Jeremy Simonson

July 2021 - Featured Artist - Jeremy Simonson

Underwater - Summer 2020.

I love to explore different ways of looking at everyday things using natural elements like reflections, light and refraction. I have a passion for landscape and water and showing how colorful, artistic and abstract even the simplest thing can be when you use the light naturally. One of my favorite subjects for this is water. Water is such a beautiful element when interacting with light and movement. Natural reflections of lakes, rivers and streams offer such fascinating frames, showing movement, a representation of light, its counterpart, giving back. Giving away so much but never telling the truth.

With water, I photograph exactly what I see and do not use manipulation to create or layer the image - just a little extra saturation and contrast to bring out the colors.

For several years I have been taking water portraits of my family at our cabin on Strawberry Lake. At the time I was concerned about protecting our water and wanted to do a series of images that explored my relationship to this natural resource. Of course there is no other subject closer to me than family and my love of nature and the memories made at our cabin in Minnesota. My family would become my subject, surrounded by water, staring directly into the camera surrounded by this precious resource. Adding importance to the water and subject. Deepening my relationship with both family and this resource I wanted to protect. But, after the pandemic hit, this project took another turn.

I moved the subject underwater. Water symbolizing my experience. Water can create such fascinating frames that I thought it needed to take center stage and envelop the subject. Elements like reflection, light and refraction painting over the subject.

I don’t know about you, but I felt isolated and underwater. We all experienced this time through our own lens. Water and light became my paintbrush to explore my own personal struggle of this turbulent time. Reaction, Isolation, Hope, Creation, Struggle. This is how I experienced it. The rest I leave to you and your imagination.

Artist Statement

I live, work and play around the transformative nature of water. Growing up in Fargo Moorhead of the Red River Valley, water always demanded attention. It was a lead character in all our lives, both life giving and volatile. Life giving by providing food and water to nourish the land and body, but also volatile with it powerful currents and devastating floods in the spring.

I have always lived near water, currently in Park Rapids, MN with the headwaters of the Mississippi, Fishhook River in my backyard, Big Man Trap Lake while at work and a family cabin on Strawberry Lake near the White Earth Reservation where I observe its beauty first hand throughout the seasons. Observing water in its purest form, its moods, its color, with light sparkling on it, objects floating in it, reflections upon it and people immersed within it. Water is irresistible as it gives an endless array of resource and inspiration. I wish to create interesting, peaceful images to express the feelings of serenity and solace that I find when I am by the water.

Arist Bio

Jeremy is an actor, photographer and artist from the Fargo – Moorhead area where he studied theater arts at MSUM and Purdue University. He discovered his lifelong love of photography at North High School and as a student of the arts at the Creative Art Studio in Fargo, ND where he learned the basics of analog photography, video and a variety of other visual art disciplines. After several years of working as an actor, Jeremy rediscovered his passion for documenting the world while working and living in Chicago, Illinois, exploring street and lifestyle photography.

Armed with a Vivitar point and shoot camera, loaded with Fuji or Kodak 800 film, he proceeded to document his life in Chicago. More recently after moving from Minneapolis to Park Rapids in 2012, he has been exploring people and the landscape through digital photography. Without the distractions of the City, Jeremy has been able to concentrate on a steady practice of technique, discovery and artistic expression in documenting the world around him. A lifelong practice of discovery and learning.

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