(relaxed happy music)
- Hi, my name is Luke Sironski White.
I'm a senior at the University of Chicago.
I'm a major in anthropology and I'm a photographer.
So, we're in my room right now.
These are my cameras that I use for assignments,
or just for fun, honestly.
I like to hang up photographs that I haven't taken
because I think that surrounding yourself
with images that you've already created
kind of reinforces what you already know.
And I just, I like to pick out things
that are different or that I wouldn't have taken
and kind of investigate, you know,
how I could take those photos in the future.
That's pretty much my space.
A typical day in my life, I normally wake up
between 7:30 and 8:30, I like to get up,
have breakfast, have to have a lot of coffee.
And then I'll normally head out
and usually go to class or I'll go to work out.
I've got an internship with a photographer
on the South Side, so sometimes I'll go and
work with him for a little bit.
On days that I have off I like to go uptown
and get some film developed, or
stay at home and edit some photos.
I'll scan in some film, and the best part, absolutely,
is I'll go out and take photos when I have the chance.
(playful rock music)
Behind us is the Logan Media Center for the Arts.
It's, it was just erected a couple years ago.
So, my job is as a projectionist for the film study center.
What I do essentially is I project films,
DVDs, videos, and then when it gets really exciting
some 35mm and some 16mm film.
It's honestly a great job, you just get to hang out
in the booth, get exposed to a lot of different films.
The university's really theoretical, so
the film content that you're exposed to
is not very normal; most of the time
you're kind of getting into some art films
and some, some really odd stuff.
And it's nice to get exposed to all of that.
(projector ticking loudly)
So yeah, that's 35.
- How did you start getting involved in photography?
- Yeah, so, my ninth grade year
when I was in junior high I went on this cruise.
Our family had saved up for a really long time
and we decided to go to a cruise to, um,
throughout the Mediterranean, so,
Italy, Greece, Egypt, Israel, and Turkey.
And I took some photos on some crappy little
digital camera that I had back then, and, um,
I was looking at the photos when I got back home
and I was like, "You know, some of these are really cool."
But this was when Flickr, which was like
a photo-sharing service, was really big at the time,
and I was like, you know, they're really cool but
they're not, they don't look exactly, you know,
like the really good photos that I'm seeing online
and I wonder how I could do that.
And so I did some research and my mom came up to me
at one point and was like, you know,
"I really liked photography when I was young as well.
"You should try that."
(somber piano music)
The brilliant thing about going to the University of Chicago
as someone who's trying to get into the creative field
is that you're not learning necessarily
the technical skills, right, but you're learning
how to think critically about
the work that you're producing.
(mellow old-fashioned music)
(relaxed modern music)
This is Haskell Hall; we're on the Harper quad
and this is the anthropology building,
so I spend a lot of my time here
for my major, doing classes and stuff.
- So you are an anthropology major.
- Mm-hmm.
- What made you decide to major in anthropology?
- I was taking soc, and, you know,
all of the professors are really amicable here
and you can, they're all engaged by what you have to say,
no matter what it is, and so
I was speaking with one of my professors
about photography, and she told me, you know,
"There's this photographer I know,
"Sebastiao Salgado, and he's got
"a lot of really interesting things to say."
And he said if you're going to study something
and you're going to be a photographer
you should study anthropology
because it creates within you a curiosity
and a willingness to engage with other cultures
that isn't laden with,
kind of, preconceptions or prejudices.
And I was really interested by that,
so I took some anthropology classes
and I really loved it.
I really, really enjoyed learning about it.
- So tell me about the Core.
- So the Core at the University of Chicago
is a core set of classes that every single student
has to take, no matter their major.
I think soc and hume are the most important classes
you take as a U. Chicago student
for building your intellectual foundation,
for building the way that you think.
It causes you to really really look
at your life and the way that you think
and the culture you exist in,
and to examine it and pick it apart,
because you're reading all of these authors
that did the same things in their lifetimes.
(relaxed happy music)
- [Interviewer] Anything you wanna tell us about him?
- I've known Luke since the first day of college.
Luke has been like, incredibly important to me
as like a, kind of just like my rock,
but he's also incredible talented
and perhaps more than anyone I know
just so deeply passionate about what he wants to do.
I love Luke.
- Well, thank you.
- That's a rousing endorsement.
- No complaints.
- Zero complaints. - At all.
- We'll talk about the dishes later.
- Sometimes he leaves the back door open.
(laughter)
(mellow music)
- Okay, so where are we now?
- Right now we're sitting in front
of the Regenstein Library.
I'm sorry to say it is absolutely
the social hub of the University of Chicago.
Well, I mean, we, so we've got
some pretty good cafes in there.
We've only got one cafe in there, correction.
It's Ex Libris cafe.
Best baristas on campus.
And you know, honestly, when you wanna go hang out
and you're feeling a little lonely at home,
you know there's gonna be a friend at the Ex.
- So, so you'd say social life
revolves in some, to some extent, around the library?
- You know, and it, it does.
And that is entirely to do with the fact
that everyone is so dedicated to studying here.
It shows by how often you see your friends at the library.
But there is a, a lot of variation
in study space out there, and,
you know, you can find a cubicle,
you can go down to the B level
where there's absolutely no-one and it's dead silent.
Or you can be chatting away in the cafe.
But I would say certainly
if you're trying to meet some friends
and if you're trying to hang out with people,
Ex is a good place to do that.
- So what's been most surprising to you about U. of Chicago?
- The thing I've learned is that everyone is,
is deeply passionate about something.
And they will engage with you
if you talk to them about it and they're
kind of prodigiously like,
knowledgeable about something, anything.
You know I, I went to sushi once
and I just saw this like, huge group
of really really big dudes talking.
And I thought they, they were like fighting
for a little bit, and then you realize, like,
they're not fighting about like,
basketball or whatever, they're fighting about
like quantum physics, and they're trying to figure out,
like these quantum physics occasion, equations together,
and it's just, I don't know,
something really beautiful about like, having
this kind of intellectual hum surrounding everything.
- And what advice would you give to
a high-schooler applying to a school like U. Chicago?
- Number one, it's, it's gonna be a gamble, right?
There's just, there's so many people
and there's so few spots that
if you don't get in it's not because
of some kind of deficiency in yourself,
it's, it's because that's just, you know,
the odds are never great.
So if you are fortunate enough to get in
I think that one of the reasons
that you were fortunate enough
probably is that you stayed true to yourself.
And by that I mean like, you're gonna get
a random essay question, right?
Like, you should write about what you care about.
Don't try and pad your application with,
you know, all your volunteer work
and all of the traveling that you did.
Talk about what you're really invested in.
It shows in every student here.
Everyone is really invested in something,
and you should talk about that,
because I think that's what the University looks for.
For instance, I didn't know I was gonna get into photography
but it's what I really cared about when I applied.
So my essay was about the way that I edit my photos
and the way that I color-correct
and crop and frame and whatever, and,
I wrote about what I cared about
and I managed to get in somehow,
so I think if you, if you do the same thing
you'll be in a good place.
(calm piano music)
Hey, guys, thank you so much for watching.
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