Student Spotlight: Meg Turner '18

The Student Spotlight series aims to highlight the work of current MFA students, asking them to share thoughts on their practice by answering curated and peer-submitted questions. Meg Turner is a first-year student in the Visual Arts Program.

What themes or subjects are you currently addressing in your work?

I think the broad themes could be described as “intimacy and representation” and “constructing how we want to be seen, be perceived, and the world we want to live in”. I work collaboratively with people I am close to to explore these questions through photography and media.


What materials do you work with?

I shoot a lot of wet plate (tin types) because they are developed on site which is good for working collaboratively, and the process is slow, intimate and transformative. I also shoot digitally. The final pieces are generally printed by hand as photogravure and silkscreen, although some are designed specifically for internet platforms and so never leave the digital realm.


What is challenging your practice right now?

Blurring the line between what is personal communication and intimacy and what is part of my art – and also the larger questions of what is the role of art in the world and what can be the role of art when the world feels like chaos.


What artist or work of art do you find yourself returning to and why?

Helmut Newton's portraits, his relationships with the models, their relationships with the camera and the viewer's relationship to them.


Your peers ask: what makes you like someone instantly?

If I share food with them or they share food with me.