{"id":798667,"date":"2026-08-02T04:43:38","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T04:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/798667\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T04:43:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T04:43:38","slug":"the-female-gaze-cynthia-gladis-an-eye-for-the-overlooked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/798667\/","title":{"rendered":"THE FEMALE GAZE: Cynthia Gladis – An Eye for the Overlooked"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"Purple<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

Cynthia Gladis<\/a> is a New Jersey-based photographer whose previous career as a graphic designer informs her work. Print and digital features include FRAMES magazine, RfotoFolio, The Visual Conservancy\u2019s Peer 3, Pinky Arts Press, Landscape Photo Books and\u00a0Street Photography magazine websites and podcasts. Gladis has participated in group exhibitions including the Plastic Camera Show at the Kansas City Stockyard,\u00a0Picture This! at the Flagler County Art League, Pinky Arts at Mignolo Arts Center. She had her first solo exhibition The Library Gallery in Metuchen, NJ, in 2024. She was honored to be FRAMES second Artist in Residence. More of her work is available on her website<\/a> and her Instagram<\/a>\u00a0feed.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

Cynthia Gladis is a New Jersey-based photographer whose work transforms ordinary surroundings into sharp, funny, and formally elegant observations that sit between documentary seeing and visual play.<\/p>\n

Gladis\u2019 sensibility is rooted in the familiarity of suburban American life, but she never takes that familiarity for granted. Across her practice, she is attentive to what hides in plain sight: the strange corner, the accidental joke, the haunting shadow, the man-altered landscape, and the beauty in the overlooked. Her humor often has an edge; her images portray the oddness, artifice, and quiet embedded in ordinary places.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

DNJ: Tell us about your childhood. \u2028<\/p>\n

CG:\u00a0I lost my dad when I was a toddler, and my mom raised my sister and me by herself. My mom was a very strong woman who gave us enough love for two parents, and I\u2019ll always be grateful for the way she raised us with kindness and empathy, and inspired our creativity through her photography.<\/p>\n

My sister was more interested in outdoor activities while I was more of the shy, bookish type who was always doing something creative\u2014needlework, knitting, drawing, and making up crazy stories for Barbie and Ken. My sister and I were always close and have remained so to this day.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

I\u2019m told my dad loved the mountains and lakes. However, my mom was a lifelong fan of the sea and its beaches and she passed that love on to me. I remember many summers at the New Jersey Shore. We played on the beach all day. At night, we would visit the boardwalks at Asbury Park or Point Pleasant; often my grandparents or cousins joined us. They had an amusement park vibe from the sounds of the rides and the aroma of cheesesteaks, pizza, and cotton candy, but you knew you were at the beach because the salt air permeated everything. It was a heavenly place to be as a child, even though I always got dizzy on the rides (something that continues to this day!) I remember being very tired on the ride home\u2014but always able to perk up in time to see what was playing on the screens of the drive-in theater as we passed. The good old days!<\/p>\n

My childhood was a happy one, though it was tinged with the sadness of missing someone I never had the chance to know.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

DNJ: How and when did you become interested in photography?<\/p>\n

CG: I always had an interest in photography because my mom had an Argus C3 (\u201cthe brick\u201d) and took lots of slides of us growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. We still enjoy looking at them. Occasionally, I restore some and convert them to black and white\u2014especially the ones of us acting silly\u2014for an ongoing series I call Vintage Jersey Girl (with full credit to my mom as the photographer).<\/p>\n

Growing up, I had small film cameras: a Brownie, an Instamatic, etc., but I never looked at photography as an artistic pursuit. I used them to record what happened around me, or things I did with friends, you know\u2014classic snapshots.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until I was in my late 50s that I decided I wanted to \u201cbe a photographer\u201d and express myself artistically through my photography. Initially, I took photographs using my Galaxy Note 3. I started with clouds because they interested me and were accessible. I posted some images on Facebook, and there I found multiple groups devoted to cloud watching. I believe that is where my fondness for pareidolia started, because we\u2019ve all lain on the grass on a summer day, looked up at the clouds and found ones that \u201clooked like something.\u201d<\/p>\n

I also started photographing things around me, paying more attention to composition and color. I posted the images on my Facebook timeline and in various photography groups there, where I began getting feedback about my photographic eye. That\u2019s when I knew I wanted to do more than shoot with a phone\u2014I wanted to learn the technical aspects of digital photography.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t doing much traveling at the time, but I had a credit card that awarded miles for every dollar I spent. Those rewards came in handy when I wanted to buy my first DSLR and a couple of lenses, and I was able to use them to pay for my Canon SL1. It was a pretty basic camera, but it sparked an urge to find the system I would feel most comfortable with. That eventually turned out to be a mirrorless Fuji system.<\/p>\n

