Behind the Lens: Re Wikstrom

When it comes to her role as an action sports photographer, Re Wikstrom is unapologetically here for the girls. Wikstrom came into her craft as a young adult with a bone to pick about how women were portrayed in media, and honed her talents with a single driving goal in mind: “to put a different vision of women into the world for people to see.”

Wikstrom grew up skiing, and the sport both introduced her to photography and offered her space to be herself in a world that often felt judgmental. “I have never been your classically outdoor fitspo model-looking person. Never been a sample size,” Wikstrom explains, the emotion evident in her voice. “So with skiing I was like ‘Oh my god, I’m really good at this thing,’ and as a kid that gave me confidence. I think that’s why I gravitated towards wanting to work in the ski industry, and then, subsequently, the bike industry.”

As for photography? “I don’t remember exactly when, but one of the first Powder Magazines I ever got and read had an article in it about this group of ski photographers and athletes that were living in the Alps,” Wikstrom recalls. “And I just thought, ‘Whoa, that sounds really cool. I want to do that.’”

It didn't hurt that Wikstrom also had an older brother, five years her senior, whom she idolized: “I spent my childhood following him around,” she says. So when he and his best friend decided to take a photo class in high school, Wikstrom decided she, too, would take that same class when she was old enough. In the meantime, Wikstrom entertained herself by flipping through whatever ski magazines she could get her hands on, admiring images and scouring bylines for photographer credits.

Once in high school, Wikstrom held fast to her commitment and enrolled in that same photography course her brother had taken, even thought the instructor didn't have a great reputation among students. 

"He was sometimes seen as a mean teacher,” Wikstrom says,“But he actually cared, and he’s the one that convinced me to study photography in college.” Wikstrom says that at his urging, and after a bit of existential debate about what to do with her life to be most helpful to society, she applied to and was accepted into the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where she chose photography for her degree.

In college, Wikstrom says another piece to the puzzle that was slowly helping shape future fell into place: she met a gal named Theresa Beer, who was a mountain biker. "So of course we called her Beers for short," Wikstrom smiles. "She had a mountain bike and worked at the local bike shop, so I would go mountain biking with her on my fully rigid, Specialized Hard Rock with the T-Rex bars and the grip shift in western, upstate New York.” 

Wikstrom laughs at the memory: “It’s so funny to look now at gravel bikes and be like, ‘It’s just a mountain bike from the nineties.’” But even though riding was, at that point, a rattly endeavor, and despite the fact that she fell often Wikstrom stuck the sport out. "My nickname in college was Endo because I would crash on almost every ride. Luckily, I didn't break any bones, but I would end up bruised and scraped," Wikstrom laughs, "And if it wasn't me, it was the bike, so half the time, at the end of the ride, Theresa, would just be like, 'Lemme take your bike to the shop. I'll fix it.'" And thus, a life-long skier started to learn to love dirt (almost) as much as snow.

Which came in handy when she applied for, and got, a summer internship with Powder Magazine. As it turned out, the photo editor for Powder—Dave Reddick—was also the photo editor for Bike Magazine, and the offices for both publications were located in southern California, where trails and sunny days abounded. Which meant the Hard Rock came with Wikstrom to the job.

Surrounded by slide film and file cabinets all day, going home to a cramped rental with two other interns at night, Wikstrom says that somewhere in there, as she continued to learn more about both her sports and the field of commercial photography, a pivotal realization hit her: she hated the options that existed for women when it came to representation in outdoor media.

“They were being used to sell their sex to sell a product or they had this one stereotypical role that was the same character in every movie. But none of them were being taken seriously for their skills or their personalities,” Wikstrom shakes her head. “And that just drove me bonkers.” So Wikstrom started to go out of her way to shoot with women, even as she had to navigate the challenges of getting her own nascent career off the ground at the same time.

“For the most part, I feel pretty lucky, because I made good connections with some great guys that were very supportive,” she says of being an outlier in a field that was to large degree an old boys club. Wikstrom says she’s often wondered about this relatively pain-free initial acceptance into the field: “Was it because I didn’t seem like competition to them, because my mission was to go and shoot with women, rather than trying to shoot with any of the top male athletes of the day? I dunno," Wikstrom wonders. "But I do feel pretty lucky that it didn’t feel difficult. I’ve talked to other women in the industry and they’ve not had the same experience, even today, and that sucks.”

