About the Artist
This page has a biography, and the artist’s thoughts on the work exhibited on the website (themes and techniques). For information about how the site and the pictures shown on it are organized, see Site Map.
Biography
Portrait of the Artist, 2018 - photo Julie Clark
James M. Peaslee (Jim) is a New York City based art photographer. He has exhibited photographs at the Soho Photo Gallery (in 2023, February 2024, and September 2024), Artexpo NY, 2022, and at the HNH Fine Art Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. For more information about exhibitions, click here. His photographs are included in the web galleries Artsy, YourDailyPhotograph, and https://thecommotion.ca/shop, in three 2021 juried exhibitions (Open Call 2021—two entries, Color, and In Celebration of Trees) at the PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, Vermont, https://photoplacegallery.com/, and in the 2021 juried exhibition Color and the 2022 juried exhibitions Open and In the Light at the SE Center For Photography, https://www.sec4p.com/exhibitions. He received third prize in the International Photography Awards, One Shot - Our Times competition in 2021 (photography about aspects of the COVID pandemic, in the category isolation), an honorable mention in the 2021 International Photography Awards annual competition, in the category abstract architecture, a merit award in the 2020 All About Photo B&W photography contest, see https://www.all-about-photo.com/photo-articles/photo-article/758/the-stunning-winning-images-of-aap-magazine-12-bandw, and three honorable mentions in the Monochrome Awards 2020, one in the Monochrome Awards 2021, and three in the Monochrome Awards 2022.
Born in 1952, Peaslee has been a photographer for 50 years, starting with school yearbooks, and was quite active in the early 70s, armed with a medium format camera and shooting in black and white. Some of the earlier photographs taken in Germany (look at Germany, 1970 in the People collection) were included in a printed magazine published by All About Photo. Peaslee photographs have been used to illustrate a number of editorials in the New York Sun.
Peaslee’s formal photography education began with a course in the spring of 1970 in the Yale Art Department, given by the venerable Walker Evans, who was approaching the end of his life (he died in 1975). Aside from various workshops to ease the transition to the digital era, the next significant formal art education came near the end of the 50 years. He attended the Rocky Mountain School of Photography Summer Intensive program in Missoula, Montana in 2018.
Peaslee grew up in the New York City area (Manhattan and suburbs), Los Angeles, and Paris (France, not Texas). He then went to three schools of higher learning (Yale, Harvard Law School, and NYU Law School), mostly in search of a way to earn a living, Ultimately, he did so (along with getting married and having two daughters) as a tax lawyer in the New York office of an international law firm, Cleary Gottlieb. Tax law has some relevance to his artistic style, as he explains below. He retired from law at the beginning of 2018, to pursue art photography and wear his hair longer. The competing demands of a law career and family explain why the photographs on this site are mostly from the 1970s and from 2018 on.
The work covers a range of subjects, as evidenced by the eight collections shown on the site. Many of the pictures are stark, and often very consciously simplified. Many show individuals who seem isolated; indeed, one of the biggest collections is Alone. Pictures of buildings and structures usually show no people, or only figures in silhouette or shadow. One artist he cites as an influence is Edward Hopper. Walker Evans also helped set the tone. Even though the great depression thankfully is long over, some of the themes of desolation and isolation carry on (particularly so in the spring of 2020).
Artist’s Explanation of Work
The Narragansett, Block Island, 2015 – Buildings and Structures
WHY. I am showing photographs on this website with the hope that some viewers will get a bit of joy out of them; and may even look more than once and want prints. Should that turn out to be you, get in touch. Many of the pictures have details, tones and colors that are brought out better in prints than on the screen.
THEMES. Looking at the assembled pictures, some themes emerge. One is that the pictures are, well, a bit stark. Estrangement and emptiness (or if you prefer, absence, isolation, solitude, alienation—it is perhaps telling that there are so many words along these lines) are represented in many of the pictures.
You can be the judge, but I think photographs of this type can be both thought provoking and visually pleasing.
When you see a picture that is simple or stark, you may ask what is missing, or what happens next. One example is No Bride in the Views collection, which shows groups of white chairs with no people. A picture can have bright colors, sunlight and ocean waves and still be stark. Look at Cabana Blue in Buildings and Structures.
One painter I admire who successfully combines visual beauty with starkness and simplicity is Edward Hopper (a local boy from New York). The Narragansett (from Buildings and Structures) shown adjacent is inspired by him.
