Frontier Fellowship: Jenn Emerling

Jennifer Emerling, Visual Storyteller (California)

Jennifer Emerling is an independent visual storyteller specializing in travel, editorial, and documentary photography. Jenn’s long-term work seeks to understand how identity, personal memories, the history of Westward Expansion and tourism intersect with cultivating feelings of awe, wonder, wildness, and love. Her calling card is her saturated, otherworldly perspective—using a documentary approach combined with magic realism, she mindfully works in the pursuit of joy, highlighting the uniquely American experience that’s both familiar and slippery in all of its wonderfully exaggerated folklore and whimsy. Jenn’s thoughtful thirst for the world keeps her on the road most of the time, but when she’s when not chasing the perfect golden light tripping down the cosmic highway in the American West, she calls California home.

What about Green River & the Frontier Fellowship excites you most?

I have been looking for more opportunities to combine community service with my art practice, and to pass on the transformative powers that are uniquely felt within the great, wild expanse of the Western Landscape through art. There seems to be something magical brewing in Green River, and I’m excited for this opportunity immerse myself in rural life and get to know the people who make Green River so special. My intentions are to gain a deeper understanding into a way of life that I might not otherwise ever get to experience, be a positive
influence, an ambassador for others, and walk away a more enlightened, empathetic human being.