CV & BIO

Michael Jackson. Born: Berkshire 1966
Lives and works in Dorset, England.

Studied art at West Dean College, West Sussex.

Born in 1966 in Wokingham, England, Jackson studied at Southampton University and West Dean College, West Sussex. In 2006 he relocated to South Wales to concentrate on his photographic studies of a single beach in Pembrokeshire - a study that lasted over eight years. Currently his work is based on darkroom chemical prints on paper, using controlled light to continually experiment with the possibility of a mirror response. Since 2017 Jackson has lived and worked in Dorset, England.

Interview excerpt from Black & White Photography Magazine

And when you're deep in the luminogram process, feeling really is all you have to go on. The digital photographer has live preview of their images on an LCD screen; the film photographer has an optical viewfinder; the luminogram maker has neither.

“You start with a blank bit of paper, and you direct the light, but you don't get any results until the end,' Jackson explains.' So, you have to make an invisible mind map of where you're placing things, and you've got to remember where everything has gone, because you've got to make everything work with everything else. You're working completely blind apart from this mind map, until you stick it in the developer and everything you've done appears in front of you."

I try to imagine actually doing this; it seems as impossible as something out of Sherlock.

“It is difficult to start with,' says Jackson.' But you get this way of working where you can just remember where all the marks are. When you look into a bright light, and then you blink, you get that after- image in your eyes, don't you? It's kind of like that- you get a mental after- image of all the marks you're making. But I do still have to make little marks on the paper, just so I can be certain that I've got very precise points laid out."

Jackson’s work is part of the library collection of The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and is collected internationally. He exhibits regularly at Somerset House during PhotoLondon and has been represented by MMX Gallery since 2016.