On the occasion of the EMOP, the European Month of Photography in Berlin, we are very happy to be able to present new, out-of-focus, black-and-white photographic works by American artist Bill Jacobson.

New York-based artist Bill Jacobson first became known for his defocused portrait and urban landscape photographs which, in the 1990s, addressed feelings of loss in the midst of the AIDS crisis. Subsequently, from 2003 through 2017, the work shifted and became sharp, focused, and delineated – for instance in his well-known “Place (Series)” of 2015 that the gallery presented in Berlin in the spring of 2018.

Now in his 60s and thinking about both mortality and the uncertain times we live in, Jacobson is again exploring out-of-focus imagery in his new series titled “when is a place”. These contemplative landscape images were taken between 2018 and 2019 in Virginia, Upstate New York and in the South of France. This new work also marks Jacobson’s return to analog silver gelatin printmaking. The large, 100 x 115 cm images are created by the artist in a traditional black-and-white darkroom.

Prior to moving to New York in 1982, Jacobson (\*1955, Norwich, USA) received a BA from Brown University (1977) and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (1981). He has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, and his work is in the collections of The Guggenheim Museum; The Whitney Museum; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Brooklyn Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Victoria and Albert Museum, and many others.


when is a place

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