For New Work, Thomas Jackson presents an ongoing series of photographs that explore the tension between ourselves and the natural landscape. Each photograph features large-scale, kinetic, site-responsive installations Jackson creates out of mass-produced cultural objects placed within an array of locations across the globe. Inspired by self-organizing, emergent systems in nature such as locust swarms, schools of fish and bird murmurations, the installations attempt to tap the mixture of fear and fascination that those phenomena tend to evoke, while creating an interplay between the natural and the manufactured, and the real and the imaginary. Each piece is an experiment in juxtaposition, an attempt to create something that is simultaneously in harmony and in conflict with its surroundings, mirroring our own struggle to achieve a sustainable equilibrium with the unbuilt landscape.

Jackson says of his work, “In the beginning stages of my current work I used Photoshop liberally. A problem with that approach, however, was that the images kept eliciting the same response, ‘Is it real?’ Some people’s enthusiasm would deflate when I told them the truth, others wouldn’t care at all, but the question itself made me realize I’d tapped into something intriguing about the skepticism people bring to photography in the digital age. And how better to explore that theme than to make images that appear manipulated, but actually aren’t. So I set out to create new work that was free of digital intervention, and with a few minor exceptions here and there, my current output is entirely in-camera.”

Thomas Jackson was born in Philadelphia, PA and received a B.A. in History from the College of Wooster. His work has been shown at select museums and institutions: SFO Museum, San Francisco, CA; The Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA; Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, Milwaukee, WI; Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI; Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM; United Photo Industries, Brooklyn, NY, Boston, MA and Atlanta, GA; The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, NY; Project Basho, Philadelphia, PA; The Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, CO; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN; The Print Center Annual Auction, Philadelphia, PA; Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, FL; among others. Jackson is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including: CENTER Curator's Choice Award, Second Place (2014); ONWARD Compé ‘14, juror's award winner (2014); Wondrous Indeed, Center for Fine Art Photography, Juror's Selection (2014); The National, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Juror's Merit Award (2014); Art Takes Paris, See.me, winner of “Photography” category (2013); PDN The Curator, winner of “Installation/still-life” category (2013); Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, Brush Creek, WY (2013); Critical Mass Top 50 (2012). His work is in the collections of Rotch Library at MIT, Cambridge, MA and The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY, as well as many corporate and private collections.