robert jones photography
robert jones photography
Photograph of the artist in leaner days; both monetarily and lipid-wise.
Copyright © 1988, Jennifer Linch.
About the Photographer:
A Visual Manifesto
'It was in Germany that I first became aware of the
composition of an image; Composition - the placement of and the relationship
between objects - is "the thing" in photography. A picture can be
grainy, poorly lit, or the negative can deteriorate over time (particularly
if colour film). But, if a shot is well-composed, then that's 90%
of the picture. It was also in Germany that I was exposed to the
superb black-and-white films and warm-tone papers produced by Agfa.
Unfortunately, in America, people buy Kodak almost as if by involuntary
reflex. Agfa is almost unheard of in the U.S.
'One area in which I had needed little training
was shooting in black-and-white. Ever since I got my first 126 instamatic
camera when I was six years old, I preferred black-and-white over colour
film; Intuitively, I learned to think in terms of light and shadow,
rather than trying to "reproduce the reality" of colour. Often,
I would go to People's Drug and buy a cartridge of Kodak 126 Verichrome
Pan, shoot all twelve exposures in an hour or so, then run back to the
drugstore to drop off the film. I believe that today - with black-and-white
film being a specialty item that can often only be found in camera shops
- kids have less exposure to the alternative way of looking at the world
that black-and-white offers.
'It was probably my preference of black-and-white that drew me to the movies;
As a photographer, I wanted to capture in frozen form the same sense of
style and drama that the great movie makers put up on the silver screen.
My chief influences were directors and cinematographers influenced by the
German Expressionist school: Karl Freund (director of photography,
Metropolis,
1925; M, 1930; Key Largo, 1948), Alfred Hitchcock (most notably
Notorious,
1946 and Vertigo, 1958, my colour holy grail) and Howard Hawks (Bringing
Up Baby, 1938; The Big Sleep, 1946). The reader
will note their influences on my works Licht
und Schatten (1986), Dark Side of Beauty (above, 1987) and
Grain
Elevator (below, 1999). My most obvious homage is to Hitch, with
Back
In Your Gilded Cage, Melanie Daniels (2000).
'My main influence in colour photography is Natalie Kalmus, who was the
genius behind the Technicolor corporation for many decades. All the
great Technicolor movies from the 1930s through the 1950s bear her master
touch: The rich saturation, the vivid hues, the sense of translucent
light presupposed by Vermeer and Dali were achieved under her careful supervision.
This in itself is almost a dangerous confession: "Serious" colour
photographers (and, there are still those who argue that "serious colour
photographer" is a contradiction in terms) have long argued that colours
should be muted, not exagerated and not impose upon the composition.
Saturated colour is regarded in artsy circles as "vulgar" and "artificial."
Well, who cast that arbitrary rule in stone? Colour photography must
be primarily about hue, not tonality (though tonality is of vital,
though secondary, importance), else why use colour film?
The notion that colour photography is only "serious" so long as the colours
can be found in nature (which was an idea promoted by Ansel Adams and Elliot
Porter, not to detract from their respective masterful works) is such an
absurdity that it should be rejected on its face. Colour photography
ought
to be about screaming artificiality and garish saturation! The prejudice
against the magnificent unnaturalness of colour photography should have
vanished the moment that the art snobs discovered that the devices of the
black-and-white "purists" - the red and yellow filters, the platinum and
paladium papers, the selenium and sepia toners, the "zone system", and
the various darkroom tricks - are no more true representations of nature
than the most saturated and garish Max Factor lipstick ad printed in a
1950s copy of Life magazine! Both are manipulations of the
natural, and it's high time we start appreciating black-and-white and colour
photography as such, rather than upon some misleading and unattainable
standard of "purity."
'Unfortunately, up until recently negative colour film that could mimic the control and saturation of the Technicolor-IB process was inconvenient (waiting forever for the Kodachrome slides to come back from the sole processor, in Fairlawn, New Jersey), or unstable at best (earlier, dyes in Fuji and Kodak Ektar 25 negative films faded and yellowed rapidly) and there was never any wholly satisfactory process for printing transparency film, which always have been more stable. Now, however, Type- R technology has advanced so much that prints are faithful to original colour. There are also many more superb colour films, in particular Agfa Ultra 50 negative and RSX-II 50 transparency and Fuji Velvia 50 transparency films. The type-R print, La Vernia Drugstore (above, 2000) was printed from Agfa RSX-II.
'Years later, when I studied photography, I learned
that Richard Avedon ushered in a sense of style to photography in the 1950s.
But, he couldn't hold a candle to Hollywood. As beautiful as his
renditions of Marilyn Monroe were, nothing to me compared to Hollywood's
treatment of movie's leading ladies of the 1940s and 1950s: The angelic
radiance that Harry Stradling bestowed upon Joan Fontaine in Suspicion
(1941);
the dusky sultriness of Lauren Bacall that Sid Hickox achieved in The
Big Sleep; Robert Krasker's melancholic, yet gorgeous, rendering
of Alida Valli in The Third Man (1949) - these were the examples
to which I aspired. 
'However, the ultimate cinematographer - who understood light and colour as did no other - to me was Robert Burks, a man few can recall by name. Yet, almost all movie-goers are more than familiar with his work: For a decade-and-a-half, he was Alfred Hitchcock's cinematographer. His idealised portrayals of Tippi Hedren (The Birds, 1963), Grace Kelly (Rear Window, 1954), Patricia Neal (The Fountainhead, 1949), Kim Novak (Vertigo, 1958) and Eva Marie Saint (North by Northwest, 1959) are to me the greatest depictions of woman as iconic beauty since Venus de Milo.
