Ginny Southworth didn’t grow up in Aiken, but she might just know more about the community than most natives.
As the chief photographer at the Aiken Standard newspaper for nearly 30 years, she chronicled events and told the stories of people in the community through first print and then digital photography.
“That’s always the beauty of a newspaper: getting to know the community,” Southworth said. “I loved my job. I loved meeting people, and I loved being a fly on the wall and sitting and talking to people and finding out about their lives.”
Today, Southworth shares her knowledge and years of experience with the next generation of photographers as a tenured associate professor of studio and digital art concentration in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at USC Aiken.
And she loves teaching as much as she did shooting local news, sports and features. In some ways, the jobs are similar. As it was in the newsroom, every day in the classroom is different.
“That’s why I love teaching,” Southworth said. “Every day is different, and it’s short-term. It’s for whatever the semester length is, and then you try something all new the next semester. I don’t like routine. As soon as a job falls into a routine, it’s not good for me. I love teaching, and I’m teaching what I love.”
Developing an early interest in photography
Southworth grew up in a large family in upstate New York. She first became interested in photography as a child. She and her younger brother would make contact sheets – prints of rolls of 35 mm film – in the closet of the house they grew up in.
“We had no idea what we were doing, but we had a great time,” she said.
When Southworth got to Elmira College in Elmira, New York, she chose art education as her major. Her focus, however, soon changed.
“I had this painting class and had to go take pictures. I told my dad about it. It was in the fall; and at Christmas, he gave me my first camera,” Southworth said. “My dad was actually a very talented photographer. He was a doctor, but I think in a different time he probably would have loved to have been a photographer.”
During the next trimester, Southworth taught herself how to process film and make prints. After another year at Elmira, she knew photography, not art education, was her calling.
Southworth transferred to Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, which she called “one of the best in the country.”
“It was an immersion in documentary photography. It wasn’t fine art. I was not a fine art photographer. I was a documentary photographer,” said Southworth, who graduated with a bachelor of science degree in photo communications. “We had to go into New York City to interview the editor of a major photography magazine, get a business plan. It was an amazing school.”
Finding a home in Aiken
After graduation, Southworth worked for a large newspaper in Florida, but the daily grind of often covering crime and deaths took a toll.
“I lived really close to the paper, so I got called for all the murders and suicides,” she said. “I didn’t want to see that many dead bodies anymore. I thought I'm going to have post-traumatic stress if I don’t find something else to do.”
She found that “something” in Aiken at the Aiken Standard.
One of her sisters worked with the racehorses in Aiken. Southworth visited, thinking she might move to Virginia, but she liked what she found and stayed.
“I’m from a small town,” she said. “Coming to Aiken, to a smaller town, was a really smart move.”
Southworth started working part-time at the newspaper, shooting freelance for horse events. She was hired full-time in January 1980 and stayed 27 years.
During those years, she said she loved shooting sports, and especially horses.
“I grew up with horses, so it was a natural transition to come here and start taking pictures of horses,” Southworth said. “I loved the horse community, and this is a beautiful area. Where else could you take pictures like this?”
Southworth said she considers herself lucky to have met “all these wonderful racetrack people like the Mack Millers and Mike Freemans, who will never come along again. “That was a different era,” she said.
Southworth said she also “made some of the best friends I’ve ever had at the Aiken Standard."
“It’s a place where you have to work closely with people,” she said. “I feel sorry for people who will never have that kind of environment where they work so closely. It was an amazing experience. It was a tough job. Looking back on it, I am so happy I worked at the newspaper.”
Transitioning from newsroom to classroom
While working full-time at the Aiken Standard, Southworth started teaching photography part-time at USCA and USC Columbia as an adjunct. She also, at the encouragement of retired USCA art professor Al Beyer, started working on a Master of Fine Arts degree on the Columbia campus.
“I had no days off, but it was the smartest thing I ever did getting an MFA,” Southworth said. “Otherwise, USCA would not have been able to hire me full-time because I would not have had a terminal degree.”
Southworth retired from the Aiken Standard in the summer of 2006. Two weeks later, she started teaching full-time at USCA.
