An Early Start to a Lifelong Passion of Documenting
Dressed in a black hooded-sweatshirt and camera in hand, Eric Marks has become a feature of downtown Reno nightlife. But as the owner of Reno Street Photography and as a documentarian, he’s more in the shadows, documenting what he sees to share with the world what life on the streets of Reno is all about.
His love for cameras can be attributed to his grandfather, who gave him his first Instamatic in the 1970s.
“My grandfather was an avid photography enthusiast, my father as well. There were always cameras around my house,” Marks said when we caught up with him for an extended interview of what drives him to capture so much of Reno. “My first foray into photography was going table to table after the junior ski program at the Reindeer Lodge, (a former property of Mount Rose highway), popping off family portraits for people and then hustling them out for ten bucks a pop.”
It didn’t take long for the young Marks to realize that what started as a simple side-hustle, could become a whole lot more.
A Natural Evolution with Trials and Tribulations
“So it was like 1979 and I'm making like $80 profit-margins,” Marks said. “I just thought that was the neatest thing in the world. I expanded that to going door-to-door in my neighborhood and doing the same thing. Then it just was a natural evolution from there.”
As time went on and he was about to finish high school, Marks decided that he was going to join the Air Force. But those plans got sidetracked when at 19 years old, he went down a toboggan run and broke his back.
“I ended up with three fractured vertebrae and [receiving] titanium prosthesis,” Marks explained. “The entire trajectory of my life changed. I was literally a centimeter away from severing the nerves in my spine and would have been in a wheelchair.”
Due to his back injury, Marks had to put his education on the back-burner until he fully recovered. Once he did fully recover, he became an entrepreneur and went on to own two of his own video production companies.
“I owned two video production companies from 2005 to 2012,” Marks said. “One worked in the music industry, which was really fun and [the other] worked in corporate America, which really was not. When the economy took a tank, we had to reevaluate and my partner and I just honestly had enough of video at the time. It was just taxing, so I just got burnt out and decided to go back to UNR.”
Marks went on to become a student at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he majored in English with a minor in photography and graduated in 2013. To further his education he graduated with an Art Degree from the Church Fine Arts (CFA) program at UNR in 2018.
During his time at UNR, Marks got an opportunity to become a Teacher’s Assistant for an esteemed local photographer, Jeff Ross. After his semester working for Ross ended, Marks was invited back to continue working for Ross in his studio.
“Jeff was very kind, assisting me and my evolution [as a photographer],” Marks said. “I worked for five years with Jeff and we did everything from shower heads to portraits. So I just obtained this very diverse set of photography skills by accident.”
After closing up shop on his video company, Marks saw an open call as an assistant for a prominent wedding photographer at Lake Tahoe. At first he was turned down, already having too much experience for the unpaid assistant position. But that didn’t stop him from wanting the experience, anyway.
“I [told him], ‘I want to do it,’” Marks said. “I had never shot a wedding before and then afterwards, I thought I was going to never take a photo again. It was literally the most difficult form of photography I had ever encountered. I've got very thick skin and I'm not easy to defeat, but I was defeated. That first season I just thought to myself, ‘I don't even know if I could do photography.’”
As the top of his website indicated, Eric Marks has many specialties.
The Pressures of Wedding Photography
Although Marks works well in high-pressure environments, he admits there’s added pressure trying to manage 300+ people on what is the most important day of his clients’ lives. It didn’t take long, however, before he developed a method to the madness that has enabled him to become a five-star award winning wedding photographer today.
“[Then] it dawned on me the correlations between wedding photography and street photography,” Marks explained. “Once I made that connection, everything just kind of clicked because I was able to utilize my street photography skill set [and apply it] to the weddings. The rapid exposures, the extreme chaos, the noise, the overwhelming visuals, the whole visceral experience of it all, I love it.”
Whether he’s photographing weddings in Lake Tahoe or the streets of Reno, he applies a similar strategy that he shares with his students at Truckee Meadows Community College, where he now teaches.
“I know where my camera settings are and I try not to move my aperture or my ISO,” Marks said. “Then I can just work my shutter and that gives me a little bit of an advantage, and I teach that in the TMCC classes that I instruct.”
Although Marks has done well for himself as wedding photographer and instructor, it’s street photography that aligns with his passions. It’s a passion that began during his childhood spending time with his grandfather in San Francisco.
