Jeff Crisman

Jeff Crisman is a lifelong photographer and retired educator. Growing up in Vermont in the 1960s, he was initially hooked by the modernist nature imagery of Edward Weston and Minor White, and fascinated by the chemical process of black and white photography. After moving to Chicago in the 70s, employment and graduate school at the University of Illinois shifted his focus to color and social documentary work. Crisman embraced a visual, anthropological approach, influenced by Diane Arbus, August Sander, and Walker Evans. He traveled across the US and provinces in Canada documenting tattoo artists and extreme collectors for nearly 20 years at a time when tattooing was gaining legitimacy as an art form yet still carried a stigma. Projects since include work with pinhole cameras exploring mythological sites in Greece and the phenomenon of pareidolia - seeing meaningful images in random forms, a long term project documenting a decommissioned munitions factory and how the natural world reclaims man-made structures, and - a return to his roots. During the Covid pandemic, Crisman spent time wandering and photographing in Will County’s forest preserves much as he did in his youth in New England. The new work continues his fascination with pareidolia and the spiritual, poetic, brutal beauty of the natural world. Expanding beyond photography, he is currently learning to sculpt with fallen branches that play with associations in his photographs. He humorously refers to the totality of this current multimedia work as “crypto-botanical haiku”. The ritual of revisiting the same places over time intrigues him, as he explores how perception shifts with familiarity.