Meet Kyle Mark Peterson | Photographer & Writer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kyle Mark Peterson and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kyle Mark, can you tell us about an impactful book you’ve read and why you liked it or what impact it had on you?
After graduating from the University of Georgia with a degree in journalism and having completed their photojournalism program, and graduating into the midst of a global pandemic, I was feeling pretty unsettled and aimless. I knew that I had a passion for photography, for writing, for telling stories, and for seeing the world and experiencing new things, but I just wasn’t feeling able to put all the pieces together to begin building a portfolio and a career that I could be proud of. With the journalism industry in the state that it’s in, and with my general disdain for feeling a lack of control in my daily life, I knew that finding a job that would leave me feeling fulfilled, at this early stage in my career, would be difficult. And after almost two decades of sitting in classrooms, I couldn’t fathom jumping right back into a routine that wouldn’t be all that different. So in the meantime, I took whatever photo gigs I could get, and I traveled the country with some pals who were in positions similar to mine, justifying the time I was spending on the road and not focusing on legitimate career growth as time I was spending building my portfolio.

Things began to change when I made a simple Google search: “books every 20-something should read”, and at the top of that list was Meg Jay’s The Defining Decade. I began listening to the book immediately and was quickly becoming unable to stop. In the book, Jay gives example after example of young adults she worked with to find some direction in their life while simultaneously offering perspective and reality-inducing statistics about the consequences of this first real decade of adult life, your 20’s, The Defining Decade. As the book went on, a sense of empowerment began to consume me. It became crystal clear that I didn’t need to let the paralyzation of endless career options and possibilities stop me from making any moves at all, and that doing nothing substantial and meaningful is more detrimental to my future than is making some moves that may not end up being inherently pertinent to where I end up in the future. I knew I needed to start making decisions, trust myself, and just see where the chips fall.

It was during this phase of internal reckoning that I remembered a part of myself that I had let fall away during my time in school: I am endlessly intrigued by the fashion industry and have been since I was early in my high school career. And I saw online that New York Fashion Week (NYFW) would be back and in-person for the first time in September of 2021 since the pandemic began. On a whim, and a lot of faith, I decided to go, and then I did everything I could leading up to it to distract myself and not think too much about it. I traveled more and really didn’t do much preparation, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was doing something important. The time came, I hopped on a plane, and I began hitting the streets shooting street style during the hustle and bustle of my first fashion week.