“We would just sit there and people watch,” Marks explained. “To this day, I just love to observe people. I love the psychology of traffic and crowds. [My grandfather] taught me one of the most important lessons in my life in terms of photography and that's what I teach my students: look up and look down. Everybody shoots at eye level, so I really try hard to get away from that.”
Back On the Streets, A Sleepless Occupation
For Marks, shooting street photography in Reno also gave him something to do in his free time or when he couldn’t sleep.
“I'm a bit of a chronic insomniac and always have been,” Marks said. “Then after my [back] injury and ten years of intense medication coming out of that, I just really had difficulty sleeping so it's a great form of therapy [for me].”
Shooting street photography in the late hours of the night also gave Marks and his audience a glimpse into the lives of Renoites that not many people see.
“Back then Reno looked a lot different and I was driving my professors at the CFA pretty nuts because I was obsessed with [street photography],” Marks explained. “There's a lot of gritty stuff [in Reno]. Then I started catching a lot of flack from people from photographing the homeless and displaced people. Even my own department heads were saying, ‘You shouldn't be doing this, but I utterly reject that because that’s ‘otherization.’”
Marks considers his street photography all-inclusive, as it’s important to show people what their cities look like when everyone is tucked safely away in their suburban homes and lifestyles. That goes without mentioning, too, that his more controversial images drive the most traffic online.
“I see the analytics on my pages,” Marks said. “I know what images are getting the most views and I guarantee you the more hardcore they are, the photos I take at four in the morning of the transsexual prostitute in a dumpster, get a hundred percent more views than the affluent kid walking through Arlington Park. There's no argument to it and I can prove that data.”
Some of the images Marks has captured have conjured up doubters as well, where people have even accused him of staging his photos.
“You know, I'm not a product of any kind of dysfunctionality, I had a great family unit,” Marks said. “But some of the things that I see crawling around these streets will blow your mind and people don't believe it. I've had people call me out and think I stage photos but I couldn't stage some of these if I wanted to. But when you do this 24/7, 365 days a year, you will catch a few lucky ones.”
Although he’s come across his fair share of criticism for the street photos he’s taken, Marks asserts it doesn’t bother him in the least bit. “I've heard the comment that I have portrayed Reno in a bad way and my response is that I don't portray Reno at all,” Marks said. “We're photographers, we’re documentarians, we document what we see, we don't portray. I am documenting things that I see and if you don't like it, don't follow the page.”
Criticism and Praise
Despite some of the criticisms, Marks has received his fair share of support and praise from the community as well.
“It's very humbling and gratifying that over time I've seen other street photographers come out of the woodworks,” Marks said. “People have messaged me and were like, ‘Hey man, thanks for doing this. I always wanted to do it, but I was afraid to do it and then I saw you do it.’ That's the moral conundrum of the individual artist as a street photographer: Do you have what it takes to stick a lens in somebody's face?”
Whether it’s criticism or praise, Marks isn’t necessarily looking for his audience to have any type of particular response to his images. To him, it’s all part of each viewer’s individual experience.
“I have no desire for my viewer to have any reaction,” Marks said. “That's up to them. I don't impose mandates on my art. Whatever natural response that [my photos] invokes in you, that's great. If it angers, terrifies, brings you joy, sadness, wonder, curiosity, whatever it is, that’s great.”
When it comes to the technical side of photography, Marks will make necessary edits to enhance his images in a certain way. That being said, though, he will never intentionally manipulate them to be something they’re not.
“I am 100% adamantly opposed to people who manipulate their images digitally,” Marks said.
“Introducing or removing an object is against the integrity of street photography. It's in direct opposition to everything that it stands for. If you do that, then you're not a street photographer.”
A recent photo from his street photography Instagram feed.
Compassion for Humans on the Streets of Reno
Street photography is not Marks’ primary source of income, it’s just always been something he’s done for himself and his love for the world around him. The things that he’s witnessed through his street photography, however, has enabled him to understand what’s really important in life.
“It's not like I'm rolling seven figures off of my street photography endeavors,” Marks said. “I don't engage in [responding to critics] because life's too short. Some of the things I've seen on these streets and now having done street photography in 14 countries, it really makes me have an appreciation for my health and the world around me.”
Marks confirms that about 99% of the homeless and displaced people he encounters on the streets are friendly. He often befriends them, learns their names, and even gives them hugs.
“People are friendly out there,” Marks said. “There’s this misconception of homeless people and I think that really needs to be addressed. They’re human beings, man.”
