someone gave him an old out-of-focus Polaroid back in high school.

“I attended Southside Jr. High,” Jenkins said. “As I was entering high school, a teacher gave me an old Polaroid camera that was being used for the school newspaper, but it was way out of focus. The pictures were always coming out too light, too dark and too blurry.”

Jenkins explained that he was asked to try and fix the camera because he knew local photographer Ben Cochran. Cochran had a studio in downtown Albany, and Jenkins had already begun spending time helping out around his studio after school and on weekends. Cochran saw the potential in Jenkins and soon became his mentor, employer and life-long friend.

“Ben Cochran was a renowned civil rights photographer,” Jenkins said. “He was the official photographer for the Albany Movement, and most of the photographs you see at the Civil Rights Institute in Albany were taken by him.”

Jenkins became Cochran’s protege’ and apprentice. He is quick to admit that most everything he learned about photography in his younger years came from Cochran and that little out-of-focus Polaroid.

Jenkins said he grew up helping small businesses located in what he calls the “Black Harlem District” of Albany. That is the cluster of small businesses around Jackson Street on the south side of Oglethorpe Boulevard. Jenkins Photography Studio is still located in that area today at 309 S. Jackson St.

His parents were educators with the Dougherty County School System, and his grandfather was a small business owner in the downtown Jackson Street area.

“Cochran Studio was on the corner of Highland and Jackson,” Jenkins said. “At that time, it was a record store, an ice cream shop and a photography studio. Mr. Cochran also had a home studio out in the country.”

Cochran helped Jenkins clean and adjust that little Polaroid camera and taught him how to use it.

“It was nothing fancy, but I ended up becoming the high school photographer using that camera. And that was the birth of it,” Jenkins said, referring to his long career in photography.

While in high school, Jenkins was in the band and played the trumpet.

“My goal was to get a music education degree and teach,” he said.

Jenkins continued to pursue both music and photography through high school and into his college career. Before graduating high school, he had already worked his way into a public relations job at Albany State.

“I did a little bit of everything, but mostly I did their photography,” Jenkins said. “I was getting my feet wet. At that time I was also working with Mr. Cochran.”

While working at Albany State, Jenkins said the college rebirthed its yearbook for the first time in 10 years. His photographs ran on nearly all of the publication’s pages.

“What eventually swayed me over to photography instead of music was the money,” he said. “I was already making good money as a photographer. While everybody my age was working at McDonald’s, I was making twice their pay and working half their hours.”

Jenkins started attending college at Albany State but soon switched over to the Art Institute in Atlanta, where he could focus specifically on photography.

“At that point, I was totally focused on the commercial side of the photography, not the art side,” he said. “My goal after graduation was to move north — maybe to Chicago. I thought I could work six months and then come back south for six months vacation.”

Entering the Art Institute, Jenkins said he was overconfident in his experience and his talent.

“I had my aha moment when I got there and discovered a wealth of kids who had tons of talent,” he said. “In Albany, I was it. But when I got to Atlanta I knew I had to buckle down, do more. There were so many others my age that were just as good and some were even better.”

Jenkins finished his studies and came back home to Albany. He went to work at WTSJ-TV, which now is owned by Fox. But he still devoted much of his spare time to working with Cochran.

“He was having health issues,” Jenkins said. “He was having me take over more and more of his business,”

In 1983, Cochran retired and sold his studio and all of his Albany Movement photographs to Jenkins.

“He gave me all the photos and the negatives,” Jenkins said. “I was glad to be able to preserve those pictures. Mr. Cochran was committed to his work during the civil rights era. Being a black photographer while all that was going on took courage and determination.

“My work as a photographer was birthed way back in school, but my work as a business owner was birthed right here.”

Jenkins’ studio is filled with all sorts of portraits and canvas works that look like paintings.

“I never thought of myself as an artist until recently,” Jenkins said. “In recent years, I’ve had crowning opportunities to showcase my work as art, and that has totally changed my perspective.”

That viewpoint changed or, rather, expanded in 2016 when Jenkins was invited by the Albany Museum of Art to showcase some of his work.

“In the 1900s, there was another portrait photographer from South Carolina named Richard Samuel Roberts,” Jenkins said. “Paula Bacon Williams from the Albany Museum of Art said my work reminded her of his work. That’s when I was invited to exhibit my work at the same time his was on display.

“His work was a very simple documentation of people in his community at tat time. We had the same style. It was interesting to compare our work with the 100-year time span and to see how much it was the same — just capturing people and life, then and now.”

This month Jenkins has some of his photos on exhibit at the Albany Area Arts Council as part of the “I Am a Man” exhibit. The exhibit, which is sponsored by Renaissance Connection, runs through March.

“This is the second time I have thought of myself as an artist,” Jenkins said. “I still think its all about capturing that perfect moment.”