Jeff Jacobson was a noted American color photographer born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1946. He began his career as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union before devoting himself to photography after studying under Charles Harbutt.
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KT: How did you get into photography? You were a civil rights lawyer in 1970’s.
JJ: I had two friends who were photographers. It seemed like something I could do. So I started shooting and fell in love with the medium.
KT: Your photography has always been colourful, political and revolves around human relationships. How did you build such fascination?
JJ: I discovered colour when I had an assignment in 1975. I began shooting ‘American politics’ in colour in 1976 and never stopped thereafter. Over the year’s my work has become less overtly political, with fewer people in my frames.
KT: You have published three beautiful books ‘My Fellow American (1991)’, ‘Melting Point (2006)’ and ‘The Last Roll (2013)’. What do you like about photography in a book format?
JJ: For me, photography lives best in the book form. Photographs want to be with other photographs and in a book, you can create meaningful sequences to build meaning from one picture to another. A book gives the viewer much more freedom to decide when and under what conditions to view the work, with much more freedom to make his or her own meaning from the pictures. Books last longer than exhibitions. Books give the photographer the most control to determine how their work is viewed.
