As Ed Hing ’77 prepares to retire, he reflects on the influence of Bob Couch ’50
Photography has, for Ed Hing ’77, always been about more than simply taking pictures. As he admits with a smile and the characteristic shrug of someone whose humility prevents him from talking about the scores of students he’s influenced, it’s a passion, one he shares with his first photography teacher and lifelong mentor, Bob Couch ’50.
Hing, who is retiring this spring after 28 years in the Art Department, pursued a burgeoning interest in photography from the time he was a “bratty 11- or 12-year-old” taking what he calls “artsy, weird photos” while growing up in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
What began as a hobby developed into much more when Hing met Bob Couch at Williston. A Williston grad himself, class of 1950, Couch returned to the school in 1957 to teach math and coach various sports. Over the next 40 years, he taught countless students and launched the school’s photography program. When Couch met Hing in his sophomore year, Hing was one of several students who regularly spent extra time and free blocks in the newly created darkroom, located at the time where the current theater offices are.
“That’s when you know kids are really interested,” Couch said. “Ed was one of them. He was one of those kids who were just always around.”
Hing, who as a student took photos for The Log and The Willistonian, joked that an added perk was that he could get out of study hall if he went to the photo lab.
“By junior year, I was there every night,” Hing said, adding that “Couchie,” as he calls him, was the keeper of the darkroom. “That was my little universe,” he said. Their mentor-mentee relationship grew, Couch serving as a “second dad” for Hing, whose parents, first-generation immigrants, wanted Hing to be a lawyer or doctor. Couch helped Hing find a spring internship during his senior year at the commercial photography studio of alum Alan Epstein ’64 in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The school, Hing said, was accommodating of his nontraditional schedule.
“They let me go [to Holyoke] from 11 to 3,” he said. “It was my escape, and that experience was formative. I was like, ‘I need to do this.’”
And he did. After Williston and an undergraduate degree in studio art from Trinity College—“they didn’t even have photography”—Hing interned with Shig Ikeda, a Japanese photographer who Hing calls his “second mentor, after Couchie.” From there, Hing moved out West to study at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. It was there in the early 1980s that he met his wife, Janine, and set up his first commercial photography business. By 1997 the couple were living in New York, when Couch called Hing to ask if he’d consider doing a Career Day presentation at Williston. The simple request ended up having lasting effect.
“I thought, ‘This is kind of cool, hanging out with these kids,’” Hing recalls. When Couch later invited Hing to join on a school-sponsored Winter Session trip to Nantucket, teaching began to seem like an attractive new direction. “I asked him, ‘So Bob, when are you going to retire?” Hing said. Couch asked Hing if he was seroius, to which Hing replied, “Call me when you’re done.”
Couch ended up calling Hing a few years later, but didn’t think Hing would apply. “He had a successful commercial business in New York, ads in the big magazines,” Couch said. Meanwhile, Hing said yes to the interview. “I did it for Couchie,” he said.
Nearly 30 years later, as Hing looks back on his teaching career, he can connect the dots between Couch’s mentorship and his own of the many aspiring artists he has nurtured at Williston.
“I’ll miss just hanging out in the lab, getting to know kids during nonclass time,” Hing said. “The kids have a different perspective on how they see things. It’s rejuvenating.”
Though he wouldn’t come right out and say it, Hing acknowledged that it’s possible he’s had some effect in terms of “this life mentoring thing.”
“That feels really cool,” he said. “That’s one of things [that comes from] Couchie’s influence.” While Hing was “puttering, tinkering, dreaming,” as he called it, “Couchie believed in me. He said, ‘You should do what you want to do. You’re pretty damn good at it.’ That was huge. There were a couple other teachers that were meaningful, but Couchie was the man. Still is.”