The entire week flew by, and it was one of the most exciting and fulfilling times that I had ever experienced. I spent every evening making my way back to Brooklyn in utter shock at how well the day had gone, and each day before that. I made some of the best work I had ever shot, I made friends, I made connections, and I didn’t know it at the time, but I made one contact who hired me to begin regularly shooting their content back in Atlanta which has led to furthered growth, further business, and a sense of purpose and direction that I desperately longed for earlier this year. Before reading Meg Jay’s The Defining Decade, I was bordering on hopeless, but her book gave me the courage to put myself out there and begin making things happen for myself. I haven’t reached a point of no return, I still have days where I don’t know what I’m doing or how things will work out for me, but the majority of days are fueled by a genuine love for what I’m doing and a passion and excitement for curating a future that I cannot wait to see come to fruition, no matter how it may turn out. I see a path to things I have always wanted to do but just didn’t know how they could come to be, and at this point, that’s all I can ask for. I wake up every day excited to take myself just a tad further to where I want to be in life, and compared to where I was at the start of 2021, that’s huge.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I often struggle with how to label myself and what I do, professionally. Part of that is because I haven’t achieved a level of success that allows me to pigeonhole myself in a way, and there’s so many varying things I want to do and try that all seem to intersect in one way or another. Currently, my focus is growing in the space of where fashion photography and journalism/photojournalism intersect. Although high profile fashion campaigns and publication covers are beautiful and rightfully have their own place in this world and photo industry, I’ve found that my desire to create lies within the realm of telling real stories of real people, whether it’s through words, imagery, or both. When I am shooting street style on any given day, or especially during fashion week, I’m showcasing real people going about their real lives, and they just so happen to look amazing while doing it. When I’m shooting content for local bloggers, I have the ability and time to connect with these individuals in a real way, and the work we create is real, it’s attainable, it’s not beyond imaginable for the average person. When I’m documenting for my ongoing Pups and Their People project, I’m taking my love of fashion and ability to spot a person with attitude, with grace, with confidence, and applying that to the people I see out in the world with their beloved dogs. I’m never going to shoot just anyone or anything, it has to be giving something that is tangible and is seen effortlessly. I can’t put into words why I stop the people I stop to photograph, but something in me tells me when I’ve seen something or someone important, someone or something that needs to be documented and seen by others. My hope is to continue to tell stories and create work that intersects and dives deeper into one realm or the other (fashion vs. journalism) at varying degrees, but the goal is to always keep my work grounded in reality. There are so many people doing work that is far from reality, and that is by no means a bad thing, escapism is important, but I feel like this world could use a bit more real, and I think the fashion industry could use more of that, especially.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Being an Athens local that grew up in the suburbs North of Atlanta, my itinerary for a best friend coming to visit would include stops all over the place, but the first thing we would do is head straight to Athens so I could show them around my parents’ beautiful 30-acre farm, Thistle Creek Farm. It’s my happy place in Georgia, it’s quiet, it’s filled with so much love and care and animals and nature and has everything you need for a beautiful afternoon followed by a night-time bonfire of chatting, catching up, and just enjoying the beauty around us (that just so happens to be 10 minutes away from Athens’s downtown area). After a relaxing first day, we would spend the next day shopping around downtown Athens as well as hitting my favorite local thrift stores like Emmanuel Episcopal, Americas, and Athens Antique and Vintage. We’d get dinner at South Kitchen + Bar and spend another evening relaxing on the farm before heading into Atlanta for the next few days. Not being someone who has ever lived in the Atlanta city area, my expertise would be limited for out of the box options, but I’m sure I could still show them a good time. We’d have to hit the classic shopping spots like Ponce City Market, Atlantic Station, Little Five Points, and Shops at Buckhead (avoiding any major malls, of course), and we’d hit restaurants like the Southern Gentleman, La Fonda Latina, and R. Thomas Deluxe Grill. We’d have to see all the classic spots as well like the Coca-Cola factory, Piedmont and Centennial Park, the Georgia Aquarium, and just wander the downtown area and see what we see, my favorite thing to do in any major city. I’d have to spend a day showing them around my old stomping grounds of Gwinnett County, too. We’d hit my favorite thrift and antique spots like Queen of Hearts and St. Vincent de Paul. We’d grab lunch at Honey Baked Ham Co. just for the memories and the great sandwiches and maybe hit Atlas Pizza in Gainesville for dinner, taking the long way back to Athens. We could do some more shopping in the Gainesville Square, too. We’d spend the rest of our trip playing it by ear. I’m not one to plan things out too much. There always has to be room for spontaneity.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Before entering The University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, I had a shell and walls around me so thick that rarely did anyone get through and rarely did I ever come out of them, especially around strangers, but Grady changed all of that. I’ll never forget being on the phone with my dad almost in tears because I was being forced to go out and ask 36 separate individuals, none of which I could know personally, if I could take their portrait as part of an assignment called “36 Faces.” It was genuinely one of the most difficult things I had ever done, and it was so far out of my comfort zone that I started considering simply not doing the assignment and dropping the introduction to photojournalism course. Thankfully I persevered, and as my career in Grady, whether it was in photo courses or writing-intensive courses, continued on, I felt my shell and those walls that I had put up to protect myself crashing down around me. I was growing in confidence and self-assuredness, and I left Grady a completely different person than when I entered. If it wasn’t for my time in Grady and for the growth it legitimately forced onto me, I would not have been able to hop on a plane and fly to New York without a worry in the world and begin tapping every individual whose look I liked on the shoulder to take their photo, I wouldn’t be able to immediately bond and connect with my clients and potential clients in the way that I do now, and I wouldn’t have the confidence to follow my heart and the stories I want to tell in the way I’ve been doing since I began telling them with the guidance of Grady. I owe my passion for this industry and my confidence to achieve what I have and what I will achieve to Grady and the amazing professors that work there.

Instagram: instagram.com/bykylemark

Image Credits
Kyle Mark Peterson