2020
Looking back now, I see 2020 as a year not just of isolation and loss, but also of adaptation. As painful as the COVID lockdowns were, they created a powerful incentive to simplify, and to come up with ways to do more with fewer resources. They also gave us plenty of time to think about our profligate habits and their escalating environmental consequences, like wildfires, hurricanes and global pandemics. For me personally, 2020 was proof of the adage that creativity thrives under constraints. Unable to travel, for instance, I visited the same local locations again and again, finding new dimension in familiar landscapes. And rather than skipping from one sculptural object to another, I focused on a single material all year, nylon tulle. I chose tulle for its mutability—depending on how it’s arranged and how the wind catches it, it can morph from a solid to a liquid, to fire to billowing smoke. /// Another unexpected innovation wrought by 2020 came in how my installations are held aloft. In the past, when doing shoots on beaches, I’ve relied on bulky tripods as off-camera supports. But hiring extra hands to help carry them wasn’t an option last year, so I tapped a resource right there on the sand: driftwood. Once I made use of it, the installations became more responsive and intrinsic to their environments, and my own life got a lot easier in the process. /// Above all, 2020 was the year I tried to harness the wind. On every shoot, Northern California’s offshore breezes were my collaborator, the force that transformed my installations from lifeless fabric to living things. As collaborations go it was a tumultuous one—of the twenty or so pieces I built and photographed last year, thirteen were failures—but along the way I learned a thing or two about the importance of staying on nature’s good side. When I built pieces that obstructed or defied the wind in any way, I’d go home unhappy. But when my constructions respected and responded to the wind, interesting things would occur!
Emergent Behavior, 2011 - 2016
The hovering installations featured in this ongoing series of photographs are inspired by self-organizing, "emergent" systems in nature such as termite mounds, swarming locusts, schooling fish and flocking birds. The images attempt to tap the mixture of fear and fascination that those phenomena tend to evoke, while creating an uneasy interplay between the natural and the manufactured and the real and the imaginary. At the same time, each image is an experiment in juxtaposition. By constructing the installations from unexpected materials and placing them where they seem least to belong, I aim to tweak the margins of our visual vocabulary, and to invite fresh interpretations of everyday things.
The Robot Series
In this series of photographs, I’ve combined elements of science fiction literature and film with storytelling motifs from Medieval tapestries and altarpieces to create a darkly humorous narrative about a lone robot’s failure to co-exist with the natural world. Against that backdrop, the work explores the uneasy, opposing emotions Mother Nature provokes in us: fear and fascination, reverence and contempt, attraction, revulsion, greed, guilt and the queasy feeling that in the end, she will get us back for everything we’ve done wrong. I chose to build the series around a robot because he seemed an apt representation of our otherness within the natural world, and a stand-in for our ceaseless desire to force our environment into permanent submission—no matter how doomed the effort might be.
Thomas Jackson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. After earning a B.A. in History from the College of Wooster, he spent his early career in New York City working first in book publishing, then as an editor and writer at Forbes Life magazine. An interest in photography books eventually led him to pick up a camera, shooting Garry Winogrand-inspired street scenes, then landscapes, and finally the installation work he does today. Self-taught as an artist, Jackson’s practice merges landscape photography, sculpture and kinetic art. His work has been exhibited widely, including at The Brooks Museum in Memphis, Tennessee and the Bolinas Museum in Bolinas, CA, and has been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Wired, the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere. Jackson was named one of the Critical Mass Top 50 in 2012, won the “installation/still-life” category of PDN’s The Curator award in 2013 and earned second place in CENTER's Curator's Choice Award in 2014.
