Jon B. Carroll is a photography enthusiast using images and interpretive drawings to study cultural landscapes. His diverse background—a rancher, architect, and mountain guide—inform his exploration of land use and social conflict.
He is self-taught, having discovered in college at a yard sale an old rangefinder camera and two books in a wooden box—Ulf Richter: Oskar Barnack, Von der Idee zur Kamera and The Americans by Robert Frank. He then dropped out of graduate school and worked in the Ukraine during protests for its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. While learning to develop film at night, he was influenced by members of the Kharkiv School of Photography and the “Panorama” group, including Mikhailov and Solonsky. When he returned to complete his graduate school - researching settlement patterns in post-reconstruction Alabama - photography was the major part.
Photography, Boris Mikhailov contends, must “speak the truth—not conform to the predetermined idea—and tap into the collective unconscious.”
He has self-published three zines about the Shining Mountains, A Horse Named Hellboy and Let Us Go to Dothan - part of his graduate thesis at Auburn University. His work has appeared on PBS and Independent Lens, and videography is part the award-winning documentary No Man’s Land.
He can be reached below.
Thank you!