For Marks, street photography is his means of trying to understand things that might be difficult for him to wrap his head around and be exposed to something new.
“I have had extensive conversations with homeless people and I'll leave that conversation, give them a hug, walk away, and think to myself not, ‘What's wrong with this person?’” Marks explained. “I think to myself, ‘What the hell is wrong with me? Why have I never done that before? Why am I not doing it more? If every citizen would just do a little bit more, if we could all just do a little bit in our own way, I don't need giving out money or whatever, just do something right because we all live in the society together, right?”
During his first two years of shooting street photography, whenever he encountered a homeless person, Marks would try and do what he could for them. This meant buying food, clothes, and blankets for them. However, he soon realized he was nearly going broke doing it.
“I had to realize that I can't solve this problem on my own,” Marks explained. “The best thing I can do is to continue to take images and just expose what's out there. I want people to look at things and understand that the world that we live in is not all luxury automobiles. We're not all making six figures and driving Teslas in Reno right now.”
As someone with three degrees and working multiple jobs to make a steady income, Marks understands that he’s fortunate enough just to be in the position he is today. Growing up, he worked as a janitor cleaning toilets and flipping burgers at fast food restaurants. These experiences have helped him develop the work ethic he has today, as well as appreciate the opportunities he has. Due to the suddenness of his back injury in the toboggan accident, Marks also understands that life can change in an instant.
Life Lessons
“What I’ve learned unequivocally is that we're all one step away from [homelessness],” Marks said. “It's not a cliche to say people live paycheck to paycheck. God forbid, if you injure yourself.”
But that doesn’t go without saying that shooting street photography and encountering displaced people hasn’t taken an emotional toll on Marks, too.
“[Encountering homeless] women and children is really difficult for me,” Marks explained. “Then in 2017, I had a little bit of a moral dilemma because I ran into somebody who I actually knew, that was living between two dumpsters with her dog. It really put me in a head space that I didn't have a reference frame for dealing with emotionally. It was the first time I ever really had to re-evaluate what I was doing and I struggled with it. I didn't post for months and I didn't even touch my camera for weeks. I had to talk to some professional photographers and peers and then I decided the right thing to do was to continue after the advice of a very good friend of mine.”
Recently, Marks has looked beyond the city of Reno to explore and experience the world through street photography. “My latest thing is international street photography and that's where my focus is headed towards in the future,” Marks said. “I’ve gone to other countries and started seeing the impoverishment in Mexico. I did street photography in Oaxaca, Puebla, and Mexico City and it's crazy down there. It's a lot different than Prague because when I'm doing street photography in Prague, it's all castles on the river. It's a whole different aesthetic.”
Sadness and Opportunity with a Changing Reno
Reno holds a special place in Marks’ heart. For a street photographer, Reno provides a unique challenge as a city that is constantly evolving and changing itself. In just the past few years that Marks has been shooting street photography in Reno, he has seen the Biggest Little City change. Unfortunately, he’s not sure it’s for the better.
“Reno is re-defining itself and I have mixed emotions about what's going on in the city, to be perfectly honest,” Marks said. “Lack of preservation, primarily, and the housing issues speaks for itself. But it’s the reality we live in.”
To Marks, it seems the more downtown is trying to develop, bulldozing motels, moving community meals away from the downtown shelter, the more everything else is getting displaced.
“Shutting down the Greyhound bus station isn’t really solving anything in my observation. It’s just kind of displacing it,” Marks said. “You can sweep dust under the rug, but there's still dust under the rug and it's still going to come trickling out. I think it’s really obnoxious that Jacobs [Entertainment] comes in here with a $500 million development plan and no preservation [for what was removed], whatsoever. The whole Fourth Street corridor has been completely gentrified. It's crazy to me to just push around homeless people the way we do in order to make way for another brewery. ”
But as a street photographer, the reinvention of Reno provides ample opportunities for Marks. Due to Reno’s comparatively small size for a major city, over the years Marks has gotten to learn the streets like the back of his hand. He knows exactly where the light is going to be in a certain location at any point of the day, any day of the year. But it’s his thorough understanding of Reno’s streets that creates opportunities to recognize and document the changes he sees firsthand.
