About the WORKSHOP

Over the weekend of October 18-20, Thomas Jackson will lead an outdoor landscape photography workshop in and around Point Reyes, California. With a focus on alternative and experimental approaches to photographing landscapes, the workshop will seek to expand the ways each participant interacts with and interprets the natural world.

The Point Reyes National Seashore is a remarkably diverse landscape. Its 111 square miles encompass broad ocean beaches, coastal plains, densely forested ridges and intimate, hidden coves. During the workshop we will engage the land in a variety of ways, from light-painting to photograms to sculptural interventions. Looking beyond the surface exterior of things, we will find ways to visualize natural forces like the the wind, the tides, erosion and fire. The landscape will not only be our subject, but our collaborator as well.

On the workshop’s first evening, we will provide an early campfire dinner, to be followed by a discussion led by Thomas Jackson about alternative approaches to landscape photography and an after-dark workshop (bring your flashlights). On Saturday we will set out to explore the region and to make work, both individually and as a group. Participants will be encouraged to introduce outside materials into the landscape, or to repurpose natural elements that are already present. Saturday evening we will have dinner in a local restaurant and discuss the day’s efforts; then on Sunday morning we will set out again. The workshop will conclude in the late afternoon on Sunday.

About the Instructor

Thomas Jackson’s work explores the tension between ourselves and the natural landscape. He addresses that theme by creating kinetic, site-responsive installations from mass-produced objects like plastic cups, cheese balls and hula hoops in an array of natural settings. Inspired by self-organizing systems in nature such as locust swarms and bird murmurations, each installation is an attempt to create something that is simultaneously in harmony and in conflict with its surroundings, mirroring our own struggle to achieve a sustainable equilibrium with the natural world.

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 much of his career in New York as an editor and book reviewer for magazines. His interest in photography books eventually led him to pick up a camera, first shooting Garry Winogrand-inspired street scenes, then landscapes, and finally the installation work he does today. His work has been shown widely, including at The Photography Show (AIPAD) in New York, the Center for Contemporary Arts in Sante Fe and the Bolinas Museum in Bolinas, CA. 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. He lives in Northern California.

Click here for more information about Thomas Jackson