I first discovered Jessica Dimmock during the Fabrica/Forma photography competition for Concerned Photography. And I was damn pleased when she won the award. Concerned photography is a fine description of Jessica's work. Her photos, especially The Ninth Floor series, are ghostly and beautiful.

Chief Magazine: So if you could just introduce yourself?

Jessica Dimmock: Introduce myself?

Yeah.

Ok well, I am from New York and I was a teacher, after I graduated from college, for three years. I was a public school teacher. And photography was always kind of my big passion, and I hated teaching, so I quit and went back to school for photography a couple years ago, but the International Center of Photography ended their program in documentary photography.

And what did you study in college?

I studied sociology and anthropology, and I studied some photography, but it wasn’t my major. Then I got my masters in education while I was teaching, because I did a program in New York [that] put you through your masters basically for free. I did that and then I went back to ICP after that.

So was teaching sort of a means to get your degree and make some money?

Teaching was like... like domestic Peace Corps. I figured I was out of college and I had done anthropology, and I didn’t necessarily think I would use that, and I didn’t really know what I would do, and teaching was kind of a thing I could do at the time, but I knew I wouldn’t be a teacher forever. I did it for like three years, and then I was like, “Fuck this.”

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So was three years the time frame you thought you would be doing it? Or was there a breaking point where you were like, “Fuck it. I can’t do this.”?

I thought I would do it a little bit more, because it’s bad money for a career, but it’s good money when you’re young. I was making more money than most of my friends. And especially when you get your masters, it’s not terrible and you have these amazing vacation schedules. So you work 180 days a year and then I would basically just travel all the time. I thought I would do it a couple more years but it was just—I hated it. It was awful. I was like, “I can’t do this. I cry too much. I’m really miserable.”

Because of the students? The school system?

Yeah, mostly because of the school system. Then that kind of just gets played out, you know, through the students, but it’s mostly just the way that the New York public schools' system is run. It’s very oppressive and it's very overbearing, and you know, a lot of testing, and a lot of regimented behavior. So that’s frustrating to teachers, and that’s frustrating to the students. Then you just fight all the time. I didn’t like that.

So what was your first step into documentary photography then?

I guess going to ICP—well no. I mean, as a kid I had done photography. My dad worked at the New York Times, for 37 years or so, as a... in random printing operations. So you know, he wasn’t a journalist and he wasn’t a photographer, but that was kind of the “texture” that was laid down already? We were really involved in newspapers. Like he would bring home the front pages on certain days when some amazing event had happened. He would bring home the aluminum sheet that the newspaper is printed from. So it was just like a culture where we kind of talked about the media and looked at images, indirectly, you know, not so obviously.  So my first camera came from [my father], when I was young. And one of his friends, who I think is still there, also gave me an enlarger when I was in middle school. When I was in high school I would do little projects that I would develop in my bathroom while like my friends were doing other things. And it would be like no ventilation, you know. [She laughs.] Towel under the door to block out the light, door shut, not thinking, for just hours and hours and hours printing in there. And I really loved it. So I did little like documentary-style projects as a teenager and then also in college, and then more formally at ICP.

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Sure. You mentioned traveling earlier, and having looked at your portfolio... Were you traveling for these projects? Or just traveling and the projects just kind of came about?

When I was a teacher I was just traveling, and part of the reason—and I don’t remember entirely, but I think I remember saying to myself, before I became a teacher—part of the reason was like, “Well, I’ll have all of this free time and I can shoot. I can work on photography and try to figure out how to do that.” And I never picked up a camera. When I would travel, I wouldn’t even bring a camera. It was like that part of my brain completely shut off for three years. But before then, in college, I had gone and I had spent a semester in Kenya, and I had done a project there. I taught at a school and I photographed my students, and I had kind of done a project out of that. I didn’t go to, like, an art school. It was kind of a liberal arts college, so....

Where did you go?

Lewis and Clark. Portland, Oregon... The guy that ran the photography department was really into it. I got some money to print the show and have a little exhibition, and frame it and stuff like that. So it was like these little things here and there, photography related, that kind of would come about, but it was very casual. It wasn’t like “This is my passion!”

Sure.  Would you say that it is now?

Yes.

Was there a definitive moment or turning point when photography became the trump card?

Yeah, when I went to ICP is when it changed. Once I started taking classes, when I applied to their full time program and I got in, and I was all excited and I was like [Gasp], “Oh my god. They’ve made this total mistake. I’ve gotten in on a fluke and I’m going to go, and I’m going to discover that I just have no idea how to take photographs.” You know like, “They’re going to kick me out,” or “I’m going to like fail.”  Then I got really panicked because I hadn’t photographed in awhile. I was like, “What makes me think I can go and do this full time?” But then once I started actually attending that program and I got into it, I was like “This is the thing.”

Sure. So what was it about the program, or maybe about ICP that changed you? I mean is it changing like a way of thinking, or is it your peers, or...?

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I think it was just having the guidance to get into work and just only do that. And just having very high standards about it, and having a very critical environment about it. And not so much, necessarily, that everyone else was, but for me something clicked in my head where I was like, “If I’m going to do this, I have to really do it. I can’t just float through and get by. This has to be what I’m obsessed with. I have to be doing this like 16 hours a day, because it’s just a hard world to try to survive in.”  And so it was something about just the discipline of constantly doing it. Also because I found a project that I really liked, and then I was just kind of very compelled to keep at it, I found meaning right away.

And that was The Ninth Floor?

And that was The Ninth Floor, yeah.

So you weren’t living in the building?

No.

And that was over how long?

The project was three years.

Throughout your duration at ICP.

The first year happened at ICP and then, once I graduated that program, I stuck with it for another two years.