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Sean Sexon (b. 1954), a photography historian and collector, discovered the then-unknown work of Charles Jones at the Bermondsey Market in 1981. Charles Jones, the enigmatic creator of the photographs gathered here for the first time, can be seen in turn as a master gardener, an inspired photographer, a meticulous botanist, or an unexpected practitioner of still life. He is all of these things and more. His images, dating from 1895 to 1910, possess the unique charm of early photography and that grain and density found, for example, in the work of Atget or Julia Margaret Cameron. We will likely never know why or how he came to photograph these ordinary plants so obsessively.
For Jones did not photograph his vegetables, fruits, and flowers in their natural settings; on the contrary, he isolated his subjects against neutral backgrounds, thereby creating captivating “portraits” of beans and onions, squash and turnips, sunflowers and tulips, plums and pears. His technique, characterized by tight framing, long exposure times, and understated compositions, anticipated by several decades the later works of the modern masters.
Foreword by Gilles Clément
Published in 1999 by Thames & Hudson, edited by Sean Sexton and Robert Flynn Johnson
28.8 cm 28.8 cm, 128 pages, in good condition,
ISBN
Sean Sexon (b. 1954), a photography historian and collector, discovered the then-unknown work of Charles Jones at the Bermondsey Market in 1981. Charles Jones, the enigmatic creator of the photographs gathered here for the first time, can be seen in turn as a master gardener, an inspired photographer, a meticulous botanist, or an unexpected practitioner of still life. He is all of these things and more. His images, dating from 1895 to 1910, possess the unique charm of early photography and that grain and density found, for example, in the work of Atget or Julia Margaret Cameron. We will likely never know why or how he came to photograph these ordinary plants so obsessively.
For Jones did not photograph his vegetables, fruits, and flowers in their natural settings; on the contrary, he isolated his subjects against neutral backgrounds, thereby creating captivating “portraits” of beans and onions, squash and turnips, sunflowers and tulips, plums and pears. His technique, characterized by tight framing, long exposure times, and understated compositions, anticipated by several decades the later works of the modern masters.
Foreword by Gilles Clément
Published in 1999 by Thames & Hudson, edited by Sean Sexton and Robert Flynn Johnson
28.8 cm 28.8 cm, 128 pages, in good condition,
ISBN
