If you’re an art student, chances are you’ve been asked mockingly how you’re going to find a career and support yourself – especially in this economy. But UCLA alumna Jo Ann Callis can attest to the fact that following your passions can be worth it.

A new exhibit at the Getty Museum, running through August 9, showcases Callis’ edgy, original photography from the 1970s through today.

Originally a design student at UCLA, near the end of her college career, Callis switched to fine arts and ended up getting her master’s in fine arts at UCLA as well.

“I got back into fine arts because that’s what I really wanted to do,” Callis said. “But I never really figured out how I could make a living at it, so I tried to pretend like I was going to make a living with being a designer.”

Now her work has been featured in numerous exhibits and museums across the country, and when she isn’t focusing on her own photography, she is a professor at the California Institute of the Arts.

This particular exhibit, which was over a year in the making, was put together by Callis and Judith Keller, curator of the exhibit and acting senior curator of the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

“The exhibition of Jo Ann’s work started with my fascination with this picture from which we took the show’s title, ‘Woman Twirling,’” Keller said.

Callis was one of the first artists to construct her own sets for photographing, a trend that has become increasingly popular. This is a technique fostered by Callis’ former UCLA professor, Robert Heineken.

Keller described the way Callis’ creation of sets allows for more freedom and expression in her pieces.

“It can be thought of more as an image that you have created out of your own imagination, so it has more validity as art, perhaps,” she said.

Callis agreed. “I just wanted to make pictures about what was going on in my head or in my imagination, and that was the way I naturally did it, by setting things up,” she said.

The exhibit features art from the 1970s, including the title piece, “Woman Twirling,” from 1985, and contains work though 2005. It was originally composed of art that the Getty already owned, but after many loans and donations, the exhibit has been expanded to include a more comprehensive look at Callis’ work.

“We wanted to give people a sense of how her work had evolved, so it was great to be able to represent more from more years of her output,” Keller said.

While the subject matter of Callis’ work has remained largely the same over the years – focusing on domestic themes – both Callis and Keller observed an evolution in the style and tone of her work.

“I think the pictures lighten up as time goes on, meaning, not so scary and serious and full of anxiety,” Callis said. “I think it’s because I’m older, and some of the things got resolved.”

Even in the lighter work of Callis’ later years, there is still a distinctive edge to her photographs.

Callis’ passion for photography over design is apparent in her work, and students or viewers of her photographs can recognize that following a dream over a safer choice has resulted in beautiful, distinct photographs.

“Callis’ work has a Hitchcock-like bent,” Keller said. “She has a tendency to create a scene subtly loaded with the attractive as well as the troubling.”