For adjunct photography professor Kurt Simonson, connection isn’t just a theme in his work, but the reason he makes it at all. His work is currently being featured in “Satellites,” LBCC’s part-time faculty exhibit, which is open until Wednesday.
“I can’t not make personal work,” Simonson said, standing beside his photo in the campus art gallery. “Everything I make seems to come from something I care about or something I’m going through.”
Simonson has been teaching photography for more than 25 years, the last three including Long Beach City College.
He also teaches at several other campuses, from El Camino College to Loyola Marymount University, but said it feels different when teaching so close to home.
Daniel Chang, an Associate Professor of Art at Biola University, close friend and former colleague, described Simonson as someone whose teaching and art are grounded in presence.
“His generous spirit and thoughtfulness permeate his work as a teacher and an artist, which was a model for generations of students in our program,” Chang said. “He is present with his students and because of the nurturing space he creates, it allows for students to step into that space with remarkable honesty and vulnerability.”
He recalled a large-scale public art project Kurt led at Biola, inspired by the work of French photographer JR, in which students installed oversized photographs across the campus.
“It remains the most ambitious public art project in the university’s history,” Chang said.
His featured photograph in LBCC’s adjunct faculty art exhibit “Satellites” began as an outtake from a portrait session for a series called “I Love You, Man”, which explored male friendship and intimacy.
“It’s all portraits of male friendship,” Simonson said. “I wanted to express multi-layered intimacy in male relationships, not romantic or erotic, just intimate in the sense of making you think about how men struggle to find closeness.”
That image eventually found its way into a new series he calls “Medway”, a term he borrowed from an old British word for pilgrimage.
“It’s my midlife crisis project,” Simonson said with a laugh. “I’ve got a bunch of abstract and travel-based pictures about the journey of life, and I started mixing in these figurative pieces, bodies that are reaching, touching or falling. They become poetic markers in between everything else.”
Simonson doesn’t approach photography with rigid outlines or shot lists.
“I can’t work that way, I tend to shoot intuitively, just a sense of, ‘Hey, I should bring my camera,’ then I start sorting through the pictures and see what hangs out together. It’s like putting little kids on a playground and seeing who becomes friends,” Simonson said.
According to Simonson, his projects often take shape after years of collecting images. “I’ll have folders on my laptop labeled ‘pictures I can’t forget’ and every so often I’ll scroll through to see which ones are starting to talk to each other,” Simonson said. “Eventually, the projects form themselves.”
Across his work, Simonson said he always returns to ideas of home, family, and belonging.
“It’s always something around home or community. I do a lot of stuff about family, but like a chosen family, or people from families that don’t communicate. I think intimacy, community, connection, they just always show up somehow in my stuff,” Simonson said.
He shared that emotional honesty comes from his own background of growing up in Minnesota, where a high school youth leader helped him discover photography.
“He invested time in me. One of the photos from that class won a national award, and I thought, ‘Oh, maybe I’m good at this.’ That’s when I learned that community matters,” Simonson said.
Laurie Huesmann, academic administrative assistant and colleague at LBCC, said Simonson’s approach to teaching is rooted in support and partnership.
“Kurt has always been a very student-centered, student-focused professor,” Huesmann said. “He has a long career of teaching and has always had a posture of coming alongside students to see them grow in their skills and artistry.”
She saw that firsthand when Kurt invited her two sons to participate in his master’s project, a series exploring how different people see the same subject.
Their photographs were displayed alongside Simonson’s for the final presentation.
“Both my sons credit Kurt with helping them come into their own as photographers,” Huesmann said.
Huesmann also noted Simonson’s long-standing advocacy for LGBTQIA+ students.
“One of the most important things to know about Kurt is his commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community,” Huesmann said. “He has mentored many students and encouraged their expression of their identity in their art. I know he continues to be a strong advocate for this community.”
Simonson cites photographer Alec Soth, another Minnesota native, as one of his biggest influences.
“It was this humble Midwest vibe of exploring and wandering,” Simonson said. “I got on the wave of his popularity just as my own style was forming.”
He also draws inspiration from photographer Jess T. Dugan, whose portraits of LGBTQ+ subjects shot in natural light mirror Simonson’s own preference for natural tones.
“I love natural light. Strobes and flashes are amazing, but I just don’t have the patience. I’d rather work with what’s already there,” Simonson said.
After earning his MFA at Cal State Long Beach, Simonson said he realized that the degree was less about prestige and more about community, which shaped how he guides his students through creative blocks.
“I appreciated it because I realized I didn’t want to play the art-world game. I just wanted to be local and part of a community, … I’m always telling students to look at everything, if you’re stuck, overload yourself with images, books, websites, galleries. Intake usually helps output,” Simonson said.
When Simonson feels blocked himself, he either waits it out or gives himself permission to rest, saying if he’s not inspired, he tells himself “it’s okay. Something will come when it’s ready.”
Kurt laughs when he recalled one of his most blunt critiques.
“I showed my next project, these weird dystopian still lifes with Disney characters, and she just looked at me and said, ‘What the f— is wrong with you?’,” he said. “And I loved it. That’s the perfect response. I like when my work surprises people, even upsets them.”
To Simonson, that’s the heart of photography, not perfection, but conversation.
“If someone’s critiquing with a good heart, it’s worth listening to,” Simonson said. “If not, just let it roll off.”
After 25 years behind the camera, Simonson still approaches each project with the same curiosity that first pulled him in.
“Connection seems to be a theme that’s just always in my pictures,” Simonson said. “Either a place I want to feel connected to, or a person I want to feel connected to, or people that are connecting, and I love that.”
The adjunct art exhibit “Satellites” will remain open until Wednesday.
