Profile: Angela Goodman Builds Cities

Photography by Kelsey Wright

“I actually love being in my thirties,” says 34-year-old Photography major Angela Goodman “there's so much less angst!” A non-traditional student at Columbia is a bit of an oxy-moron, because, c’mon, how many students consider themselves ‘traditional?’ In some respects, being an older student can have its disadvantages, but in many ways, it can work in the students favor. In most cases they never have to wonder what the heck they want to be when they grow up, because, like Goodman, they have known for years. 

A Chicago transplant from San Francisco, Goodman has really ‘taken’ to the city, and embraced her new surroundings in a way one might expect from a student at an art school.  In her studio, she builds cityscapes out of products like vases, filters, utensils, and even toasters.  Afterward she photographs her model creations, and voila, she transforms the objects from her home into elements and stories of an urban environment.

“I am fascinated by cities and I hold very ambivalent feelings about them,” she explains, “I love the sense of drama and possibility, the awe-inspiring stature, the beautiful way light reflects off surfaces and moves down corridors, but also I feel the density of the city is hard on the human sensibility from the individual to the cultural.”  Through her photography and art she examines the choices of city-dwellers and their desire to create this overwhelming environment while wondering how inhabitants of a big city adapt and maintain their humanity. 

Photography has always been an interest of Goodman’s since her high school days and since she always leaned on the shy side, photography gave her a reason for being in different places and talking to strangers. “It also gave me a way out of my own head,” she says, “before, I could walk for blocks without seeing anything and once I started carrying a camera, I was much more engaged with the world.”

She has resigned herself to the belief that, like it or not, photography is where she is meant to be. “This is just the thing I do,’ she says, “I also believe that ‘work’ is a huge percentage of your life, so you should probably try to spend it doing something that is fulfilling on some deeper level than getting the bills paid.”

Agreed. 

Liz Olszta
Magazine Journalism