Caleb Stein ’10

Photographer

By David Kersey h’98, Alumni Liaison

“When I look at the photographs taken by Caleb Stein it’s hard to wrap my mind around the idea that he is just at the beginning of his photography career. And if I can predict correctly, it’s a career that will undoubtedly lead to a level of mastery that will equal the greats. His work is so well seen, with such clear, unflinching vision, that his storytelling is profound and singular.”— Aline Smithson Lens/cratch 2017

At 28, Caleb Stein ’10 is a highly acclaimed art photographer whose work has been exhibited in London, New York and most recently at the prestigious Rose Gallery in Santa Monica. His work is published in anthologies and magazines here and in the UK, and is included in museum collections, the latest being The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Caleb is drawn to subjects that affect him personally, and he focuses on them in-depth—a nineyear look at a watering hole in Poughkeepsie, New York, two years in Hanoi with Vietnamese War veterans and their descendants and more recently, extensive travel throughout the United States for his project, “American Glitch,” which investigates the conspiracy theory that Americans are living in a virtual simulation and the internet postings that purport to offer evidence of glitches that support this contention.

Though Caleb is a solo photographer, he prefers collaborating with others. This was true of his work with Vietnamese War veterans and when he joined one of his English teachers at Vassar College, Amativa Kumar, to create an op-ed piece in The New York Times. Most often though, he works with his multi-media artist wife, Andrea Orejarena, whom he met when they were firstyear students at Vassar.

He says this of his interest in art: “Art has always been important to me. My family was filled with creative people; my grandfather was a painter and an incredible draftsman; my father’s an architect; my mother’s a film producer who was very involved in art in New York; and my stepmothers were art dealers. It’s always been there.

“Those years at Allen-Stevenson were very formative. It was the moment when I was very excited about learning. I remember loving art classes at Allen-Stevenson because they were a place to experiment, and the teachers were sweet, open and encouraging. I have very, very good memories of making art at Allen-Stevenson, but I think my real interest in school then was words. It was more about words at that point and trying to get some command over them and learning how to tell a story, learning how to express myself.”

When asked if he had advice for A-S boys of today: “The good thing about Allen-Stevenson is that if you want to learn and you want to take a really deep dive, there are people there who will do it with you—whatever it is, particularly if you engage. My advice is to take it seriously because then the teachers will take you seriously, and special things start to happen. I’ve taken that philosophy throughout my education.”

And influences? “I’m a big believer in remaining a student— always. So, I look widely at everything. During the pandemic, I spent about six weeks looking at the entire online collection of the Tate Britain—varied images which became a kind of flow, an ocean of art that I found very generative. As to individuals who do personal documentary work (or lyrical documentary work), I’m very interested in the work of Sergio Lorraine, William Klein, Mozet Modele, and Josef Koudelka, who is my god. I looked through his whole archive, something like 30,000 images, where I discovered that once in a while a photograph gets away from its maker and that’s the sort of thing that inspires me, that’s the sort of magic that sometimes happens with photography.”

As to the future, Caleb said that he couldn’t talk too much about what’s next in terms of exhibitions and publications, but he did enthusiastically describe his interest in wrestling. So much for us to look forward to.