Clinton Lewis, official Photographer for WKU honored with museum exhibit

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) – For the past 15 years, Clinton Lewis has been documenting life on campus at Western Kentucky University as the official staff photographer. If you’ve seen photos of campus life over the past few years, odds are that it was taken by Lewis.

Tasked with capturing and preserving unique moments in time, his photographs stand as historical records for the university.

To honor his extensive body of work and service to the WKU community, the Kentucky Museum is honoring Lewis’ work with an exhibition called “The Lewis Lens.”

“He’s been there for 15 years and what a great time to celebrate why he’s such an important voice and conduit for everything that has to do with WKU. He’s an amazing talent that’s long overdue in celebrating,” said Director of the Kentucky Museum Brent Bjorkman.

His photographs offer honest glimpses into the lives of the people on the university’s campus and beyond.

“I really took the ethics and the core of photojournalism that life unscripted is the best way to tell a story. That’s the way I prefer to take pictures and I think that tells the most genuine, authentic stories,” Lewis said.

The visual stories that he tells provide a modern historical record of college life.

“I like to think of my job as part as National Geographic photographer for the university, and part historian, visual historian, and part you know just really telling the story of WKU in a visual manner,” Lewis said.

His passion for photojournalism started when he was a student at Bowling Green High School where he met a photojournalism major who was working as a volunteer lab tech. It was from there he decided that he would study Photojournalism at WKU and make it his career.

Lewis went on to work for 8 years for the Bowling Green Daily News before taking the job at the university.

He also combines his passion for photography with an equal passion for outdoor adventures.

“Trail running, road and gravel cycling share equal passions with photography and they overlap but it also brings me balance. Just anything to disconnect from the hectic world and find solace in the natural world,” Lewis said.

The retrospective exhibit was the idea of Lewis’ wife who presented the idea to the Kentucky Museum. It was up to Clinton to go through his entire body of work to choose the 65 photographs that would be on display. This process took him around 4 months of consultation with his peers and other professionals.

“We average so many pictures every academic year, well over 100,000 a year and so after 15 years that adds up to a lot of editing,” he said.

He says that seeing his work displayed in the gallery on the campus where he works and loves gave him an overwhelming sense of pride.

“Definitely a high point in the career to have a full gallery in the Kentucky Museum. Just a gallery for sure anywhere is a highlight for any artist or photographer but one here that’s on the campus of a place that I work and love is even more special,” he said.

The Lewis Lens will be on display at the Kentucky Museum for everyone to enjoy. Admission to the museum is free and they are open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.