Jordan Ewert

The work on this site is meant to be seen both as a portfolio of my best work and a visual way of mapping personal evolution in terms of photography and conceptual thinking. If this is your first time here I suggest you take a look at my previews before delving into anything else. For an understanding of where I started, where I am, and where I am going please take a look at my history.

I am now on the path for collaboration and community involvement and no longer interested in taking photographs or producing work only by myself. There is something unique that happens when artists begin to collaborate and share perspectives from two or more angles. It’s truly impossible to work in a vacuum I’ve discovered. Just as a musician may feed off a crowds energy, I need to feed off creative energy as well.

Bio

I was born in Osaka, Japan on December 9th, 1985 due to the fact that my parents were doing missionary work. My father was a pastor and my mother was a teacher. When we moved back I was bounced around Illinois for awhile until I went to high school in Austin, MN in 2000.

I didn’t get into photography until my senior year, and even then I never took it all that seriously. That all changed in late 2006 when I realized I could use photography as a tool to make art. Like many photographers just starting out, I thought it was fun to take pictures of people, places, events, whatever. For awhile there this was enough for me and I felt successful as an artist. It wasn’t long before this feeling wore off… In late 2007 and early 2008 my images began to undertake more and more post-processing—focusing on the potential of an image rather than the image itself. It was also during this time I began to develop more readily my closed series. Using friends and even hiring some models I began to generate more focused work: creating series about the dark side of human nature within the sub-context of drugs, relationships, sex, beauty, isolation, and violence.

Statement

I am only interested in photography that sends a message. The images I take all deal with psychology & sociology to a degree and are generally in some form of a narrative within an open or closed series of work. My open series deal with ongoing investigations and are more sporadic and spontaneous than my closed series counterpart, which are more or less “closed” events. Most recently I have begun to focus on digital manipulation; pushing how far a composite can be mistaken for realism (or “hyper-realism”). In regards to my open and closed series I often reflect on the dark side of human nature within the masquerade of something visually stunning or beautiful. In other words, I’m not interested in taking pretty pictures of flowers and landscapes.

For this last year or so my work has been heading in the direction of social commentary and photo-journalism but with focus and detail from a fine-art perspective. I want my work to challenge audiences and make them think. I want to get people’s attention to the topics at hand and not about me as an artist.

History

Click here to read my history, a more detailed journey of my photography from 2006 to present.