ARTIST STATEMENT
For the past few years I have been photographing the continent of Africa country by country. We are using the “universal language” of photography to illustrate contemporary Africa. Western media has for hundreds of years intentionally only told the story of poverty, pestilence & conict with negative images of children with ies on their faces, AK47s, sickness & disease. Whereas the culture, traditions & economies have leapfrogged over much of the world & there is so much progress in agriculture, technology, health care & education that never gets shown in our textbooks, newspapers or social media.
By making long term documentation of all aspects of all 54 countries, the mission of my photography is to change that narrative. It is an overwhelmingly ambitious undertaking. But from the very beginning it was intended to grow & become more ambitious, experienced & better informed as we progress. By design I seek local experts & proactive gures to inform us about the unique qualities, talents & features of each country.
After delving into the culture, tradition, resources & talents of each country, my studio disseminates the pictures through educational curriculums, articles, lectures & gallery exhibits to a broader audience. Social media has been a major source to show each trip & to allow a larger audience to gain access to the amazing places we have been.
In addition to my commercial photography my studio has been doing the research & raising monies to continue revealing the largely ignored parts of Africa. Each trip opens new doors & makes the project more complicated but there is so much material that it may take a lifetime.
Lou Jones has maintained a commercial photography studio in Boston for many years. Much of the work is for advertising agencies, design studios & directly for Fortune 500 corporations. A large portion of the commissioned work is for publications & magazines, such as Time/Life, Sports Illustrated, National Geographic & Paris Match in 63 foreign countries & 48 or the fty USA states. Jones has covered thirteen Winter & Summer Olympic Games.
Lou Jones has served on the boards of directors for Photographic Resource Center & the American Society of Media Photographers. He has taught photography at several colleges & universities & continues to lecture about photojournalism & ne art photography.
When not traveling Jones exhibits at schools, museums & galleries around the world: Smithsonian Institution, deCordova Museum, Grin Museum of Photography, Cape Cod Museum of Art, Texas Tech University, Harvard University as well as libraries & institutions.
For his entire career, Jones has undertaken many personal long term projects, such as, Japan, tall ships, jazz, pregnancy & six years photographing men/women on fourteen death rows in the USA which resulted in two books & many exhibitions.
For the past few years, Lou Jones has been documenting all 54 countries in contemporary Africa country by country. We are trying to change the narrative from the stereotypical negative topics of poverty. pestilence & conict. http://www.panAFRICAproject.org We just returned from number sixteen & ve weeks in Mozambique. This series is a sampling of the work we have done to date.
