Joseph Jachna Featured at Madeline Tourtelot Archives & Study Center

Photo by Joseph Jachna.

Chicago photographer Joseph Jachna will be the featured artist at the Madeline Tourtelot Archives & Study Center at the Peninsula School of Art through Oct. 2.

Ripples of water, timeless rocks, reflections of sky, light and shadow, space and perception, and even his own body parts are the subjects of Jachna’s photography. Jachna began the Door County Landscape Series while teaching a summer workshop at the School in 1969. He installed an 18mm Takumar wide-angle lens on his single-lens reflex camera.

“When I saw my hand in front of the lens as I was focusing (the extreme wide-angle lens), instead of pulling it out of the frame, I looked at it and moved it into new configurations,” said Jachna.

The Door County Series was a complete break from Jachna’s earlier work. He explains, “The earlier pictures almost never had a horizon. In them the field was limited by pointing the camera down, there was sharpness throughout the field, there was a simplicity brought about by limiting the content of the picture to two or three elements. Then I go into these [the Door County photographs from 1969 to 1970]. All these clouds I had always hated floated through the frame. My own shadow was in the picture. Everything you can think of is making these different. This lens is so wide I have to get either the horizon in or my shoes.”

Exhibition hours are 10 am – 2 pm Wednesdays or by appointment from Aug. 1 to Oct. 2. The Archives is located on the grounds of the Peninsula School of Art at 3900 County F in Fish Creek. For more information call 920.868.3455 or visit peninsulaartschool.com.