Meet Kevin Linde and Deborah Klochko of Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kevin Linde and Deborah Klochko.

Kevin and Deborah, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I’ve always been fascinated with photographs and curious to explore the role they play in our lives. Some of my earliest memories are sitting with my grandmother and great aunt and looking through a hundred years of family photos.

I started at MOPA five years ago as an intern in the museum’s library, and it was incredibly inspiring to be surrounded by the collection, immense resources, and amazing staff. I began to see how the museum’s resources could be used to engage the public with the rich visual history of the photographic arts, but also to better understand how and why we all use photography in our daily lives; whether to tell others something about ourselves, to communicate how we see the world, and to record some of our most cherished moments. -Kevin

Deborah Klochko is the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of Photographic Arts. She has taught, lectured, and written extensively on photography and has curated more than thirty exhibitions throughout her career. Was executive editor of see, an award-winning journal of visual culture and is the founder of Speaking of Light, Oral Histories of American Photographers.

She is the author of Picturing Eden and co-authored Moment of Seeing, Minor White at the California School of Fine Arts and Create and Be Recognized, Photography on the Edge and numerous other publications. Formerly the director of The Friends of Photography, located at the Ansel Adams Center, she has also worked at the California Museum of Photography, the International Museum of Photography and Film at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I think the biggest challenge is knowing how to be present. Museums tend to look to the past in order to preserve it for future generations. But in the end, we’re a museum which opens its doors six days a week for the public to visit, and it’s the programs and conversations with the public where the truly amazing moments happen. Learning to live in the present, whether it’s in teaching a class for seniors dealing with memory loss, or leading a tour at the museum for members, is the ongoing challenge that keeps me inspired and moving forward each day. -Kevin

It would be no fun if life was a smooth road with no challenges. Transitioning from being a fine art photographer with an MFA to finding a meaningful career in my field, was part of the beginning of my journey. After briefly working as an assistant to a fashion photographer in New York, I quickly realized that I wanted to do something more significant. I got my first museum job as an educator at the George Eastman House/International Museum of Photography and I was hooked.

While I loved photography I knew that I needed more training in the museum field and worked on my MAT in Museum Education at George Washington University in DC. For the 2 ½ years of the program, I had to believe that there would be an opportunity in a photo museum somewhere. Ultimately there was—from Washington, DC to the California Museum of Photography, to the Ansel Adams Center in San Francisco and then to my current position as Executive Director and Chief Curator at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. -Deborah

We’d love to hear more about your business.
The Museum of Photographic Arts (“MOPA”) is one of the nation’s premier institutions dedicated solely to the lens based medium (photography and film). Located in historic Balboa Park, our world-class museum offers an annual calendar of exceptional exhibitions, programs, film festivals, and lifespan learning opportunities. Each year over 107,000 patrons visit MOPA with an additional 100,000 yearly visits to our main website. They leave with a diverse and enriching visual art experience, unique to San Diego and the photographic community.

Our mission is to inspire, educate, and engage the broadest possible audience through the presentation, interpretation, collection, and preservation of photography, film, and video.

Guided by our core values—inspire, see, learn, create—we deliver our mission through the production of relevant, thought-provoking and engaging exhibitions and educational programs. Our vision is to be a vibrant center for visual learning, passionately dedicated to sharing and exploring the universal language of photography.

Accordingly, the programming philosophy of MOPA is deeply rooted in the concept of visual literacy, the ability to critically interpret and understand photography and related lens-based media. Visual literacy enables viewers to construct meaningful interpretations of images with tolerance and understanding for multiple viewpoints and knowledge of the social, political, and cultural frameworks that play roles in each image’s messaging.

Those well-versed in visual literacy are not only consumers of visual images, they become interpreters, critics, appreciators, and makers of images as well, fluent in the language and power of the medium

Contact Info:

• Address: 1649 El Prado San Diego, CA 92101
• Website: www.mopa.org
• Phone: 619.238.7559
• Instagram: instagram.com/mopasd
• Facebook: facebook.com/mopasd
• Twitter: twitter.com/mopasd
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/museum-of-photographic-arts-san-diego

Image Credit:
Stacy Keck

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