Jock Sturges -- A Brief Biography
When I graduated from high school in 1966 I was faced with one of three choices: go to college, be drafted into the war in Vietnam or actively evade conscription. As I knew I wasn't ready for college, had no interest in killing or being killed but nevertheless found unacceptable the notion of dodging the draft so that a minority without my social advantages could go in my place, I chose to enlist in the U.S. Navy. I didn't enjoy military service particularly, but my four years were, in fact, fascinating as I was stationed in Japan, where I worked as a Russian language communications specialist. Pursuing an interest that had already begun to dominate my attention in school, I also taught photography at special service facilities and eventually was made base photographer as well.
To our mutual relief, I left the Navy in 1970, at which point I went directly from Japan to Marlboro College in southern Vermont -- and much longer hair. There I started out studying educational psychology but ended up working with two psychologists from Cornell and a photographer named Richard Benson on a cross discipline degree in perceptual psychology and photography. I worked summers in Newport, Rhode Island, photographing the plastic yachts and children of the well-to-do. After college I continued to live in Vermont for a few years, working in the local school system and moonlighting as a photographer and as a paramedic with a rescue squad. I also worked for the Experiment in International Living as a trip leader to Russia and Japan for two summers. In the midst of all this, in 1972 I shifted my photography to the large format (8x10) view camera and began the fine art effort that has since become my life's work.
I worked for Richard Benson for a year as a printer/business manager in Newport, where we were printing the negatives of Atget, Paul Strand, Gary Winogrand and Lisette Model, among others. In 1978 I finally pulled up stakes once and for all and moved west to California's meritocracy. I've worked in many corners of the photographic medium since but from the outset my commercial efforts specialized in classical dance, fashion and portraiture. This work was all accomplished in the winter months so that I would have my summers free to concentrate on my personal work. This work consists of life-time studies of girls, young women and mothers and daughters, taken in West Coast communes, on East Coast beaches (Block Island, Rhode Island), in naturist resorts on the Atlantic coast of France and in small towns on the West Coast of Ireland. I received a Masters Degree (MFA) from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1985, which I like to describe in retrospect as the least useful thing I have ever done to eight thousand dollars. I lived in San Francisco at the same address for 21 years and have most recently moved with my wife, Maia, to Seattle, Washington, where she is a hardworking medical student and I continue my work in a beautiful new lab.
My life at this point is entirely taken up with fine art photography, the majority of which is done in France, which has become a second home. I have done five major books in the last eight years: two with Aperture, one in Japan with GAKKEN and, most recently, two with Scalo of Zurich, Switzerland. I am currently represented by 25 galleries in eight countries, have three more books and numerous gallery and museum exhibitions in the works and a full program of workshop teaching lined up for 2001 -- 2002 as well.
Jock Sturges <> Seattle <> February 2001
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Jock Sturges -- Short Bio
Jock Sturges is a fine art photographer who has recently moved to Seattle, Washington. Best known for his nudes and extended portraits of families in Northern California counter-culture communities, Ireland and on French naturist beaches, his large format images borrow significantly from classical periods in both photography and nineteenth and early twentieth century painting. Represented by 25 galleries in eight countries, Mr. Sturges' work is also to be found in the collection of many of the world's museums, including The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and The Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art in Germany. His published works include Jock Sturges (Zurich: Scalo, 1996) published in conjunction with a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt and, most recently, another Scalo monograph entitled Jock Sturges: New Work 1996 - 2000, published in October, 2000. Other titles to his name include: The Last Day of Summer, (New York: Aperture, 1991), Radiant Identities, (Aperture, 1994) and Evolutions of Grace (Tokyo: GAKKEN, 1994).
Mr. Sturges travels to photograph, lecture and teach throughout the world, but is reliably to be found working on the beaches of France almost any late summer afternoon. In addition to this, he has been working on a distinctly different body of work in the West of Ireland for the last ten years. A monograph of this work is envisioned for Autumn, 2001.
© 2003 Jock Sturges
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