About the Images

The images here are an incomplete sampling of my involvement with photography over the last 20+ years. Currently, we are located in North Africa and are involved with helping English university students progress in their culture and language acquisition. Consequently, the majority of my images, particularly many of the best, are in storage in the U.S. This is most apparent in the pages dealing with large format photography. The bulk of my photography over the last 16 years has been made on 4x5 and 8x10 film and only a few of those images are currently accessible to me.

The 35mm work predominate here is, in fact, a rather small part of my larger body of work. The grouping of images for presentation is a subjective choice and I have chosen ultimately to do so on the basis of emotional or aesthetic associations rather than geography or date. Also, a few of the dates listed (particularly in the early '90's) should be considered approximate.

What is apparent here, now, however, are the styles of photography I find most satisfying. First of all, black and white has been my passion since the first years of my involvement with photography. I respond deeply to a full, rich palette of gray tones and to the reduction of shapes that black and white often reveals in its subjects. I am more often stimulated to photograph by the presence of shape and form, tonal possibilities, and how an object processes the light falling on it, than by subject matter. In fact, when "subject matter" plays a compelling role, it is still usually because of bigger implications felt on some level at the time, that I photograph. An example of this is the North African man in the photocopy shop near where we live. There is a minimalism in this photograph that is predominate here in most areas of life and that is as much the subject as the man.

Secondly, I value "straight" photography -regardless of format- as an honest response to life and incisive way of "seeing". Many of the images here have, for me, connotations of what I value in life; peace, beauty, and conviction, to name a few. I also appreciate the qualities that each format possesses; from the seamless tonality and deliberate compostion of large format to the quick, intuitive feel of 35 mm.

For those who are curious about the details of materials and equipment, the earliest images (color; Ecuador) were shot on Ektachrome and Kodachrome before I had any understanding of the differences between those two films. They were made on a borrowed Minolta X-700. I believe I had the use of Minolta 28 & 50 mm lenses as well as a Vivitar Series 1 70-210. From about 1985 to '89, all images were shot on a Nikon Fm2 or Fm with Nikkor 24mm, 50mm, and 100-300 lenses. Examples of this are the early 35mm, color images of Hawaii, black and white images of Australia, New Zealand, and my former roommate, HJO.

1989 was a defining year for me photographically. An interesting phenomena is how one camera can influence the creative process over another. Photographing with an electronic SLR is a different experience than using a mechanical rangefinder and a view camera is altogether different still. It is not only the limitations or advantages of a specific camera, but the very feel can put one in a certain disposition. In 1989, I acquired a 4x5 technical field camera and my first Leica. Since then, I have rarely been without one or the other and all the 35mm images from 1990 to the present were made with one of the various Leica rangefinders. (IIIF, M-2, M-3, M4-2, M-6, and Leica 0). The 35mm images of France were made with entirely with an M6 and Leica 0.

The medium format color images were made almost entirely on Hasselblad 500 CM's with lenses from 40mm to 500.

Over the years, I have been able to work with a number of different formats and cameras and have found I work best with simple, well made mechanical tools and have a deep satisfaction in equipment that facilitates the photographic process without dominating it.

As a last word, virtually all of these images were originally made on conventional silver-based materials from Agfa, Kodak, and Ilford, (to name a few) as well as the hand-coated platinum/palladium images. These materials have their own distinct palettes and qualities. The low-resolution, electronic images here simply hint at these qualities and must be considered as marginal reproductions.

Donn Jones, 2006