The personal photo journey I am on today, started when I was nine or ten. My father, Leonard Janklow, was an accomplished visual artist, and his idea of father/son bonding was taking me out, shooting photographs and then developing and printing the results in our home darkroom. I still remember how exciting it was on my thirteenth birthday to get a Kodak Pony 35mm camera, created for young photographers.
Of course I had no idea then that photography would become an important lifelong passion for me.
When I finished college and started my career in marketing I resumed shooting and never stopped. But, it wasn’t until many years later, when I retired, that I really became dedicated to my photography and it ultimately became a personal art form.
Two of my post retirement goals were to travel internationally to learn about authentic cultures and to get much deeper into photography. As it turned out I joined them together. As I travelled extensively and frequently, mostly to hard to reach tribal areas, I became more than competent with my camera and took very pleasing well-composed travel photographs – some of which I continue to covet.
But I found myself becoming more and more interested in pursuing photography as a personal artistic expression, and before long I became committed to becoming a serious fine art photographer. With that came a lot of reading and thought followed by a period that continues today of learning how to “see” in new ways and how to turn that vision into images.
My first aha moment was the notion of going beyond producing “pretty pictures” and trying to create images that have meaning to me. As a result my photography became even more deeply personal and I felt liberated to go where my muse took me. Since then I have gone through a number periods. I’ve produced some work I really like and lots I don’t. But each stop along the way has had meaning and been a stepping-stone.
Currently, I’ve been creating work where my goal is to make images that are not fully resolved, where there’s a bit of mystery, where the image is asking questions as well as revealing information. I find myself seeking to really develop an intimate relationship between me and my subject - later between me and the image itself and ultimately maybe even between the image and a viewer.
I hope my work that you find here creates a reaction of some kind within you. I’d be glad to hear about it.