I read everything I could about the exposure triangle but soon discovered that I was less interested in the technical side than in subject matter and strong composition. I preferred to shoot in RAW so I would have more latitude in post-production. I used\u2014and still use\u2014Photoshop or Lightroom to bring out what I envisioned when I made the image.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

I joined more Facebook groups; most focused on minimalist photography. It was an aesthetic I had always loved, and it fit naturally with my background in graphic design. Although my corporate career was effectively behind me, I found that I still \u201csaw\u00a0\u201d graphically whenever I went out with my camera. Composition is very important to me. I pre-visualize how a scene might work as a photograph, paying close attention to the edges of the frame and deciding what to include and what to leave out.<\/p>\n

Even when I photograph the messy urban scenes I love, my background in graphic design brings a sense of order to the way I compose. I strongly believe that my design experience improved my skills in photographic composition. But, as often happens with Facebook groups, the rules and regulations\u2014and people\u2019s different interpretations of minimalism\u2014eventually got in the way. That turned me off to groups devoted to a single genre.<\/p>\n

I decided to shoot what I wanted, when I wanted, and that was when my work began to attract more attention. I started paying closer attention to the extraordinary range of subjects around me: the irony and quirkiness of life in the New Jersey suburbs; the crazy transition from suburban New Jersey to urban New York City, as seen through train windows; and the city itself, with its architecture, people, and overall joie de vivre.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

DNJ: Tell us about your photographic journey since that initial interest.<\/p>\n

CG: My photographic journey is littered with the remains of Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS)! I spent ten years buying, trying, and selling a variety of cameras and lenses while developing my style. I listened to a lot of my new photo friends talk about their gear, the weight of it, what they like to carry, when to use certain lenses, etc. My husband also had a Pentax film camera and some vintage Takumar lenses from the 1960s that he gave to me.<\/p>\n

During the pandemic, my GAS returned with a vengeance. I bought more vintage film cameras and even more lenses, and spent a few months enjoying the film experience. But once the film was developed and scanned, I was still ending up with digital files. I decided I might as well continue with my rapidly expanding collection of digital cameras. After using Canon for a while and then Sony, I switched to and settled on the Fujifilm system as my weapon of choice. The film gear sits in my office; many rolls of black and white film sit in my freezer. And that was more or less the end of my film experiment. The vintage lenses adapt well to my Fuji gear, and there is something about the way Fuji designs its cameras (the dials!) that allows you to work fully manually and feel like you are actually making a photograph, not using a miniature computer to create it.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

When I began, I shot anything and everything: clouds, street photography, minimalist scenes, rust, abstracts. One person said to me, \u201cYou are all over the place; you should stick with one thing and just do that.\u201d Of course, a comment like that was all I needed to spur me on to experiment even more, expand my definition of good subjects, and try a little bit of everything.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite experiments\u2014and something I still return to often\u2014is shooting with an infrared-converted camera (that is just one great thing to do with old gear!). I tried some false color infrared and didn\u2019t care for it, so now I stick to 720 nm. I don\u2019t make what I call the clich\u00e9d infrared photos of white foliage and misty cemeteries. Instead, I use it for high-contrast black-and-white images with dramatic skies.<\/p>\n

I never paid much attention to what other photographers were making. I just kept doing my own thing. Eventually, I realized that what resonated most was my quirky way of viewing things and a deadpan approach to my surroundings.<\/p>\n

Through social media, I had the good fortune of meeting several influential people who believed in me and my work. One was the editor-in-chief of FRAMES\u00a0magazine. That exposure led to some wonderful opportunities including a print feature in the magazine, and an invitation to be FRAMES\u2019 second Artist-in-Residence, which took place online. For that, I recorded myself on two photo walks, sharing how I see and why I find particular subjects interesting. I kept the videos light in tone so there are even a few instances of the gymnastics I will go through to get a particular image.<\/p>\n

My online presence also led to being invited to exhibit the work of my choice at my local library\u2019s gallery. I decided to show Sand Stories, which are abstract images of sand patterns I see on the beach in my home away from home, Hilton Head, South Carolina. It was my first exhibition and I found it quite challenging\u2014choosing the images, figuring out how to display them, doing all of the marketing, and planning the opening. I enlisted the help of two women who know a lot more about this stuff than I do, gallerist Debra Klomp Ching, and you, as I would have been flying by the seat of my pants, otherwise. I did manage to sell a few pieces but would have found the experience worthwhile even if I hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis, from the series Sand Stories<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis, from the series Sand Stories<\/p>\n