CV
Background
b. 1971 Philadelphia, PA
1993 Bachelor of Arts, History, The College of Wooster
Solo Exhibitions
2023 Chaotic Equilibrium, Brooks Museum, Memphis, TN
2023 Collaborative Nature (public art installation), Tiburon, CA
2019 New Work, Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2018 Tree no. 1, Heron Arts, San Francisco, CA
2018 Emergent Behavior, SFO Museum, San Francisco, CA
2017 Emergent Behavior, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
2017 Emergent Behavior, Cynthia-Reeves, North Adams, MA
2016 Emergent Behavior, Miller Yezerski Gallery, Boston, MA
2015 Emergent Behavior, Dina Mitrani Gallery, Miami, FL
2015 Emergent Behavior, Photo-eye Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Group Exhibitions
2022 Intersect Aspen, Jackson Fine Art, Aspen, CO
2019 The Photography Show (AIPAD), Jackson Fine Art, New York, NY
2019 Art on Paper, Ellen Miller Gallery, New York, NY
2018 Art on Paper, Ellen Miller Gallery, New York, NY
2017 Art Miami, Jackson Fine Art, Miami, FL
2017 Phenomenon, The Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA
2017 The Photography Show (AIPAD), Jackson Fine Art, New York, NY
2017 Unnatural Phenomena (with Alejandra Laviada), Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design
2016 Art Miami, Cynthia-Reeves, Miami, FL
2015 The Disrupted Landscape, Miller Yezerski Gallery, Boston, MA
2015 Scope Basel, Cynthia-Reeves, Basel, Switzerland
2014 Art Miami, Cynthia-Reeves, Miami, FL
2014 The Curve, Center for Contemporary Arts, Sante Fe, NM
2014 The Fence, United Photo Industries, Brooklyn, NY,
Boston, MA and Atlanta, GA
2014 Photography Now, juried by Julie Grahame, The Center for
Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, NY
2014 ONWARD Compé ‘14, juried by Andrew Moore, Project Basho,
Philadelphia, PA
2014 Wondrous Indeed, juried by Philip Toledano, The Center for Fine Art
Photography, Fort Collins, CO
2014 The National, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN
2013 Well Hung, The Print Center Annual Auction, Philadelphia, PA
2013 PDN The Curator group show, Industria Superstudios, New York, NY
2013 Emerging Artist Auction, Daniel Cooney Gallery, New York, NY
2013 Critical Mass group show, curated by W.M. Hunt, Jennifer Schwartz
Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia and Southeast Museum of Photography,
Daytona Beach, Florida
2013 Intro, La Fototeca, Guatemala City, Guatemala
2013 Fountain Art Fair, with Arcilesi-Homberg Fine Art, New York, NY
2012 The Gallery at Eponymy, curated by Amani Olu, Brooklyn, NY
2012 Take Me There (MOPLA), Venice Arts Gallery, Venice, CA
2012 Angkor Photo Festival, Siem Reap, Cambodia
2011 The Governors Island Art Fair, New York, NY
2011 The (un)Framed Photograph, The Center for Book Arts, New York, NY
Collections
2020 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
2019 Marin Health, Larkspur, CA
2018 JP Morgan Chase, New York, NY
2017 Delta Airlines
2016 Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA
2015 Berkshire Partners, Boston, MA
2014 Rotch Library at MIT, Cambridge, MA
2014 The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, MA
2013 United Talent Agency, Los Angeles, CA
Collaborations
2022 Polaroid
2022 Merci Paris
2021 Adobe
2018 Isle of Man
Lectures/Workshops
2024 Savannah College of Art and Design (visiting artist fellowship)
2019 Farther Afield, Landscape Photography Reimagined (workshop for San Francisco
Photo Alliance)
2018 The HOPES Conference, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
2015 Photo-eye Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2014 Photo Alliance (with Robert Cumming), San Francisco Art Institute,
San Francisco, CA
Awards & Residencies
2014 CENTER Curator's Choice Award, Second Place
2014 ONWARD Compé ‘14, juror's award winner
2014 Wondrous Indeed, Center for Fine Art Photography, juror's selection
2014 The National, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Juror's Merit Award
2013 Art Takes Paris, See.me, winner of “Photography” category
2013 PDN The Curator, winner of “Installation/still-life” category
2013 Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, Brush Creek, Wyoming
2012 Critical Mass Top 50
Publications
2022 Juztapoz
2021 Harper's
2017 Harper's
2016 The New Yorker
2015 Harper's
2013 Wired
2013 Photo District News
2013 Tricycle Magazine
2013 American Photo Magazine
2012 The Artist Catalogue
2012 M/I/S/C magazine
2011 The Huffington Post