Lanya Snyder ’08

Lanya Snyder transferred to Bard from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts halfway through her sophomore year. During the summer after her first year at NYU, when she was working as an assistant to the artist Vik Muniz, she struck up a conversation with a recent Bard graduate. “I mentioned to him that although I wasn’t particularly unhappy at NYU, the size of the place made me feel like I had to fight with a computer to get into the classes that I really wanted to take. And he said, ‘You should visit Bard.’” Snyder, who’d been studying film at NYU but had been thinking about switching to photography, didn’t waste any time—she drove up from Manhattan and met with Stephen Shore (Susan Weber Soros Professor in the Arts, and director of the Photography Program). She liked what she saw and heard during her visit, decided to apply, and transferred to Bard the next spring.

Snyder spent a lot of time in a studio last year, shooting still lifes of household objects with a 4" x 5" view camera, and “fell in love” with the tools and processes involved with being a photographer. “I love the view camera and all the equipment associated with it. I shoot film, and I really enjoy printing my work myself, in the darkroom.” She is completing her Senior Project, in which she is combining portraiture with landscape photography. “As a photography student, a question I think about a lot is whether a photograph of an object that I take in a studio is a portrait or a still life or just a picture of an object. It’s similar to what I think about when I’m framing a photograph that I take outdoors. When you take a photograph of a tree, or a bush, it becomes a portrait of the object, but it’s also a still life.”

Her favorite aspects of student life at Bard? “The accessibility of the faculty, and the sense of community among students. When I arrived here as a transfer student, I said to myself, ‘This is what college is supposed to be like.’” Is she satisfied with the outcome of her decision to transfer to Bard? “Absolutely, yes. I’m very glad I came here. In fact, I kind of wish it weren’t almost over.” Snyder plans to move to Manhattan after graduation, where she will continue her job at a nonprofit gallery, and “keep taking pictures.”