Anyone who has viewed the black-and-white art photography of Edmonton's Jonathan Luckhurst will have been struck by its timeless, otherworldly nature. I first encountered some of his work at Axis Cafe on Jasper Avenue a couple of years back, without knowing anything about the photographer.
The profile has remained low-key in the years since, give or take a bit of exposure via The Works and the Art Walk festivals, but Luckhurst's days of relative anonymity may soon be coming to an end. Although he still has no formal exhibition at a local gallery, some of his prints have been on display this month at Europe's most prestigious photo festival, Les Rencontres D'Arles, in southern France. In addition, his work is being considered for an upcoming exhibition at the Buschlen Mowatt in Vancouver, one of Canada's most highly regarded private galleries.
And coming this fall, Luckhurst's first book, displaying 40 of his duo-tone images, printed in Italy and published by Zoom Editions, will be released in Europe and North America.
Entirely self-taught, the 31-year-old Luckhurst photographs with film cameras and prints all of his work in a traditional darkroom. No digital manipulation is used at any stage of the process.
"I think digital is great for certain things but for what I want to do, I need to be more connected to the work," Luckhurst said in an interview this week. "For me that means really working the image in a traditional darkroom where it's more hands on. They call it painting with light and that's literally what you're doing."
Luckhurst has been travelling back and forth between here and India since 2004, honing his style and slowly building his portfolio, taking many of his images at mass Hindu pilgrimages there. A stranger in a strange land, then, but he's not interested in pure documentation, nor stating the obvious. Cultural and racial identities tend to disappear in the way he depicts the human form, and visual clues are lost as to the precise setting.
In these corner-of-the-eye renderings of the physical world a tiny cyclist traverses a vast floodplain, his form mirrored in the pooled water; a ghostly flock of birds take flight in the muddy light; a figure is caught mid-stride through the menacing frame of dark foliage at the edge of town.
See for yourself online at www.jonathanluckhurst.com.
"I'm trying to keep the work as anonymous as possible," said Luckhurst, who cites the American photo artist James Whitlow Delano as a great influence.
"So in the work I do a lot of my subjects are sort of in silhouette or as really distant figures. I'm trying to go beyond the traditional type of documentary or travel-photography work."
The 41st edition of the Festival takes place in Arles, France, (July 3 to September 19, 2010), and has exhibited the likes of Yousuf Karsh, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Ansel Adams in the past.
From July 3 - July 10 you can see my original handprinted photographs at Parc Des Ateliers, the meeting place for galleries, curators, publishers, collectors and artists. Wave Photogallery (http://www.wavephotogallery.it) and ZOOM Magazine (http://www.zoom-net.com/Home.aspx) will be showcasing my work.
"This is a chance for my work to be seen by some of the world’s most important people in the photography world; I'm hoping it leads to some amazing opportunities...to participate in a festival which has exhibited the work of the world’s foremost photographers establishes my reputation as an artist. It is a tremendous honour”.
http://www.rencontres-arles.com/A09/C.aspx?VP3=CMS&ID=A09P1162
