Sydney Brink’s interest in photojournalism was kindled while he was an
environmental studies major at San Jose State University, California. He had always been interested in photography and bought his first Nikon and three lenses in Okinawa shortly before he got out of the Army in 1975. After learning how to develop and print black and white prints in an introductory photography course at San Jose State, he enrolled in an elective photojournalism class anhttp://www.photojournalismhalloffame.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/SydneyBrink.jpgd worked on the The Spartan Daily. Two semesters on the campus daily staff lit a spark that persuaded Brink to pursue photojournalism. A five-month internship at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner exposed him to life at a big-city metro. Brink went on to work at the Santa Fe (N.M.) Reporter, The Santa Fe New Mexican, where he left as chief photographer, and the Albuquerque Journal. He was the beat photographer everyone knew, who built trust and relationships with a mosaic of artists, politicians, native people, ranchers and characters who make northern New Mexico so fascinating.
Brink moved to Missouri in the early 1990s where he was hired by Sedalia Democrat Managing Editor Douglas Kneibert. For the next 20 years he covered events and people in central Missouri, earning their trust just as he had in Los Angeles and Santa Fe, and along the way garnered awards from the Missouri APME (Associated Press Media Editors), the Missouri Press Association and Kansas City Press Club. At the Democrat, he instituted a photo archive and helped the newspaper transition to digital photography. In his free time, Brink is drawn to the art of still life photography. But at the core, he is a street photographer, a patient, skilled observer in awe of life’s unplanned, candid moments that invite reflection and conjecture.