Southworth teaches digital photography; a narrative course in photography, “which is almost like a documentary class,” she said; and social media in the studio and digital art concentration. Social media doesn’t focus on how to use Facebook or Instagram.
“I have to explain to my students that they are in a photography class, so my goal is to make you a really good photographer to help you with your social media skills,” she said. “It helps them learn to deal with those platforms in a professional manner. We’re really trying to provide classes that will help them be ready for the changes in the future.”
Southworth also teaches a class in black-and-white photography, which has always been “very successful,” she said.
Southworth said her classes are designed to teach students how to problem solve.
For example, on the first day of class, Southworth gives her students 45 minutes to go out and shoot an assignment and bring it back to class for everyone to critique.
“I know my students think it’s crazy, but it teaches them to think outside the box. There is nothing better than open critiques to watch their styles change.
“A big part of our program is teaching people to problem solve: to problem solve with the camera and the computer, to think for themselves. They also have to think about how the camera works and how to get creative with photos within a time limit. They do a good job.”
Southworth also encourages her students to become the teachers.
“If I have a student who’s slow in digital photography, somebody else will jump up and say I’ll help,” she said. “They’ll ask if I mind, and I’ll say, 'Nope.' The best way for you to learn is to teach.”
Southworth said she loves interacting with her students and introducing many of them to a new medium.
“They get excited,” she said. “I had a student this year who said this has changed my life. This is changing what I’m going to do. I love teaching because I love seeing the students’ ideas, and I love seeing how they grow with those ideas once they leave school. They really figure out how to make it work for them.”
Focusing students on the future
In the last year, USCA approved its first art major, allowing students to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in art. Before, art students majored in visual and performing arts, which included courses in music and theater.
“It’s really beneficial for the students, because it’s so much more focused,” Southworth said. “There are very specific routes that our students take to be marketable at the end of four years. A lot of my students have started their own businesses and been very successful with wedding and personal photography. Our students have good placement records, really good placement records. In fact, we get them to come back and talk to our other students. I’m really proud of what they’ve done.”
Southworth said she also is proud that USCA fills a specific need in the community.
“Our school is so important because so many of our kids are the first in their families to graduate from college,” she said. “It’s such an underestimated school at times because, I think, so many people who come into the area think we’re a community college. We’re an independent campus. We fall under Columbia, but we’re our own campus.”
At USCA, Southworth is in her third year as a member of the Scholastic Standing and Petition Committee.
“It’s for kids who possibly are falling through the cracks because they have bad grades or issues or have left school and then come back,” she said. “It’s been excellent because it allows me to see how we need to help our students. So many students come to the university and get into trouble the first couple of semesters, and they don’t understand how that is going to impact the rest of their academic careers. ...”
Giving back to the community
Outside the university, Southworth recently became a member of the Advisory Council for the Aiken County Land Conservancy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of open, undeveloped space in Aiken County, according to its website.
“I started in the fall,” she said. “I love being able to give something back.”
She also is a former member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Board.
Southworth also practices Taekwondo, a form of martial arts, earning a black belt.
“I started about 20 years ago, and it was the best thing I ever did. I still go three days a week to work out. Love it,” she said. “It’s a discipline; it really keeps you fit, and makes you think.
“It just gave me confidence. I started before I left the newspaper. I so recommend it for any age group: the flexibility of it, the self-confidence. It’s a wonderful sport, and it’s life changing for kids, truly life changing, because it’s all about being disciplined.”
Southworth won many awards from the South Carolina Press Association while working at the Aiken Standard and continues to compete in mostly regional photography competitions.
Last fall, she won a first place at the South Carolina State Fair in Columba from a field of more than 4,000 entries.
After more than 40 years in the community, Southworth has made a lasting impression in not one but two successful careers, especially through all the people she met and all the thousands of photos she shot for the Aiken Standard.
“Just getting to tell the history of one town for 27 years is pretty impressive, getting to watch its growth and the people’s growth,” she said. “I still get people who come up and say, 'I remember you at the football games.'"
