Tomiko Jones

These Grand Places

January 4 - February 28, 2013

The landscape echoes an internal terrain, simultaneously marking and blurring difference. Exploring the geography of the land, I search changing and transitional landscapes, places I can feel a sense of communication. At times I am drawn there by history or literature, at other times I strategically seek out places of obvious, often destructive, human disturbances, and yet others, I simply walk and see what is revealed. Response is quiet and often slow. Sometimes I will walk for hours and make no pictures, sometimes I make many, but show none.

In my working method with a 4x5 press camera, things slow down and moments of contemplation are possible. I often photograph at dusk, when color bleeds from the sky and the sublime reveals itself. As the light of day dims, time and movement become an integral part of the photographic process. These Grand Places are collected from many different places in parts of the American landscape and abroad while at two different residencies in France.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Tomiko Jones received her Master of Fine Arts in Photography with a Certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Arizona in Tucson in 2008. She is the recipient of many awards including the National Society for Photographic Education Freestyle Crystal Apple Award for Outstanding Achievement, 4Culture and CityArtists. Tomiko exhibits regularly in the United States, and has had solo exhibitions in Tokyo and México City. In 2008 she spent three months in residence at the Museé Niépce in Chalon-Sur-Saône, France, the dually acclaimed birthplace of photography. In 2009 she returned to southern France for a project-specific fellowship at The Camargo Foundation in Cassis. After teaching photography at New Mexico State University for a year and a half, in fall 2011 she moved to Colorado as an Assistant Professor of Art and Coordinator of the photography program at Metropolitan State University of Denver. http://tomikojonesphoto.com/