All of Jackson's art from his Solo Show, "The Blue Room."
Some more collections of Echol's photography.
Jackson Echols is an intermedia artist originally from Birmingham, Alabama.
For the last decade, Jackson has honed his skills at imaging the environment, focusing on the relation of man to nature, with particular interest in the myth of the beyond. Jackson's artworks are predominantly photographic, although each series ranges from direct chemical photograms to satellite imagery to traditional nature photography. Jackson's most recent work also includes a variety of text-based pieces and artists books.
Jackson’s photographs appear in collections of various corporations, hotels and collectors nationwide. In addition, Jackson’s photography has also been featured in numerous magazine articles and online journals.
Compress is an exploration of the technological sublime- awe and terror- inspired by colossal marvels of human engineering and the marks they make on the planet. In this body of work, I have utilized satellite imagery to emphasize areas of intense human activity especially in relation to natural resource exploitation and consumption. In each image, layers of up to twenty years of satellite imagery show an accelerated timetable of continual destruction of the land. These beautifully horrifying marks made by forces of our collective consumption are simultaneously temporary and permanent in that each stage of exploitation is temporary yet the destruction of the original environment is permanent. No amount of reclamation can return the sites to their former splendor. Each of these images is thus a testament to human ingenuity and an epitaph for each site of exploitation.
Shear began as a conceptual approach to illuminate the topic of global warming. I chose to photograph mirrored mylar for two reasons. First, this material is used in greenhouses to reflect sunlight and increase heat to encourage the growth of plants. Second, the mirrored surface holds interest as an aesthetic object, rendering the reflections of its surroundings in ambiguous, abstracted form. When photographed under harsh lighting, the mirror finish of the mylar simultaneous reflects and hides its surroundings, creating hot spots of high reflectivity and completely hidden areas of zero reflections. I am interested in using the material's simultaneous illumination and shadowing as a visual analogy for society's hypocrisy regarding global warming.
The Trash series is an exploration of the ambiguity of society's detritus through the aestheticization of trash bags. By focusing on the industrial patina of mass-manufactured trash bags, I am interested in exploring the perception of trash within our consumerist culture, noting a sublimity when one realizes the collective enormity of our waste system. Strikingly specific in form and texture yet purposefully ambiguous in content, the subject matter of trash bags provides a glimpse into the politics of waste collection and relocation.
