Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonas Jungblut.
Hi Jonas, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles’ beautiful sister city, Berlin, Germany. For the first nine years of my life, I lived within the confined West-Berlin, in the American sector, which was of course rather lost on me then. But it left marks below the surface. I started becoming interested in the English language at an early age and, in my teens, read exclusively in English for a while. There was an English bookstore around the corner from where I lived and one day, I wandered in and struck up a conversation with the owner. I asked him for a recommendation and he handed me “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac. The “Beats” were one thing. There was also many road trips through the American west during the 1990’s with my family. Then there was the arts, skateboarding, surfing and mountain biking. Everything was pulling me to the West Coast.
Like many others, I had been documenting my friends and my own adventures in youth culture, especially tied to action sports and the linked travel with photography. At the age of twenty, I packed two large duffle bags and together with my then girlfriend left my life behind and boarded a plane to Santa Barbara, CA where I would attend the prestigious Brooks Institute to study commercial photography. First thing I did upon arrival was buy a surfboard and a Volkswagen van. After graduating, I traveled the world as a photography assistant and eventually just moved into shooting myself full time. I still live in Santa Barbara and create artworks as well as assignment photography across the globe.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I am a dreamer. I am easily distracted and I have a short attention span. Doing something twice is not very interesting to me. Helmut Newton said it well: “I have a very short attention span… For me, any job that lasts more than two days is no good.” I am not that extreme but I execute ideas “now”, otherwise the chance of the next idea taking its place is high. I am starting to understand that pursuits, the big pursuits, may take longer that way but I accept that. My obstacles and challenges exist in my head. It’s not easy to tackle them but creating art works has been my release. A concept I can’t stop thinking about may surface as a photograph or a sculpture, that is how it is communicated.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I have been in photography professionally (personal, editorial and commercial) for the past 20 years. Over this period, my work has appeared on the covers and inside publications nationally and internationally. While my focus naturally has shifted some, I consider myself a people photographer. The human has always been my main subject, from artists to scientists, from farmers to celebrities. One of the most impactful sessions I had was photographing Italian war hero Pino Lella at his home in Italy. It was a personal project that was so unlikely to become a reality that when it did, it instantly cemented itself as a personal achievement. You can find out more about it on my website.
Another highlight, this one more on the comedic side, happened years ago when I walked into one of the large bookstore chains and found myself on the cover of a featured book on the table closest to the entrance. It was a self-portrait I had taken and licensed through an agency without knowing how it would be used. I was holding the book in my hand and shyly looked around to see if anyone else had noticed that it was me on the cover of this book. Classic moment.
In March of 2020, when Covid shut us all down, I started a project taking Virtual Portraits via video chat. I photographed people all over the world and we exchanged information, laughs and concerns. It quickly became incredibly creative and it landed me an assignment to photograph 17 people for the Washington Post Magazine. So all of a sudden I was video-chatting with and photographing people like Margaret Atwood, Ron Chernow and comedian Russel Peters. I actually got the cover with that story.
The best moments always come out of a mix of a happy-go-lucky attitude and a concentrated push at the right time. Being open to things and then applying your honed skill at full force when the moment presents itself. The tough cookie is that those events can’t be fabricated without losing some of their magic. It is the reason for my push into a fine art direction where I can realize projects I dream up without having to give up anything to fit into someone else’s vision.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
Sooner or later, a lot of commercial photography will be replaced by technology. First, the creation of the image and then the image itself. It’s already in full swing and has been for a while. It’s progress and it’s inevitable. Photography as an art form, creative expression through the still image as well as any form of documentary photography, I believe is going to be impactful for some time to come.
I’d be surprised if the visual arts industry as a whole isn’t going to make incredible leaps into the digital realm over the next years. I am not going to speculate on what exactly that will look like but, despite being an analog person, I am looking forward to observe and experience it. I believe, following society as a whole, the arts will also undergo a division of digital and analog citizens. We are simply not capable to lead two different lives well. There will be overlap but there will also be division.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jonasjungblutphoto.com/
- Instagram: @jonasjungblut
