May 9th I went to a lecture given by Lou Jones (www.fotojones.com). It was organized by the Boston Photography Center (http://photo.meetup.com/52/) and took place in one of the rooms in NESOP. Thank god there was air-conditioning J.
His focus for his lecture was ‘documentary photography’ with some sideways into ‘travel photography’.
Lou Jones himself is – as you all probably know – a well established photographer from Boston and has traveled all over the world. His body of work is wide, from commercial photography, fine art photography, documentary photography, etc.
He began talking about his entrance into the world of professional photography. He was – and still is – a jazz lover. He decided to start a project to get him noticed with the editor of magazines and of other publications. This project involved photographing jazz players. Not in their own surroundings (at their homes, in bars or clubs) but in Lou’s own small studio. This ‘project’ is still on-going. He complained how hard it is lately, even with him being a well known photographer, to get access to the great jazz musicians. In the ‘old days’ it used to be much easier: Catch the musicians when they are alone – not when they are already talking to other people or just busy – and ask permission to shoot their portraits. He used to ‘stalk’ the bathrooms in clubs to get their undivided attention when they left the bathroom.
He then went on with some p.j., travel photography and commercial photography, about his projects for the Massport Authority, wars in Central America, pictures from New England and him shooting all Olympic events since 1984, for example.
Lately, he said, his work can be mostly described about ‘where land meets water’ (he’s afraid of water…) and ‘I’m interested in shooting what is too fast to see with the naked eye and what is too slow for the naked eye‘.
The last part of his lecture was about two projects:
‘Final Exposure’: An editorial/documentary about death-row inmates.
‘Pregnant Women’: I don’t know if this is the actual title… it is still an ongoing project. He shoots pregnant women (mostly) naked in his studio or on location.
Lou Jones has - by his own admission - a hard time keeping long stories short J but they are worth while listening too. I liked the lecture a lot.
I bought a book of him called ‘Travel Photography: Off the Charts’. Very informative and many pictures J.
