Education
Sturges graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Perceptual Psychology and Photography from Marlboro College and received an Master of Fine Arts in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute.
(My hope is that my work is in some way counter-pinup. A p...)
My hope is that my work is in some way counter-pinup. A pinup asks you to suspend interest in who the person is and occupy yourself entirely with looking at the body, fantasizing about what you could do with that body, completely ignoring how the person might feel about it. People who make pinup photographs don't care who the woman is, what tragedies or triumphs that person's life might encompass. My work hopefully works exactly counter to that. My ambition is that you look at the pictures and realize what complex, fascinating, interesting people every single one of my subjects is. --Jock Sturges, the Boston Phoenix Long known for his radiant black-and-white naturist portraiture, Jock Sturges has also been quietly working in color for more than two decades. Life Time presents a broad range of this color work for the first time and carries forward Sturges' extended portraits of families in Northern California counter-culture communities and on French naturist beaches. Working with the same models and their families in his long-term studies of growth, change and relationship, his large format images borrow significantly from classical periods in both photography and nineteenth and early twentieth century painting. The large color plates in Life Time represent almost perfect one to one translations of the original transparencies and are rich with detail and physical and psychological nuance. Sturges describes his work as "identity driven" because his portraits represent collaborations that stretch over entire lifetimes. The confident ease with which all of his subjects present themselves to his camera evidences a rare level of trust and friendship.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3865217001/?tag=2022091-20
(An oversized book (handbound/Japanese hardcover binding) ...)
An oversized book (handbound/Japanese hardcover binding) with more than 50 unpublished photographs and text by Jock Sturges. The edition consists of 500 copies, signed and numbered by Jock Sturges. Rare is the day when a publisher comes to an artist and says "What for you would be a perfect book?" and then, having listened to the artist's immoderate ideals, says, "Yes, we can do that. We will do it exactly as you like." Thus was born my Edition Galerie Vevais title, "Familiär". I wanted a very large book to project to the viewer the scale of how I see when working with the big camera. Before now, this has only been possible to achieve with prints in a gallery or museum context. I was fully expecting to be told that such a thing was just not technically or economically possible, but Alexander Scholz of Edition Galerie Vevais was if anything more enthusiastic about the project than was I! The result is the single most ambitious work in print that I have ever attempted or, for that matter seen attempted since the "elephant portfolios" by the like of Jackson and Watkins in the 19th century and Helmut Newton's SUMO. The quality of our result with this work is sure to mark the pinnacle of my work in print for all time. I feel deeply privileged to have my work elevated to this grand and eloquent form. Apart from size, the guiding principle behind the project is to show a maximum timespan of images of 20 of my best known models and, wherever possible to do this with previously unpublished work. Thus very few of the pictures in this book will have been seen before. My hope is that the viewer will be moved to page back and forth to compare beginnings with evolutions and the present reality. My work is after all un histoire d'amour and such stories forever carry forward. Jock Sturges, Seattle, 2011
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3936165300/?tag=2022091-20
(The gallery brochure/booklet for an exhibition of photogr...)
The gallery brochure/booklet for an exhibition of photographs by Sturgis, held at the Bernarducci.Meisel.Gallery, December 18, 2008 - January 24, in conjunction with the publication of a book of the same name. Photographs by Jock Sturges; essay by Mary E. Sonntag. Staple-bound card stock; 8 pages; 3 color illustrations; 7.25 x 10 inches.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0173TBIWO/?tag=2022091-20
(Hardcover. Linen cloth-covered boards with title stamped ...)
Hardcover. Linen cloth-covered boards with title stamped in black on spine, with photographically illustrated dust jacket. Photographs by Jock Sturges. Designed by Hans Werner Holzwarth, Berlin. 112 pp., with 79 duotone and 8 four-color plates finely printed in Germany by Steidl, Göttingen.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3908247365/?tag=2022091-20
(Over the course of his career, Jock Sturges' long-term en...)
Over the course of his career, Jock Sturges' long-term engagement with his subjects has been a cornerstone of his work. Misty Dawn, one of his primary and most popular muses, is one such subject; he has photographed her for 25 of her 28 years. Lithe, beautiful, classically proportioned, she is the personification of Sturges' philosophy of being at home in one's body. This volume follows her growth from a shy, tomboyish child to a gorgeous, confident young woman. Taken as a whole, this series of images presents a unique, fully realized portrait of a blossoming individual and explores a rare and beautiful relationship between photographer and subject. "Misty Dawn: Portrait of a Muse" presents iconic images as well as previously unpublished material, mined from Sturges' older contact sheets and newest work. Jock Sturges, born in New York in 1947, received a B.A. in perceptual psychology and photography from Marlboro College in Vermont in 1974 and an M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1985. He has exhibited internationally, and his photographs are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. His previous Aperture books include "Notes, The Last Day of Summer" and "Radiant Identities."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1597110744/?tag=2022091-20
(In 1990, the FBI entered Sturges's studio and seized his ...)
In 1990, the FBI entered Sturges's studio and seized his work, claiming violation of child pornography laws. Citizens, artists, and the media responded with outrage. "With The Last Day of Summer," Aperture accords Sturges's vision the dignity and respect it so richly deserves. "In the 58 images of this handsome... monograph, Sturges sustains a delicate balance on a very precarious wire... His struggle is to observe and render his subjects in all of their complexities, trembling on the cusp of change. The result of this long-term, communal effort is one of the most clear-eyed, responsible investigations of puberty and the emergence of sexuality in the medium's history, making a metaphor of the metamorphosis from child to adult." --A. D. Coleman, "The New York Observer"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0893815381/?tag=2022091-20
Sturges graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Perceptual Psychology and Photography from Marlboro College and received an Master of Fine Arts in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute.
His subjects are nude adolescents and their families, primarily taken at communes in Northern California and at the Atlantic-coast naturist resort CHM Montalivet in Montalivet, France. Much of his work features Californian Misty Dawn, whom he shot from when she was a young child until in her twenties. Sturges primarily works with a large 8x10-inch-format view camera.
He has taken some digital photographs but prefers to work with prints.
His work has been the subject of controversy in the United States. In 1990, his San Francisco studio was raided by Federal Bureau of Investigation officers and his equipment seized.
A grand jury subsequently declined to bring an indictment against him. In 1998 unsuccessful attempts were made to have his books The Last Day of Summer and Radiant Identities classed as child pornography in the United States. states of Alabama and Tennessee.
(An oversized book (handbound/Japanese hardcover binding) ...)
(Over the course of his career, Jock Sturges' long-term en...)
(In 1990, the FBI entered Sturges's studio and seized his ...)
(The gallery brochure/booklet for an exhibition of photogr...)
(Radiant Identities: Photographs by Jock Sturges by Jock S...)
(My hope is that my work is in some way counter-pinup. A p...)
(Hardcover. Linen cloth-covered boards with title stamped ...)