Bill Jacobson

Bill Jacobson has been making his signature out-of-focus photographs since 1989. While the camera lens is meant to show the world objectively in perfect detail and clarity, Jacobson seeks to capture images the way the mind processes them. His earlier works, close-up black and white silhouettes, are blurry and ghostly, evoking the sense of loss associated with the AIDS epidemic of the time and indicating the futility of trying to fully capture a person in art or in memory.

After a trip to India in 1999, Jacobson returned to New York and shifted his practice to color photography while maintaining his out-of-focus aesthetic. Rather than depicting loss, these photographs emphasize a physical presence in the urban or rural landscapes. Jacobson's latest bodies of work since 2003 are minimalist still lifes that explore the boundaries between architecture and nature, between abstraction and reality.