Bill Jacobson, Interim Landscape #134-17, 1989. Gelatin silver print, 30 x 30 inches. Courtesy of Robert Klein Gallery.

Robert Klein Gallery is hosting its sixth solo exhibition of works by the New York photographer Bill Jacobson. The sweeping show titled “This Is, this is (1989‒Now)” charts the evolution of Jacobson’s photographs over the last twenty-six years, beginning with his early out-of-focus works and ending with the minimal compositions he continues to explore today.

Bill Jacobson, Untitled #4033, 2001. Archival digital pigment print, 58 x 68 inches. Courtesy of Robert Klein Gallery.

The Jacobson retrospective (the first for the gallery) features twenty-three works spread between both Robert Klein Gallery locations—one on Newbury Street, Boston’s high-end art and shopping mecca, and another on gallery-studded Harrison Avenue, which runs through the heart of the city’s trendy South End neighborhood. According to gallerist Robert Klein, “Bill made a studied evaluation of the space in both locations and created a dialogue spanning 23 years through careful juxtaposing and pairing so that works relate to one another and speak to the viewer in sympathetic ways about the range of his art. There are—minimal structures, figurative studies, cityscapes, landscapes, and constructed still lifes.”

Jacobson began making his signature images of defocused figures and landscapes in 1989. He continued to work within this aesthetic—images so soft that the viewer is tempted to squint as if recalling a distant memory—through the 1990s.“Bill was clearly thinking in an original fashion about how to use a camera,” says Klein. “Rather than focus the camera, he used it to make everything blurry, and he did it in a very effective way; visually there’s a painterly quality and emotionally there’s a sense of how things might make you feel.”  From luminous, almost ethereal figures to dark, shadowy forms, all of Jacobson's unfocused photographs touch on many of the same subjects—time, memory, absence and the insistent, uncontrollable flow of life.

Bill Jacobson, A Series of Human Decisions #2051, 2006. Archival digital pigment print, 30 x 28 inches. Courtesy of Robert Klein Gallery.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, Jacobson switched to color and began photographing urban and rural landscapes. Still employing a soft focus, the images built on Jacobson’s earlier explorations of memory and the uncertainty of the mind’s eye as we move through life. Then, in 2003, everything came into focus, literally. Jacobson began creating crisp images of man-made spaces and objects and, while the figure is noticeably absent, the traces of human existence are not. All of the images—the spare corner of a living room, a messily painted wall, a cluttered attic—hint at the sometimes mundane, sometimes chaotic quality of everyday life.

More recently, Jacobson has continued to use a sharp lens to compose colorful minimal still life photographs by placing rectangles of various sizes in a variety of man-made and natural settings. This series, titled Place (Series), echoes the inherent qualities of conventional landscape and still life traditions, while exploring the contradictions between the built and natural worlds as well as abstraction and reality. These began with the observation ‘there are no right angles in nature’.  Robert Klein Gallery exhibited some of the first images from this series in 2012—the same year that Jacobson was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

“This Is, this is (1989‒Now)” highlights the completion of Places (Series) as well as a concurrent project titled Line in My Eyes. The exhibition also includes images from Jacobson’s earlier bodies of work, including the luminous figures and places from Interim Landscape (1989), the shadowy apparitions from Song of Sentient Beings (1994‒1997), the soft, colorful urban landscape photographs from New Year's Day (2002‒2003), the minimal, nearly abstract landscapes from Some Planes (2007‒2008), and the poignant spaces (that are ironically devoid of humans) from A Series of Human Decisions (2004‒2009).

Bill Jacobson Place (Series) #1034, 2013. Pigment print mounted to archival 4-ply museum board, 28 x 22 inches. Courtesy of Robert Klein Gallery.

Klein says, “Photography is typically based in reality, but Bill works in an aesthetic realm. It’s less about the fact and more about the impression. Or, in his case, the feeling. His works are non-subjective—he’s defining what he wants you to see, but doesn’t insist that you only see it one way. There’s an elegance and a balance to his compositions that make them extremely accessible  . . . we hope that [visitors] see why Bill has been honored with Guggenheim Fellowships and the esteem of his peers in the art world and see that he has committed himself for the past thirty-five years to the pursuit of artistic excellence that distinguishes his work from other artists. We want them to see that he produces work that is uniquely Bill’s.”

“This Is, this is (1989‒Now)” opened with a reception and book signing at Robert Klein Gallery (38 Newbury Street) on Saturday, February 27. A First Friday reception at Robert Klein Gallery @ Ars Libri (500 Harrison Avenue) will be held on Friday, March 4, from 5:30 to 7:30 PM. The joint exhibition, which runs through April 30, coincides with the release of Jacobson’s fifth monograph, Place (Series), published by Radius Books. For more information, please visit www.robertkleingallery.com.