Gallery: Photographer Marc Safran ’80 Has an Ophthalmologist’s Eye

“Princeton Views: Winter in Summertime” photographed by Marc Safran ’80

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Photo: Mary Jumbelic s’80

Marc Safran ’80 never picked up a camera at Princeton. Instead, he focused on music, even deferring medical school for a year to travel to Europe and busk on the streets with a keyboard and an accordion. But today, when Safran leaves his day job as an ophthalmologist in Syracuse, New York, he makes a stop on the way home — at his photography studio. 

For the past 15 years, Safran has been taking dramatic portraits of local and New York City-based artists, actors, dancers, and models. He has received a number of awards but, he says, “it’s mainly been a self-driven, noncommercial artistic enterprise.” The key to a good shot, Safran adds, is making the subject comfortable. 

At Reunions in 2018, Safran brought an infrared camera to capture unexpected hues in his campus photos. “The greens are rendered snowy white while bluish hues are portrayed in darker tones,” he says. “The overall look is quite ethereal and artistic. It puts everything in, literally, a new light.”