Can a landscape be captured at a "decisive moment?" This is what contender Greg Jones asks when he carefully composes composites of parks and street scenes, crafting narrative by layering multiple frames of ordinary interactions between humans and their environments. Jones cites his photographic influences mostly as New York and Paris-based European landscape painters, including Claude Lorrain and William Marlow. Looking to their longitudinal studies of town squares, parks, sea ports, and other hubs of everyday activity, the paintings of Lorrain and Marlow emphasize dramatized (but believable) landscapes of their day, and the human form, posture and dress, of people within these environments. Their skies are saturated with color, trees are in peak bloom, grasses are lusciously green, and the natural elements are often blossoming with the richest of their possible palettes.
Highland Park 5.19.09, 2009 by Gregory E. Jones
Jones' work adopts this lush palette along with often vivid lighting , but also pays close heed to the angles and curves created by man-made elements and how they intersect with the characters in his frames. In his work in parks and grass knolls, Jones captures casual passerby on paved paths, unaware that their mundane activity is being recorded as part of a storied picture. In Highland Park 5.19.09, three threesomes engage in separate dialogues, on their own unremarkable. But, by layering multiple frames, the triads of park-goers are put in conversation, asking the viewer to observe the textures and dimensions of the space.
St. Paul Street 3.20.09, 2009 by Gregory E. Jones
Jones also takes his technique to the street, with a style of lighting that channels the photography of Jeff Wall, who also cites painting as a crucial informant to his photography. Like Wall, Jones sees the frame less as a moment to document the "truth," but as a canvas on which to craft a scene, and applies controlled lighting and placement of his subjects—and their actions— to do so. He writes in his statement, "I think part of what I'm trying to do is to establish a link with those old paintings to show that at the core of our experience, our relationship to the world; there are things that will never change."
You can see more work by Greg Jones over on his website.