The news was devastating to Angela Strassheim.
At the end of her sophomore year, her family moved from Elkhart, Ind., to Minneapolis.
Strassheim left her small school, where the introvert had worked hard to make friends, and enrolled in a huge high school.
She hated it. Just hated it.
Strassheim couldn’t find a group of friends she felt comfortable with. But in the spring semester of her junior year, she found photography.
It changed her life.
Photography turned out to be a way for Strassheim to communicate, to start that conversation she often struggled with.
It also became a passion and a career. One that has led to shows around the world for the 45-year-old Strassheim, including her Focused on Family exhibition opening to the public Saturday at Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville. It is the latest Project Atrium show at the museum.
Her photography class met twice a week for three hours each time. The first class was spent out in the field, photographing different parts of the city. The second was critique day.
Between those days, she spent hours in the darkroom. It was a place she could get lost in as she watched her photographs come to life.
So lost at times she actually got locked in the school at night a couple of times.
“The first time it freaked my parents out,” she said. “The second time they knew that’s where I was.”
Strassheim works exclusively with film, even in today’s digital world.
“I like every aspect of film,” she said. “I tried digital. I don’t even enjoy it.”
After receiving her bachelor’s degree in media arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Strassheim’s life in photography took an interesting turn.
She attended the Forensic Imaging Bureau in Miami, where she received her certification in forensic and biomedical photography.
“I always wanted to be Quincy,” she said, referring to a television show in the 1970s and 1980s about a medical examiner.
The Miami program was “really where I learned all the technical stuff about photography,” Strassheim said.
She used her certification to photograph crime scenes and autopsies, which she enjoyed. Strassheim left the field after working at a crime lab in Richmond, where she didn’t enjoy working with the strong science minds.
Much of Strassheim’s work features the children of one of her brothers, whom she has photographed all their lives. “If I showed up at their house without a camera that would be weird to them,” she said.
She’s thankful for a career in photography, one of two good things that came out of her time in Minneapolis. The other is a longtime friendship with the mother of her ex-boyfriend who she dated for seven years.
The woman taught Strassheim about art, took her to the Nutcracker and taught her how to drink coffee. French press, Strassheim said. It’s still her favorite.
When Strassheim went back to Minnesota to teach, she met up with her ex-boyfriend. There was nothing there anymore. They didn’t make it past the drinks. “We said, ‘Let’s just call it a night,’” she said.
But it was different with his mother. “I missed her,” Strassheim said. “She had such a huge impact on me.”
Strassheim renewed her friendship with his mother. Good friendships are hard to find.
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