“I make monochromatic photographs which offer me and the viewer an altered reality. This distance is an intensional and integral part of my work. Real life is layers of color - black and white images offer a sense of detachment. This detachment allows a viewer the space and depth to ponder and contemplate the idea in front of them - to see into the heart of things. My images become a vehicle for the imagination. The photographs I make have been described as ‘hauntingly beautiful’. Beauty liberates us from the tyranny of the useful and satisfies our human spiritual and moral needs. My creations are a coping mechanism for life — for the loneliness of being, for the longing for connection, for the dazzling incomprehension of what it all means.”

I grew up in a small midwest farming community – my grandparents were farmers, all my relatives were farmers - photography in this context was a mechanism to record family.  The year 1975 - my first camera - a holiday gift.  Our small country town became my subject. 

Fast forward - many cameras later, years of travel, years of looking and looking purposefuly.  I now create images with a much loved fine Hasselblad digital lens.  Years of study and experimentation – three decades wandering the streets of Manhattan.  I am a certified flaneur - I stroll and I observe. The great French poet, Charles Baudelaire referred to flanerie as “botanizing on the asphalt”. I now wander a million miles away from the rural country roads that nurtured my early self. My formal education was in theatrical set design, art history and interior design. Following my years at University I spent seven years traveling the world working as a flight attendant - always looking - always exploring - always curious.

I am a reductionist in most things which is reflected in my photography. I refer to the images I make as “plein air photography”. En plein air - this method contrasts with formal staged imagery or carefully orchestrated or artificially illuminated shooting. Much of my work is created in a random and disorderly urban environment. My visual ideas are created in this disorderly isolation. Beauty is an everyday - ordinary thing. Through beauty we are brought into the presence of the sacred. Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the world as a home and amplify our joys and find consolation for our sorrows. What we call art is a gesture toward some authentic answer to the question of the elemental truths of being alive, animated by a craving for beauty, haunted by the need to find a way of bearing our mortality.

The way I see it.

Jim Fairfax