Jean Greenfield

Student

“I think the school is really good. It’s always the people that make the best environment.”

Like Ariel in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Jean Greenfield is very much of a free spirit, exploring life’s many facets on her own terms and at her own pace. “I’ve been independent since I was 14,” says Jean who came down to LA from Portland three years ago, leaving behind a seven-year career in the music industry. “I worked for a rock promotion company, and I was everything from secretary, cashier, and stage manager to caterer, security manager and bar tender,” she reports. “I ended up producing my own shows too. I really learned the ins and outs.”

Once in LA, Jean decided to refocus her energy on a career in photography and enrolled at SMC. “I’m studying with George Phillips in the Photography Department,” she says. “I was really lucky that he took me on. He’s very creative, and I like that a lot. Plus, he really knows the professional and business side of photography.” Jean is currently working on putting together her portfolio with an eye on possibly entering the field of commercial photography. “I’m already working free lance, and in fact I just shot a rock band for the magazine Entertainment Today,” says Jean. “But there are so many sides to photography. I don’t want to limit the kinds of subjects I shoot.”

Buying, developing and printing film doesn’t come cheap, though, and Jean supports herself by operating her own massage business. She supplements her income as an artists’ model, and SMC fashion students may also have seen her on the runway. No stranger to modeling, Jean would like “to get a contract and do some catalogue work to make more money,” she says, adding with a chuckle, “But I know I’m getting ‘old’, and there’re so many people out there who want to do the same. Plus, I really think the photography is my strong point and that’s the career I want to pursue in the future.”

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