Rousanon Monastery, Meteora, Greece
Silver Bromide and Ink Jet Piezo Prints
16x20 and 44x55 in.
1993
16x20 and 44x55 in.
1993
Philip J. Jameson
Providence, RI
About the ArtistProvidence, RI
Philip Jamoulis Jameson is a large format black and white photographer specializing in natural landscapes and the built environment. He has worked in the American West, Italy, Greece as well as in rural and urban New England. Prior to 1993, he divided his time between photography and a medical practice in radiology, a specialty he originally selected in part because of its visual nature. Since retiring from medicine, he has devoted himself fully to his lifelong passion for fine art photography.
Largely self-taught, Jameson began his education in photography in the early 1970s by studying the texts and published images of photography’s best known modernist figures including Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston and Harry Callahan. He spent considerable hands on time with two of Ansel Adams’ former students, Joe Englander and Gary Adams, and he has participated in many workshops including the well-known Fred Picker gatherings in Vermont. These experiences, including workshops in the American Southwest as student and later as teacher, form the basis of an education and development that has spanned over thirty-five years.
Jameson’s choice of subject often accommodates a penchant for depicting extremely fine detail to capture an essence of texture and tactility that seems at times to go beyond one’s recollection of nature. Effects of natural light play a central role in the unfolding drama and no parcel of the print, however apparently subordinate, is allowed the luxury of devaluation: information is available in the darkest darks, and often in the whitest whites as well. Subject and point of view comply in the exercise of a keen eye for composition, though such effects are understated, serving to direct the viewer’s eye through an experience of the image.
The works share an aura of tranquility where nature is revered and humans are generally absent. Time and its effects -- on the landscape geologically speaking, and on human artifacts on a more humanistic scale -- is an underlying theme of the work. “The relationship between man and nature is the more elusive subject that gives many of these photographs resonance,” wrote Bill Rodriguez in 1996. “That and the implied irony of how time flows so differently for the earth than it does for its inhabitants.” This, the metaphorical scope of the work, complements a more literal program in that the images are an attempt to share the artist’s perception of a specific place, time and lighting condition that produced in the artist a specific response. Far from generic images of nature or cities, the photographs, pure and unmanipulated, reflect unique characteristics of place yet they are not purely documentary. Instead, each is a little gem imbued with the artist’s inherent ability to perceive and communicate the visual surprises, delights and comforts that he encounters in his explorations.
Jameson’s works are in numerous American, European and South American private collections. Since 1998, his images of the American West have been published by Graphique de France in the form of posters and cards that are sold internationally. His photographs have been featured in group and solo exhibitions at Bates College, Colby College, the Worcester Art Museum and at other venues. At the Colby and Worcester group exhibitions, his images were shown beside those of photography’s great masters, including Ansel Adams, Minor White, Alfred Stieglitz, Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, Paul Strand, Garry Winogrand and others.
Jameson’s images are in the permanent collections of the Rhode Island School of Design, Colby College, Bates College, Brown University, the Worcester Art Museum, the DeCordova Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
In recent years, in addition to continuing work on images of the American West and New England, he has begun to concentrate as well on Providence, his city of residence, in its current period of vibrant transformation and development.