Rob Stephenson • From Roof to Table
Please introduce yourself: what’s your name, where are you from, what do you do?
My name is Rob Stephenson, I live in Fort Greene, Brooklyn New York with my wife and 2 kids. I work as a photographer and run my own drum scanning and archiving service out of my studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
What is your relationship with photography? How did you get into it & and what keeps you interested/ motivated?
I had various film P&S cameras as a kid that I messed around with and was gifted a really early digital camera in the late 90s. I think it was around 2 megapixels. Soon after, I upgraded to a slightly nicer dslr, and eventually transitioned to shooting with a view camera. I worked for Joel Meyerowitz for several years and that experience really intensified my relationship with photography and led to what I am doing today.
Tell me about your project „From Roof to Table“, what was the driving force behind creating it? What was your intention, and how did you come up with the Idea?
From Roof to Table was the final result of a year long project documenting New York City’s urban agriculture movement. The project was made possible thanks to a fellowship from the Design Trust for Public Space, a non profit that seeks to study and improve public space usage in NYC. My mandate was to create a document of the different approaches to growing food in the city. Much of my work looks at the transitioning spaces in the city, places that juxtapose past and future, or nature and civilization and these lush, fertile pockets on rooftops or under subway tracks were the perfect subject.
What are you currently working on, and – if there is – what is your next project/ journey?
I’m reluctant to define my next project, though I have been shooting quite a bit recently. I continue to canvas the outer boroughs of the city and have am exploring a couple of themes that that are slowly coalescing into a more finished form.
