BIOGRAPHY
HOW DID YOU GET STARTED?
WHAT WAS A FAVORITE PROJECT?
WHEN DO YOU LIKE TO SHOOT?
WHAT EQUIPMENT DO YOU USE?
ANY ADVICE FOR ASPIRING PHOTOGRAPHERS?

Jim Lo Scalzo snapped the winning picture in TRAVELER’s Second Annual Photo Contest while traveling in India shortly after college. (See our March/April 1991 issue.) The portrait he took of a young girl in Peru garnered third place three years later. Despite a full portfolio and well-stamped passport, Lo Scalzo found it difficult to break into professional travel photography. So in 1992 he enrolled in the graduate program at the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia. After graduation it was sheer luck, says Lo Scalzo, that he landed a job at U.S. News & World Report. Now a staff photographer there, he covers breaking news and occasionally works the White House beat. Whenever he can convince his editors, he shoots travel assignments.

I’ve always had a real interest in travel. As a college student I was going to India in the summers to volunteer at one of Mother Teresa’s missions. I just enjoy taking pictures and saw it suddenly as something that would enable me—assuming I got a job as a professional photographer—to keep traveling.

In graduate school I went to the Navajo Nation in Arizona, someplace I had always wanted to go. I went there without having any contacts. It was winter. The weather was really bad. It was very hard at first to meet people, because people weren’t even outside! But I did meet a guy in Window Rock and told him about my project. He let me stay at his trailer in back of his property and photograph him. From then on it wasn’t a problem, because he knew somebody who knew somebody else.

I lived with five families between January and April. One family—I lived with them for about a month—was really poor, with ten people in one little trailer and nobody working. Another was a traditional Navajo family who were living in a hogan, a traditional Navajo home. I needed a place to stay. Living with the families meant I could be with them constantly.

I’m not one of those guys who always has a camera around his neck. I remember my first three days staying with the second family I spent just in the woods cutting wood. Maybe I took some pictures. But more of it was just being a part of it.

I did chores with all the families, driving them into Gallup to get groceries or helping to build a hogan—you know, just to assume a role within the family that was functional. I was able to document, but I was also able to have these other experiences. And that’s important to me. It was never like, “Try and act natural,” because we sort of bonded to begin with.

My photo project developed into a project on the Navajo’s attempt to balance two worlds: the Native American tradition and modern American society. There’s a word for it in Navajo called hozo, which means balance.

One of my photographs was of kids playing Nintendo in the hogan. The modern world is constantly encroaching. Still, they’re able to balance these two worlds. I have a funny picture of a Navajo sweat. You see these guys all nude rolling in the sand, and there are all these pickup trucks in the back!

The pictures that were most effective showed how alive Navajo culture actually is. Butchering up a goat, listening to spiritual healers, or building a hogan in Monument Valley—these scenes could have happened 300 years ago.

I love shooting early in the morning and late at night, but also in the middle of the day. It’s a totally different mood. The light comes directly from above, making extremely bright colors and extremely dark, moody shadows. I can never have enough black. I think it’s wonderful when you have those great shadows that you can play with.

I shoot all Nikon and all Fujichrome. When I’m on travel assignments I find I use really wide lenses like 16- or 20-mm. That and a really tight lens, like a 300-to-500-mm. Both lenses do interesting things to landscapes—showing both extremes—and look awesome when played against each other.

You’ve just got to shoot a lot of pictures. That’s all there is too it. Everything you learn can be thrown to the wind when you’re actually in the environment shooting. Different situations develop. Film reacts differently. Technique is something you’ve got to acquire.