DNJ: I know you as more of an \u201cI want to show others what I see\u201d photographer than someone who begins with a concept and makes work from that starting point. Say you find yourself in a city you\u2019ve never visited and have time to walk around with your camera. How do you decide where to go and what to photograph? How do you go about looking?<\/p>\n

CG: I love this question! Over the past two years, I\u2019ve become quite the traveler. Many of my trips have taken me to cities I\u2019ve never visited before.\u00a0 However, I approach the local photo walks the same way I do an unfamiliar city\u2014I pick up my camera and shoot the first thing that interests me. That simple exercise gets my juices flowing, and I just keep going. I find that I lean toward the same subject matter no matter where I am\u2014I love backlighting, shadows, silhouettes of people, architecture, and traces of human presence (like laundry).<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

I try to make images that are distinctive to a location. It can be hard to strike a balance between photography that looks simply like travel imagery and photography that honors a place more artistically. I had a great opportunity to do just that during a recent photography workshop in Venice. Although I shoot a lot of architecture in New York City, Venice offered something entirely different. I photographed the buildings and their reflections in the canals. At night, I was drawn to the city lights, crumbling fa\u00e7ades, and old streetlights. At a similar workshop in Switzerland last summer, I found inspiration in reflections in the windows at the airport and the boats at Lake Lucerne. I tend to avoid typical tourist images unless I want to preserve a memory in my Lightroom catalog, which has become a sort of journal of the last decade of my life.<\/p>\n

The more of the world I see, the more I realize how much we humans have in common. That has been one of the best things I\u2019ve learned from my photographic travels. Traveling with my camera has also become one of my favorite things to do.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

DNJ: Which of the series you\u2019ve made is your favorite, and why?<\/p>\n

CG: I don\u2019t have a particular favorite. I have come to realize that my true voice is the one that\u2019s unexpected with a bit of humor (even if I\u2019m the only one who gets the joke).<\/p>\n

Pareidolia\u2014the tendency to see faces or familiar forms in ordinary objects\u2014is one way that quirkiness appears in my work. The image on the cover of FRAMES MONO is a perfect example. I was walking around a construction site looking for interesting graphic compositions when I felt like someone was looking at me\u2014a very odd feeling, but it happens to me quite often. I turned around and saw a standpipe against the building with a rag that had become wrapped around it. The pipe looked like goggles, and the rag looked like a scarf that had seen better days. I titled it World War I Flying Ace. Perhaps that is not what everyone sees when they look at my photo, but it is what I see. It is now one of my favorites.<\/p>\n

I may be the only person I know who has traffic cones conduct \u201ccon(e)versations.\u201d Because I frequently experience pareidolia and tend to anthropomorphize inanimate objects, traffic cones often look to me as if they are interacting. My \u201ccon(e)versations\u201d pair a photograph with a short bit of dialogue spoken by one or more cones (sometimes a cone talks to itself!). A photograph of a traffic cone can be art on its own, but giving the cones dialogue makes it something different. I don\u2019t do this all the time, but sometimes I see cones interacting and their \u201ccon(e)versations\u201d pop into my head. It\u2019s fun. It\u2019s also a good brain exercise. I put together a book of them for a friend who was going through some health challenges, and I may eventually self-publish it. The cones are a blessing and a curse because I have someone DMing me a cone meme at least three times a week. And, of course, I do not want to just be known for shooting traffic cones!<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

I also have an ongoing series I enjoy in which I photograph the world through train, subway, and Uber\/Lyft windows.<\/p>\n

I find the greatest satisfaction in discovering offbeat images in unexpected places. They are not a series, but they turn up in almost every photo shoot I do. For example, last October I attended a landscape master class in Scotland. By the time I noticed the laundry, I had seen many unpopulated natural landscapes. They were beautiful, but they didn\u2019t give me the same satisfaction I get from photographing a city or another place with signs of human presence, even when no people are visible\u2014a bicycle leaning against a building, a collection of brooms, or a potted plant in a window. Seeing some interesting-looking laundry blowing in the breeze in the middle of that Scottish landscape was a real treat for me.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019ll never photograph natural landscapes again\u2014I love photographing many things\u2014but it\u2019s the quirky gems that I\u2019m most grateful for.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

