French artist Jean Jacques Gaudel

Born in Luzy, France in 1946, the artist got interested in photography early and was given his first camera, a Kodak Brownie, at the age of ten, but it is while in college that he learned darkroom techniques and bought his first camera. Working as an oil prospector in Indonesia and New Guiney in the 70’s he traveled with a dark room in a suitcase, a Pentax, and a Bronica.  In 1973, he and a friend equipped a VW van as a camper/darkroom, shipped it to New York and drove all the way to Brazil.  Shooting and processing both black and white film, he brought back thousands of pictures of Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia, Equador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil.  His main focus was on people and architecture.

He moved to the US in 1974 and settled in Birmingham, Alabama.  He exhibited both color and black and white photographs in Birmingham and in New Orleans, was an artist in residence at the old Lakeview School and taught classes at the University.  Several trips to Mexico led to a series of colorful images of doors and walls.  The focus of most of the black and white work then was found in objects and architecture.

In the early 80’s he taught himself drawing and painting, using his photographs as the source material.  Having by 1984 become a full time painter of photorealistic still-lives, he continued shooting slides during trips to Guatemala, Morocco, Italy, India and Burma.

The purchase of a computer and a digital camera at the end of 1999 revived his original passion for photography.  The amazing power of Photoshop allows much more control than the darkroom and it so fast, that he is now producing limited edition on an Epson 870, both from a Nikon 990 and older slides in color and B&W.  The latest series of larger computer montages, called “binarycollages” is growing almost daily and the 13 x 17 images are printed on the latest Epson 2000P archival printer.