Cynthia Wilson is a perpetual learner. She first received a camera at the age of 10 and her love of photography has been with her ever since. Her first shots were mostly of family, friends, and landscapes through the car window on family vacations to upstate New York. That start still influences some of her current work and she can still be found pointing the camera or now phone to the side of the window trying to capture the view along this road of life.
She attended Beaver College (now Arcadia University) where she took her first Black and White Photography class with Judy Taylor in her senior year. Her hard work in that fall semester lead to a lab monitor position in the spring, allowing her to experiment in the darkroom. Cynthia’s first exhibition was in the library gallery at Beaver College, where she also worked during her college years. She combined short poems with her black and white work, which focused on landscapes and portraiture.
She pursued photography after graduation by working at Larmon Photo then expanding her knowledge and experience in lab work at New York Camera and Video. Alongside day-to-day work, she freelanced for the Times Publishing Group. Being around other photographers has been a great source of inspiration for Cynthia. In particular Ernie Dietz, Kathy Hierholzer, Lisa Mahler, and Harvey Scherzer from Larmon Photo and Karen Hassinger and Lauren Carbone from New York Camera and Video have been her teachers in the working world.
These sources of inspiration lead Cynthia into cross processing slides, a process entailing the development of slide film in C-41 chemistry (typically used for print film) instead of E-6 chemistry as directed for slides. This process brings brighter, more saturated colors to her imagery.
After working in the lab, Cynthia decided to pursue photography from student eyes again. After taking a job in the library at Temple University, she was able to enroll in another photography class, this time with professor Jeff McConnell. She was also given the opportunity to hold another photo exhibit at Temple’s Diamond Club and was profiled in the Temple Times. Cynthia continued to exhibit her work at various coffee shops, libraries and businesses in the years that followed. She did some freelance work for various publications as well. You can see a full list in the Publications/Exhibitions section of this website.
She also worked though a variety of jobs in the library field and completed her Master’s Degree in Library Science from Clarion University. She is currently the Senior Manager of Implementation Programs at OCLC, where she manages a team to help libraries get started with OCLC services.
The perpetual learner in Cynthia is not just aligned with full-time work, schooling and degrees. She is a self-taught tarot card reader and has read cards for people over the last 25 years. In addition, Cynthia has also studied shamanism over the last few years, where she focused on negative energy extraction, energy balancing, and soul retrieval. Her teachers in the shamanic world are Dana and Shana Robinson, through the Foundation of Shamanic Studies and Maya Phoenix. She continued her spiritual growth in studying Intuition with William Stillman and then learning how to read the Akashic Records with Maureen St. Germain. Cynthia is a member of Akashic Records International and began giving Akashic Records Readings in 2020.
Cynthia lives in Broomall, PA with her husband Chris and their two children Harmony and Shane.
Her website is a portfolio of her work throughout the years. Enjoy!