30 Apr ARTIST SPOTLIGHTS: STEVEN A. JACKSON

Steven A. Jackson deploys his camera and the modern digital darkroom tools of Photoshop to record and transform scenes that, once processed and printed under his expert eye, often eerily express the subtle interactions between humans and the natural world in the Southwest, near and beyond his home in Santa Fe. His photograph entitled Abandoned House, Outside La Veta, Colorado, for example, captures a farmstead at the base of the Spanish Peaks in Southern New Mexico, its isolation dramatized by the muted colors in the foreground, the richly toned black-and-white of the snowclad summit looming behind, and the eerie glowing effect Jackson gave to sunlight coming through the clouds. “I used a moderate telephoto lens to bring the mountain in closer,” Jackson says. “And I toned down its color while using different filters to change the tones of the bushes and trees. There were something like 10 or 12 different digital layers for the finished image.”

Jackson arrived at this nuanced approach to exploring and celebrating the world around him following a health crisis at the age of 50. “All through the years, I’ve been photographing,” he says of a serious hobby that occupied his spare time during a career first in banking and then in real estate. “And I’d give my prints as gifts to friends.” But his recovery period in the late 1990s led him to reassess his priorities, “and I began to think of my photography much more as a profession.”

School Bus, Encino, New Mexico | Archival Digital Print on Cotton Rag Matte Paper | 12.375 x 20 inches | 2017

That was also right around the time that Photoshop’s “layers” had taken hold, enabling photographers to edit multiple elements of a digital image. “Digital photography, processing, and printing got my juices flowing. It’s a different medium [from film and darkroom], and I found that change very invigorating” — not to mention far more salubrious than dealing with all the chemicals involved in processing. The results he achieved also found immediate interest among galleries and their collectors.

The Church, Morley Mine, Colorado | Archival Digital Print on Cotton Rag Matte Paper | 29 x 20 inches | 2019

Relatively recent though his current creative calling may be, Jackson has long been fascinated by photography. He first picked up a camera seriously as a high school student in New Jersey, and during his years as an undergraduate at the Annapolis campus of St. John’s College. “I would wander around taking nighttime photographs,” he says. “But photography was always primarily for my own pleasure.”

As the saying goes, a pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled — and the joy and wonderment Jackson now finds through his aesthetic calling is shared through creations like The Church, Morley Mine, Colorado, and School Bus, Encino, New Mexico. “I’m aiming to capture a feeling of the area, not just the visual,” he says. “When you get there, you know you’re there because it just feels different.”

Jackson’s work is represented by New Concept Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Based in Marin County, California, Norman Kolpas is the author of more than 40 books and hundreds of articles. He also teaches nonfiction writing in The Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension.