Learning to Speak the Visual: Meaghan Looram '92

On July 14, 2014, Meaghan Looram Mulcahy '92 presents photographs to senior editors at The New York Times.

Photograph by Andrew Renneisen for The New York Times

In September, Meaghan Looram Mulcahy ’92, deputy photo editor at The New York Times, curated a photography exhibit in a shipping container. The occasion was Photoville, an annual festival beneath the Brooklyn Bridge that repurposes more than 50 containers into photo galleries. The Times exhibit featured the work of staff photographer Josh Haner, whose stills and drone footage capture the life-altering effects of climate change. Haner’s work was explored further in a nighttime projection and discussion of The Times’ most visually powerful stories of the year, a presentation that Mulcahy produced and moderated.

The festival gave Mulcahy a chance to step outside of the fast-paced daily machinations of the newsroom and engage with the work of Times photographers in a completely different setting. “It’s fun and rewarding for me, and nice to be able to physically stand with people as they experience the photography,” she says.

And photography is an experience. Images have the power to transport us into the lives of others, or to a particular time and place. The best ones may even change the course of world events. “That’s one of the things that makes working in journalism feel very rewarding,” Mulcahy says. “I think all journalism that’s well made has the potential to change people’s minds, their behavior, or policy. Visual journalism is particularly effective because it’s a universal language. It’s kind of an Esperanto.”

Mulcahy joined The New York Times in 2005 after spending seven years as the assistant picture editor at Fortune Magazine. For the past several years, she has helped manage The Times photo department, 42 photo editors strong. That means that as she sees to the changing needs of her staff, she’s also staying on top of global events and coverage, and often helping decide which photos end up on the front page.

Most of her time is spent overseeing these areas, but when she’s down in the trenches as a photo editor, the process generally goes like this: First she decides how best to illustrate a story—are portraits the way to go, or is it better to use photos of the subject in action? Then she assigns a photographer whose stylistic or personal skills are the best fit. She may handle the logistics for the photographer, such as scouting locations, arranging credentials, or finalizing travel plans and safety measures for assignments like those in the aftermath of a hurricane. Finally, after the photos come in, she identifies the best shots for publication and works with designers and editors on how to present them—whether as a single image in print or a photo gallery online, for example.

“I love that my job involves so many different kinds of tasks, from assigning photography to ironing out editors’ schedules to planning awards night coverage,”she says. “No two days are alike.”

Photograph by Todd Heisler/The New York Times

In intangible ways, Santa Catalina prepared her for all of it.

Mulcahy grew up in Pacific Grove as the youngest of five children in a military family that had moved frequently before she came along. (The five siblings, including sister Mary Looram Moslander ’84, were born in different states.) At Catalina, she found a community that empowered her to pursue a range of interests, from student government, to school newspaper, to athletics, to dance and musical theater. “I know I didn’t excel in every area, but I was never discouraged from that exploration,” she says. “It was a safe space to try new things in a completely positive and constructive environment.”

She studied photography at Stanford University but soon discovered she was more of a “facilitator of photography than a perpetrator of it.” Mulcahy explains: “While I enjoyed the creative process of shooting, I was equally as interested in talking about and studying photography, and in thinking about what it means to communicate visually. I didn’t really know that photo editing existed as a line of work, but when I discovered it, it felt like a perfect fit for me.”

So, too, was journalism. When asked whether she had any particularly influential teachers at Catalina, she offered up history teacher Broeck Oder. “He taught me to be curious and critical minded and questioning, to be rigorous about facts but also to see humor in the world”—all qualities that are in journalists’ DNA. The profession also feeds the perpetual student in her. “I often say that working in journalism, and particularly at The New York Times, feels like being enrolled in some type of continuing education course,” she remarks. “I learn so many new things each day about the world, and I get to learn them first-hand from some of the smartest, best-informed, and most curious journalists out there.”

Newspapers’ shift to a digital-first world over the past decade has changed the game for photographers and photo editors, who have had to learn to work faster and become more versatile. One perfect image is no longer enough; photographers now must compose fully realized photo essays or shoot video, and photo editors have to think about how images will look not only in print, but on small screens and in social media feeds. As Mulcahy sees it, “It means there is much more real estate for photography, which is wonderful, but it also means that the demands on our photographers and editors are much more extreme.”

Her staff is lucky to have her on their side. “For me, it’s really important to contribute to a working environment that feels supportive and humane, especially [because] our jobs tend to be very stressful, pressure filled, and deadline oriented,” she says of the management side of her job. That type of outlook is reflected in the lessons she learned from another influential teacher at Catalina, former dance instructor Susan Cable. Mulcahy notes that Cable’s “buoyancy and brightness and optimism left a very lasting impression on me.”

Meaghan Looram Mulcahy ’92 with her husband, Conrad, and daughter, Maeve.

Photograph by Kiersten Labzd

There’s a lot about Catalina that lingers within Mulcahy. She hopes that other students take these matters of character with them as well. “A big part of my growth during my time at Catalina had to do with gaining self-confidence and learning to express myself thoughtfully and assertively,” she says. Current students are learning how to think, speak, and write critically, but “they are also fortunate enough to be learning the value of empathy, altruism, gratitude, and generosity.” These qualities, Mulcahy points out, “will serve students well in any future pursuits,” even if a “specific life or vocational path may not yet be crystal clear.”