After graduation, full of enthusiasm to make her mark, Wikstrom moved to Utah, because that was where the skiing was. “But I couldn’t get anyone to hire me, because I had zero waitressing or hospitality experience,” she laughs. So Wikstrom instead bounced between winter and summer seasonal jobs that first year, including for a mountain photography operation while the snow flew, and then decided to try for a warehouse job at the then-relatively-new Backcountry.com headquarters.

“But I happened to know a guy who was their content manager,” Wikstrom says of what would become a fortuitous exchange. “He reached out and was like, ‘Hey, I know you were shooting photos; do you have any other photo experience?” Wikstrom smiles at the memory: “I was like, ‘Buddy, that’s all I’ve got.’” That conversation would turn into an eighteen-year tenure with Backcountry that would take Wikstrom from Assistant Photo Editor to, eventually, Senior Photographer and Marketing Photo Manager.

Of course, Wikstrom says her path to the top wasn’t all roses: the same prejudice she saw against women in front of the lens also impacted her life behind it. 

“New leadership would mean new, often male, creative directors, who would look at me and think ‘You can’t possibly be who we need to do this job.' So I constantly had to prove myself to them—and it would take a good six to nine months to do that, and by the time I finally had, the whole leadership team would turn over again and I’d have to do it all over again. It was pretty much like banging your head against a wall.”

But Wikstrom carried on, dedicated to her craft and her personal mission both in and out of the office. “I would use my vacation time to go where I could and shoot what I could,” she recalls. “Canada, Norway, South America, anywhere. I was dedicated; it was a labor of love for sure.” And in most of those projects, Wikstrom says, her priority remained the same: to give the spotlight to the gals. 

“I love shooting projects where I get to focus on women being their own unique, individual human selves,” Wikstrom reaffirms. “I don’t care what it is—commercial, editorial, personal, that’s still what I want to be shooting, when I can.”

What Wikstrom is too humble to mention is that her own narrative behind the lens gradually became as much the bigger point as the stories of the women she was capturing in her photos. There needed to be someone to recognize the talents and nuances of all the women in skiing and mountain biking in the first place—and Wikstrom ended up that person. 

From becoming an ambassador for Alta ski resort’s photography team, to getting women on covers like Backcountry Magazine and Skiing Magazine, Wikstrom became the name in the photo credits that other aspiring photographer girls and women got to see as they flipped through pages of magazines or stared at high resolution shots on websites. And when, more recently, the women of freeride needed an ally in visual media, they found one in Wikstrom, who has documented their rise in the sport for years.

Which is what excites Wikstrom most about where she is now in her career: after leaving her in-house job with Backcountry.com in early 2023, the ceaselessly energetic creative is looking forward to being free to pursue projects that feel meaningful. “My freelance work and client list had progressively been taking a backseat as my responsibilities in-house grew,” Wikstrom explains matter-of-factly. “So I’m looking forward to building more and more connections across the outdoor and bike spaces, and being able to say ‘Yes!’ to more and more opportunities.”

On her mind are a few things, first and foremost getting herself to Virgin, UT, in time for Red Bull Rampage 2024, where the women will drop in, for the first time in history, down the event's fabled red rock cliffs. “The progression in women’s freeride is amazing,” Wikstrom swoons. Beyond that, Wikstrom says she’s also keen to train her lens on another group typically overlooked in the outdoors: women 40 and beyond. “As a woman who’s officially hit ‘middle age’—I enthusiastically refer to myself as a middle-aged broad,” Wikstrom grins, interrupting herself. “I’m highly interested in projects that depict and represent women across a wider range of ages.”

“I also love seeing a push to represent more bodies on bikes,” Wikstrom adds thoughtfully. For a brief moment, it’s almost as if twelve year-old Wikstrom is speaking, the girl who was teased at school for not being teen-magazine thin, but who fought back against self-doubt by remembering her prowess on the ski slopes and the freedom offered by a clapped BMX bike she would use to rip around her neighborhood.

But then adult Wikstrom, with an accolade-rich career behind her, smiles and zooms the conversation right back in to present-day focus, acknowledging that while we’ve come a long way as a society and an outdoor industry, there’s still always work to do. “I believe that the pendulum has to swing so hard in the other direction before it finally comes back to center,” she says of current trends, like the rollbacks on promises made during the post-2020 uptick in profits that coincided with DEI initiatives. “And we're not done swinging.” Which means that until it does—and even after—Wikstrom plans to be out in the dust, mud, snow, wind, and rain capturing the efforts, emotions and achievements of those whose stories need telling most.