You can see Hopper’s influence in a number of other pictures, such as Officers’ Row Fort Hancock (Views), Lepanto Garage (Buildings and Structures/Butte), and Lighthouse (Buildings and Structures). A picture that combines a storefront (an occasional Hopper theme) and a woman passing by is Storefront With Boots (Buildings and Structures/Butte).
Guard at Wall, Germany, 1970 – Alone
Pictures can suggest emptiness even if they include people. See the adjacent Guard at Wall, from Alone.
Solitude can, but need not, imply loneliness. Two pictures of solitary figures that suggest contemplation more than loneliness are Tentative Steps (Alone/Beach) and Lakeshore (Alone).
I’m not sure why my photographic tastes have developed as they have, and it troubles me a bit. Who wants to have a dark side, or at least to put it on display?
One possible explanation is that in my professional life I was a tax lawyer. What this entails (or did for me at least) is not paperwork and forms but many hours spent parsing arcane texts and staring out a window trying to puzzle through a problem. As a generalization (and meaning no disrespect to others), people who enter the field seem to prefer abstractions, logical reasoning, and words used like surgical tools, to hugging. More chalk on a blackboard (shades of gray) than vibrant colors.
Window, New Haven Train Station, 1970 – Views
Another contributing factor is that my first photography teacher was Walker Evans, via a course in the Yale Art Department in 1970. He is best known as a chronicler of the depression. Among other things, he provided photographs for the 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (written by James Agee), which describes three sharecropper families in Alabama.
His teaching style as best as I recall (it has been a few years) was not to show slides, or discuss concepts or techniques. Rather, he sat on a chair and gave thumbs up or down to student work (usually through grunts without much explanation). Everyone figured out quickly that the accolades came to those who brought photographs that reminded Mr. Evans of the era he knew best. Fortunately, New Haven in 1970 was rich in depression-like tableaux. One picture from the course (see adjacent) is Window, New Haven Train Station (in Views).
Wine Country, South Africa, 2014 – Views
BLACK AND WHITE AND COLOR. Many of the photographs shown here are in black and white. Before the digital era, I used mostly black and white film (Tri X was my staple). Once I switched to digital in 2006, the choice could be made after the fact. I look at each image to see what works best, and usually choose black and white unless color affirmatively adds something. Color can of course make an image, but it may also just add clutter. The landscape photograph adjacent (Wine Country from Views) is better in my judgment in black and white, even though the original scene has a range of greens, yellows and blues. On the other hand, Stones (Surreal) would be flat in black and white.
The digital world allows a color picture to be desaturated in part to produce muted colors, which can suit the subject (and appropriate for me, add an element of starkness). For an example, see Pyramid (from People, which had all colors removed except for reds). Colors can also be altered or enhanced in ways that add interest to a picture. An example is Trees Cathedral (from Design/Patterns and Curves).
Beach Winter, Atlantic Beach, NY, 2007 – Alone/Beach
DIGITAL MANIPULATION/CLARITY. I am not a photojournalist, and welcome the ability to edit images, even aggressively, in ways that were never possible with film. For example, the solitary tree near the skyline in Tree on Horizon, Surreal, was joined by bushes and other trees until a visit to Photoshop. Digital tools make it easier to simplify images, which usually suits the feeling I am trying to convey. Man and Bridge (in Alone) benefited from the removal of extraneous objects. I often use Photoshop to highlight parts of an image and fade the rest. This technique was used, for example, in the adjacent Beach Winter (in Alone/Beach). Two other examples are Chairs and Commemorative Roses (Objects) and Figures, Selling Floor (People).
While photographers generally try to achieve sharp images, softer ones can sometimes be as effective, or even better. Profiles (from People) doesn’t have detail and is better without it (indeed the more distant woman is out of focus, which separates her from the woman in front).
A few of the photographs combine multiple images. One example is Dress Runner (Surreal), which shows a strategically placed runner taken from another scene. Another example is Painted House (Buildings and Structures). The girl was present at the location and on the same day, but not in the same frame.
RESOLUTION. The images shown on this website are small resolution copies appropriate for the web. The master files mostly have lots of pixels and a fair amount of detail, and could be printed in large sizes. If anyone contacts me about prints, we can discuss the right size for a particular photograph.