DNJ: Recently, FRAMES published a \u201czine\u201d of your work via its FRAMES MONO publication. How did the project come about, and what did making it involve? Who handled the selection, curation, and sequencing? What was your role beyond making the images?<\/p>\n

CG: The zine was a huge honor. Tomasz Trzebiatowski, the editor-in-chief of FRAMES magazine, invited me to be featured in the second edition of FRAMES MONO. Each edition is a saddle-stitched collection of 40 photographs by one photographer with an essay and an autographed cover.<\/p>\n

I was very involved in the process from start to finish. I made the initial selection, although Tomasz did suggest that I include a cone or two. Choosing 40 images that made sense together was one of the most difficult things I\u2019ve had to do, photographically speaking. I am nothing if not prolific, and I have thousands of photographs I would have loved to include. My first pass was sort of \u201cCindy\u2019s greatest hits\u201d\u2014images that had received more attention than others.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Detail: Cover, FRAMES MONO \u2013 Cynthia Gladis (Photo credit: \u00a9 FRAMES; Cover image: WWII Flying Ace \u00a9 Cynthia Gladis)<\/p>\n

I eventually narrowed the possibilities down to around 100 photographs. The Scotland workshop included three hours of one-on-one Lightroom training with Bob Killen, who ran the landscape master class. Bob didn\u2019t think I needed assistance with post-processing, so he suggested we use the time to cull that group. He also brought in a gallery owner he knows to offer another perspective.<\/p>\n

Their feedback was invaluable as I decided which images worked best together. It ended up being\u2014in effect\u2014my first portfolio review! The process confirmed that my unique and sometimes whimsical way of seeing was what connected the photographs, and my choices became clearer as I considered their comments.<\/p>\n

I also learned a lot about editing, sequencing, and the importance of \u201ckilling the beloved darlings.\u201d I had heard that phrase before, but I never understood it the way I do now, after having to kill a few of my own! Once we had an edit we felt good about, W. Scott Olsen of FRAMES created the final sequence. He also interviewed me and wrote the introductory essay.<\/p>\n

There are still photographs I would have liked to include, especially some of my sand abstracts and more of my New York City architecture. But I\u2019ve come to realize that those series might be better as small publications of their own. And I discovered that people can enjoy my photographs without titles!<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

DNJ: What do you hope people take from your work?<\/p>\n

CG: I hope that people feel a certain joy, or happiness, when looking at my work. Perhaps they think it\u2019s amusing; maybe its clean style makes them feel calm, as it does me.\u201d I am not politically vocal, nor do I make work from personal challenges. My sense of humor keeps me grounded and helps me enjoy this gift of life. I love getting the kind of feedback where a viewer says to me, \u201cYou see things that so many others would just walk right past.\u201d I find a lot of interesting things\u2014and beauty\u2014in the everyday and I want to share that with others. All the better if it gives someone a chuckle.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis<\/p>\n

DNJ: What is next on the horizon for you?<\/p>\n

CG: I have a lot of travel coming up. I always bring a camera, whether it is a photo-related trip or not.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be in Hilton Head in August where I will add more to my sand series. October will be a whirlwind, and I am already planning to be exhausted. I have a FRAMES Rendezvous\u2014that\u2019s what they call their workshops\u2014in Seoul, South Korea. It\u2019s limited to seven people, and I\u2019ll be focused on honing my street photography chops. I will also be taking a cruise from Boston to Quebec with two longtime friends, but I plan to do a lot of photography on that trip, too. The third trip is another FRAMES Rendezvous to Fargo, North Dakota. Based upon Scott Olsen\u2019s photography of that city, I\u2019m really looking forward to that one. I know I will enjoy each experience and will be walking around with an eye out for the out of the ordinary; that brings me the most joy. I am sure I will bring back many memories and add to my Lightroom catalog!<\/p>\n

I also plan to follow through on the small publications I mentioned, including ones devoted to my sand abstracts and observations of New York City. All of these projects take time, as you know, and I\u2019m one of those people who\u2019d rather be out shooting and making new images than doing anything else.<\/p>\n

DNJ: Cynthia, thank you ever so much for the time and thought you have give me for this interview. Readers, I hope you have enjoyed learning about Cynthia and her practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Cynthia Gladis, from the series, Sand Stories<\/p>\n

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Posts on Lenscratch may not be reproduced without the permission of the Lenscratch staff and the photographer.<\/p>\n