'After I was discharged from the Army, I enrolled as a photography major at Shepherd College in West Virginia in 1988, studying under the talented Maryland photographer Benita Keller. More than anyone else, I am indebted to Benita for having the integrity to push me, but in my own direction; so many artists would rather have artistic "heirs," but Benita is secure enough in her own abilities to help her students mine the unforseen talents within themselves.
In 1989, I transferred to Hunter College, New York, where I studied photography with renowned photographer Mark Feldstein, author of Unseen New York. Professor Feldstein had a particularly intellectual approach to photography, and it was from him that I gained an appreciation and understanding of the communicating through visual ideas.
'I began hitting the road in my beat-up 1977 Toyota before attending Hunter, documenting the remnants of roadside civilisation along the old U.S. highways on the East Coast of the United States. I wasn't very familiar with Walker Evans - the great Depression-era photographer - at this point, though I was unconsciously taking photographs similar to his great works. Rather, I took my cue from movie directors of the 1980s' depictions of small-town and backroads America: Tim Burton (Pee-Wee's Big Adventure), Robert Harmon (The Hitcher) and David Lynch (Blue Velvet). Instead of "formal education," I picked up technical advice and darkroom techniques by picking the brains of hobbyist shutterbugs, newspaper photographers and photo lab techies.
'As the reader can probably tell, I don't eschew
influences. I rather believe that if an artist lets himself be influenced
at a subconscious level, then one can be true to his own self as
an artist. I don't set up a shot of a landscape thinking "How would
Walker Evans or Paul Strand have taken that shot?" But, if I find
a tinge of their composition or stylization evident in one of my prints,
I think "okay, that's cool."
'For many years - up until 1999, in fact - I worked strictly
in the 35mm format. My trusty workhorse up until last year has been
my Ricoh KR-5, with f2 50mm lens. Though it is an "entry-level" camera,
it is quite clear that even with a simple camera, one can take extraordinary
shots. Lately, though, the Ricoh has served as a backup to another
manual 35mm, a Nikon FM-10 kit with an f3.5 35-70mm Nikkor zoom.
'A friend, however, suggested that I was holding
myself back, even though I was quite satisfied with shooting in 35mm.
An entire new world of imagery has opened up for me by another warhorse
manual camera, the Hasselblad 500C medium format camera with f2.8 80mm
Zeiss Planar lens. The 500C has made me rethink composition, inasmuch
as it produces a square negative (with a standard camera back), rather
than a rectangular image that is typical for 35mm work. Many photographers
find the square format constricting and thus use a 645 back in order to
make vertical/horizontal images. To me, that's defeating the purpose;
most Medium format is unique for forcing photographers to conjure
images on a square canvas. In doing so, I have found - for example
- that a more powerful statement of height can be produced by working within
the viewfinder, rather than by taking the easy way out of positioning the
frame vertically.
'Currently, I work out of Philadelphia and New York, having spent the past seven years in San Antonio, Texas. However, the Southwest is where my photographer's heart is, and I am still represented by Sonja Heldt-Harris at the Rebecca Creek Gallery near San Antonio, which is exclusively dedicated to photography.
'The Southwest is still so new and fascinating to
me (having cut my teeth in the Northeast). The colours seem so much
more striking down there than in the Northeast - so I am finding myself
buying almost as much colour film as black-and-white. On the other
hand, the skies are so big and wide that the lighting they provide a landscape
almost begs for the subtle gradations of grey found in a film such as Agfa
Pan 25. I am trying to find my own way of documenting this Southwest,
and to the degree that I am successful, I am satisfied.'
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'Concrete
Cathedrals' - Rebecca Creek Gallery, Canyon Lake, Texas, April-May 2002
Read
Review
'Concrete
Cathedrals' - Business/Industrial Showing, Frankfurt, Germany, May-August
2002
'Concrete
Cathedrals' - Gallerie B-27, Offenau, Germany, September-October 2001 Read
Review
'Concrete
Cathedrals and Other Photographs' - Wild Horse Gallery, San Antonio, Texas,
November, 2000
'The
Road Less Travelled' - Martinsburg Public Library, Martinsburg, West Va.,
December, 1990 Read
Notice
Group Exhibits:
'Concrete
Cathedrals' - Lowery Gallery, Athens, Georgia, June, 2001
'Looking
Down: Sidewalks of Hyde Park, Boston' - Wild Horse Gallery, San Antonio,
Texas, April, 2001
Various
Entries at Wild Horse Gallery, June 2000-May 2001
'Four
Square' - Public Hanging, San Antonio, Texas, April, 2000
'Modern
Man' - Public Hanging, February, 2000
'Earth
Room' - Shepherd College Juried Exhibit, Shepherdstown, West Virginia,
1989
Group
Exhibit - Artillerie Kaserne Photo Studio, Neckarsulm, Germany, 1987
Exhibits Curated / Supervised:
Chiho Tobe, Photographer, 'Ginshika' - Wild Horse Gallery, San Antonio, Texas, April 2001
Upcoming Exhibits:
'Los
Colores de Coahuila' - Studio
Arts Gallery, Del Rio, Texas, August-September, 2003
Entry
in Foto Septiembre, Rebecca Creek Gallery, Canyon Lake, Texas, September,
2004
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