From Penniless to Premier: Shaping LA's Top Photography School- #210: Julia Dean | Projecting L.A.

·1 hr·5 clips

Julia Dean's life changed when she became the last apprentice to pioneering photographer Bernice Abbott.

This episode of Finding Founders features an interview with photographer and educator Julia Dean, hosted by Samuel Donner. Dean begins by describing her childhood in Broken Bow, Nebraska, a small town of 3,500 people, and how receiving a camera at age 10 sparked her interest in photography. She studied journalism at the University of Nebraska to take photography classes, where mentor George Tuck encouraged her. After her father's death from brain cancer at age 21, she attended the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). At RIT, a history of photography class introduced her to Bernice Abbott, leading to a life-changing apprenticeship where she printed Abbott's work daily. Dean then embarked on a financially challenging career, taking various jobs like a whitewater rafting photographer and a baseball dictationist at the Associated Press in New York. She traveled extensively for documentary projects, often running out of money, such as in Guatemala where she sold film in a park. Dean eventually moved to Los Angeles in 1994, starting Julia Dean Photo Workshops from a loft with a $15,000 loan. The business grew, inviting more teachers, and after 14 years, she transformed it into the nonprofit Los Angeles Center of Photography (LACP) to sustain it, which offered up to 150 classes annually. Dean left LACP in 2021 to start The L.A. Project, which includes Projecting L.A., an outdoor exhibit projecting stories about Los Angeles onto a building in Chinatown. The exhibit features work from professional photographers, including Pulitzer Prize winners, and aims to secure corporate sponsorship for future iterations. Throughout, Dean emphasizes themes of perseverance, community building, and the importance of seeing light and beauty through photography.

As heard by us

A grounded career story about turning an unexpected opening into momentum through craft, patience, and instinct.

Julia Dean's path from RIT to the Associated Press gives this episode its clearest thread: careers often move forward through the nearby door, not the obvious one.

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Why you'd press play

You get a photography career lesson from a three-week Associated Press detour.

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