Bill Jacobson grew up in Norwich, Connecticut and received his B.F.A. from
Brown University and his M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute. Jacobson
began working in his signature blurry style in the early 1980s while completing
his graduate work in San Francisco, but he first received major public attention
with the exhibition of the "Interim Photographs" at the Grey Art Gallery
of New York University while at the same time appearing in many gallery
group exhibitions in 1993. These shadowy pale portraits were intended to
evoke the sense of loss and faded memory associated with the AIDS epidemic,
although, as in all of Jacobson's work his subjects were selected from among
friends who he photographs in his studio. These pictures are also about
the futility of capturing human likeness in portraiture.
An earlier series of Interim Landscapes shot outdoors and resembling memories of childhood were made in the same way, black and white negatives subtly printed as monochromatic color prints. The "Songs of Sentient Beings" series, first shown in 1996, is still figurative but now the prints have deep black backgrounds and white ghostly figures and heads bend, sleep, stretch and howl all the while floating on a velvety ground, and the ground itself floats on a white background. The Songs of Sentient Beings next evolved into the Thoughts series- an almost monochromatic deep black evocation of the flow of life- from tightly cropped faces to fields of grass and water- a deliberate linking of the figure to nature at large-suggesting a flow subtle narrative.
Jacobson shifted to color and working out of the studio in the late 1990s which culminated in a second monograph published by Hatje Cantz in 2005. He has recently been working with a variety of themes, in color and in focus, yet never departing from his meditation on our passage through the world.
An earlier series of Interim Landscapes shot outdoors and resembling memories of childhood were made in the same way, black and white negatives subtly printed as monochromatic color prints. The "Songs of Sentient Beings" series, first shown in 1996, is still figurative but now the prints have deep black backgrounds and white ghostly figures and heads bend, sleep, stretch and howl all the while floating on a velvety ground, and the ground itself floats on a white background. The Songs of Sentient Beings next evolved into the Thoughts series- an almost monochromatic deep black evocation of the flow of life- from tightly cropped faces to fields of grass and water- a deliberate linking of the figure to nature at large-suggesting a flow subtle narrative.
Jacobson shifted to color and working out of the studio in the late 1990s which culminated in a second monograph published by Hatje Cantz in 2005. He has recently been working with a variety of themes, in color and in focus, yet never departing from his meditation on our passage through the world.
New Year's Day 2002-2003 [view images]
Untitled 1999-2001 [view
images]
Thought Series 1990-1998 [view images]
Songs of Sentient Beings 1994-1995 [view images]
Interim Series 1992-1993 [view images]