“I'm waiting for the proverbial dust to settle and see what kind of scape I have now because for me as a street photographer, it's great,” Marks said. “It's like Inception, the movie, because as the city is reinventing, we’ve brought in all these awesome artists and street muralists and so [the city] never looks the same. I can go out in one summer and shoot the same place and get a completely different look than I did the summer before.”
Reno being such a small city, however, does provide its own set of specific challenges for a street photographer like Marks.
“Over the years I'm constantly developing my style and pushing myself to try to find something new,” Marks explained. “There are some things I try not to shoot too much anymore: the Circus Circus Clown, Manzanita Lake, and the Reno Arch I think should all be on a broad “No Shoot” list, but that's just my personal opinion.”
Another recent series from his Instagram feed renostreetphotography.
Safety First
Whenever he goes out to shoot, Marks’ goal is never to make himself noticed. If he’s seen taking photos, that compromises the quality of candidness in his photos. It’s natural for people to change their demeanor when they see their photo being taken. That’s an example of when street photography becomes street portraiture, and Marks vows never to pass off any of his photos as something it’s not. That being said, safety is his first and foremost priority, especially for his students when he takes them out on a shoot with him.
“We do what we have to as photographers to get our shots,” Marks said. “But you have to obey the law, 100%. You don't impede a police investigation, block doorways to businesses, and most certainly don't ever go into moving traffic, especially in this town nowadays. There's no image on the planet that's worth getting [attacked] over.”
Everything else, however, is fair game for anyone walking around in the public domain. If he encounters anyone that becomes upset about their photo being taken, Marks does what he can to de-escalate the situation.
“I never purposely aggravate somebody,” Marks said. “The last thing I want to do is disrupt that person any more than that person's life is [already] disrupted. I've never had a physical altercation and have no intention of having a physical altercation. I don't carry weapons. I know street photographers that do and I find that disgusting. That’s a good way to get yourself killed or hurt somebody and I'm not looking to do either one of those two things.”
Street Photography vs. Journalism
When he’s out shooting photos on the street, Marks admits he’s not looking for anything in particular. Most of the time, he’s simply just documenting the things that he finds interesting.
“I’m honestly winging it out there,” Marks said. “I like interesting characters and that doesn't come from any specific demographic, that just spans the whole gamut for me. I'm also a big fan of negative space, because I think negative space when used properly is an extremely powerful compositional tool.”
Although Marks takes to the streets with the intentions of shooting street photography, his work at times has also adapted to a form of journalism. He encounters a wide variety of people, but he approaches them all the same.
“I think anybody that knows me knows that I have good intentions,” Marks explained. “There's a video on the street photography page when I made a little time-lapse video between the police, the paramedics, the fires, the hookers, and the gang bangers. Now, they're all the same to me, I don't treat any of them any differently. Obviously I treat the law enforcement with the respect they deserve, but I have also helped them as well.”
In his time shooting street photography, Marks once accidentally aided in the arrest of three people who committed assault because he happened to photograph it when it happened. Another time, he got trapped behind a dumpster between two SWAT teams as they addressed an active situation. But as an experienced contributor for This is Reno and Reno News and Review, he understands when to classify certain photos he takes as street photography, and when they qualify as journalism.
“I have to come home and say to myself, ‘Okay, that's not even a street photography image, that's journalism,” Marks said. “[Journalism] is a whole different world. So that [image] goes into this pile, this [image] goes into that pile.”
Marks has also done photography for the local alt-weekly the Reno News and Review.
Grateful for His “Wild, Wild West” Community
By documenting and posting the things he sees on the street, Marks feels as if it’s his way of giving back to the city of Reno. He has a unique relationship with the city, one that he feels has been mutually beneficial.
“I’m grateful for my followers and the city,” Marks said. “They're very supportive of me and I think it's because the art form [of street photography] was never about Eric Marks. It was always about the things that I see on the street.”
Like an itch that can’t be scratched, every day provides another opportunity for avid street photographers to experience and witness something new.
“The world is the best subject studio possible,” Marks said. “It's constantly just in a state of flux every second of every minute. So it's hard to really not to take a good picture if you’ve developed the skills and have the desire to do so.”
Marks hopes street photography encompasses that state of flux in such a concentrated area like Reno. To him, it’s what makes Reno...Reno.
“I absolutely believe that Reno was, is, and always will be the Wild West,” Marks said. “It's kind of cool in terms of a photographer's perspective, at least it is for me.There's history here.”
Thanks to the work of street photographers like Marks, that history of Reno is being documented every day and night for the world to see.