By Shandra Back
Boston University News Service
Eyes scanned mindlessly through pages. Another day of mom dragging a groaning high-schooler to a too-small shop full of too many antiques. Cydney Scott’s fingers grazed through pages in a magazine, then stopped. The room was dark, or maybe that’s just how she remembered it as the full-page spread sprung from the page, sending one sentence to her mind.
“That’s what I want to do.”
Not many people can say they had a distinct lightbulb moment, said Scott. Yet the first instance she understood the power of capturing emotion and the human condition through photographs, Scott’s path had been set.
Now a senior photojournalist at BU Today, Boston University’s in-house platform that blends news and storytelling, Scott has continued her journey towards capturing raw, intimate moments that showcase the essence of humanity.
The Magazine was LIFE. The photographer, Alfred Eisenstaedt. The content, a dragon being slayed. Scott didn’t yet understand what photojournalism was before college, yet this candid shot of children’s emotions during the climax of a puppet show in 1960’s Paris summed it up.
Eisenstaedt positioned himself where the children were looking and then snapped the lens shut at the perfect moment. This double truck, a full-page spread, captures disbelief, excitement and fear. The screams burst through the old unglossed pages of the magazine, Scott said. This photo defined photojournalism, said Scott. She sits, head to toe in gray, purple streaks peek out from her long hair. As she reminisces, her fingers pull a yellow fidget spinner.
Throughout her career as a photojournalist, Scott has been seeing her pieces in print since shooting for her middle school yearbook. But, this is the first time her photographs will be printed and placed on walls.
From Oct. 29-Dec. 3, in the 808 Gallery, staff photographers at BU Today will be showcasing photos from their careers entitled Moments in Photography, “which celebrates each photographer’s career and delves into moments when they chose to snap the shutter.”
Scott has always had a camera in hand, said Christina Ciccolini, Scott’s childhood friend.
Although she has grown in her photographic skillset, she was always able to capture that moment: the twinkle in people’s eyes, said Ciccolini.
In eighth grade, their class took a field trip to Montreal. Decades later, Ciccolini still references the photo Scott snapped that day: the elation of being abroad with friends, even on a rainy Canada day. Even then, “she’ll catch you at a moment of expression that you’re just like, ‘Wow! How did you get it?’ ” Ciccolini said.
Scott attended college at Ohio University. She said she remembers the pressure of taking classes with graduate students, who seemed endlessly ahead of her. The program was small, yet one woman stood out during her training.
Any students of Marcy Nighswander’s class would leave with either a skillset built toward success or a rejection straight out of the industry. “She was a ballbuster,” said Scott. The determined undergraduate, surrounded by graduate students, faced the challenge of an independent study under the guidance of the professor she both admired and feared. Her assignment: to photograph the birth of a calf.
It was a waiting game, anticipating the farmer’s call with the news that the birth was coming. When he called at 4 a.m., Scott ran to her car and raced through the 45-minute drive, praying she wouldn’t miss it.
Everything was brown, the mud sticking to her shoes as she ran behind the farmer, his friend trailing behind with the tools. So many tools. And then everything was red.
Scott caught it all behind the lens. The birth, the resuscitation, the death. Scott said that “when it was all over, he said, ‘I have to go bury the calf now.’ ”
She didn’t follow him. Didn’t have the guts, and although she had many shots from the day, she knew even before her professor tore her apart for it. She missed the shot. “That moment that really mattered was afterwards of him sitting quietly outside the barn by himself,” Scott said.
After graduating from Ohio University, Scott worked for 10 years as a photojournalist in New York and Florida. After six years working for the Palm Beach Post, she took a buy-out and indefinitely left newspaper work in Florida.
Heading from hurricanes to Boston blizzards, Scott’s childhood room turned into her studio apartment. It was then that she decided to give birth photography another shot. Despite the jarring experience of witnessing a cow’s stillbirth during her undergraduate experience, capturing emotion during the arrival of new life still felt like the true epitome of Scott’s calling as a photographer.
“If people could have babies at convenient hours, I would do it for a living,” Scott said, laughing. Before joining BU, she spent a winter freelancing and started to document at-home births.
Scott’s professionalism and knack for putting subjects at ease allow her to participate in moments as intimate as a home-birth. Jennifer McCleary-Sills, a friend from summer camp, still calls Scott each time her family needs portraits.
The goofy faces Scott uses with kids, the high-pitched tones with dogs and the jokes she cracks to pull adults away from the inevitable awkward lens grins makes the subject comfortable, McCleary-Sills said.
Scott herself remembers a time when she took senior photos of a girl who had lost her mom. “She told me all about her and we had a good cry,” she said, “then we went on with her session.”
One of her favorite photos from her short time as a home-birth photographer came, not from the graphic nature of birth or even the new child, but a new sister. Playing in the other room with grandma, the soon-to-be sissy runs into the room to ask, “Mommy, have you had the baby yet?” She returns many times, ping-ponging the same question, no after no, until a yes finally comes.
Scott got the shot, the mother pushing, the husband behind, the midwife ready to go. It’s happening fast, yet each click freezes the moment for a millisecond. And then, from the door, the little girl pings back in. As her hands raise to cover her mouth. Scott waits for the twinkle and then, presses down.
From her 14 years working at BU, and a lifetime of previous photographs spanning from junior high field trips to hurricane coverage in Florida, Scott could only choose 13 photographs for the exhibit. In a lifetime of capturing moments, the selection seemed like an impossible task. Yet, Scott was sure that at least one image would make it up on the gallery wall.
Each year Scott gets called to cover the pumpkin drop, a fall event held by the BU Physics Department in which physicists play with squashes and drop them from buildings for science. Each year she drags herself out and snaps a shot of mildly amused college students watching pumpkins burst on impact.
But, in 2016 the student onlookers were not the typical college kids that Scott was accustomed to.
Arriving at the smashing scene, Scott glimpses a line of third graders exiting a bus, something Scott had never witnessed before. As squashes smash on plastic tarps below, excited screams fill the air: “Two at once! Two at once!”
They’re squealing with delight, and so is she. A squatting sitting duck, Scott positions herself to face the third-graders. Hands stretch out, eyes widen. Then an explosion. Every expression a twinkle, she snaps the shutter closed.
She captures disbelief, excitement and fear. The screams burst through the screen.
And as Scott shot it, the picture that would turn out to be one of her favorite pictures of all time, it dawned on her: This is my version. This is the Dragon Slaying.
Cydney, so so happy you have been recognized for your creative work!! Getting a fantastic letter from a colleague, friend or student is the highest praise you can receive as a human showing your connection to people. I wish you the best in (maybe) becoming the first women president of your professional organization. I am going to try to get in and see your exhibition. Best to Harlow and your continuing mentoring of Miss “Little”. Very impressed with you my former student!!
Sandra von Holten