As the "short bio" states, the earliest work that I exhibited was my photography; compositions produced in the mid-1970's through the mid-1980's. Since then, while I have continued my photographic research, from analog to digital, it has been a personal and private involvement within my practice, up until 2010. The early compositions and the current photographs are organized within five inter-related portfolios; Walls & Areas, Locations, Formations, and In Plane View, all being part of the project Material Witness. In 2019, I received an Illinois Arts Council IAS Artist Project Grant to assist in the production
of the three-volume boxed set of Material Witness: Photographs : 1978 – 2018.

Statement about the work:

While I am an artist who works within a number of disciplines, my lens-based work is discrete and addresses the world in the most direct way. The formal and material relationships that exist in my photographs are evidence of the accumulated human contact with the built world, contact that has yielded a unique but shared entropic beauty specific to place.

I am in pursuit of subjects that have a timeless clarity and order. With an economy of means, I attempt to produce photographs that possess a formal rigor while being suggestive. I remain skeptical of special effects, and, as a producer of images, I consider my involvement with the camera a meditative act.

My photographs stem from a minimalist aesthetic. They are simultaneously factual records and abstract construction. I attempt to maintain a balance between my conception of a given subject, its image capture, its subsequent process of development, and ultimately its stasis. The reductive compositions that I have found, and arrested, are equally concerned with the problems of photographic vision, and the perception of concrete reality.


John Fraser Photography

Selected Exhibitions:  

2022    Traces, PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, VT. Juror: Jeff Curto (catalog)
           PhotoSpiva 2022, Spiva Center for the Arts, Joplin, MO. Jurors:  Erin & Eric Dodson, Kiosk Gallery, Kansas City, MO 
2021    Composed, PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, VT, Juror: Jeff Curto (catalog)
2020    Portals, Windows, Mirrors, and Doors, Photoplace Gallery, Middlebury, VT. Juror: Elizabeth Avedon (catalog)
           PhotoSpiva 2020 (44th Annual), Spiva Center for the Arts, Joplin, MO, Juror: April Watson, Nelson-Atkins Museum of
           Art
2019    Portfolio Showcase 2 : Abstract Expression, Davis Orton Gallery, Hudson, NY
2018    Intuition & Memory: Recent Mixed Media Assemblage & Photography by John Fraser, Cumberland Gallery, Nashville,
           TN
2016    PhotoMidwest 2016, Overture Center for the Arts, Madison, WI
            Framed Occurrences, Photographs by John Fraser, Photographs by Julie Weber, and Mixed Media by Grant
            Newman, O’Connor Gallery, Dominican University, River Forest, IL    
            PhotoSpiva 2016, Spiva Center for the Arts, Joplin, MO. Juror:  Sean Kernan
2015    Dallas Art Fair, with William Campbell Contemporary Art,  Fort Worth, TX
            33rd Annual Juried Membership Exhibition, Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX
            Juror: Russell Lord, Freeman Family Curator of Photographs, New Orleans Museum of Art
            Framing Photography, Beard & Weil Gallery, Wheaton College Photography
            Biennial. Norton, MA. Juror: Kristin Gresh, Assistant Curator of Photography
            Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
            Photospiva 2015, Spiva Center for the Arts, Joplin, MO, Juror: Shannon Thomas
            Perich, Curator, Photographic History Collection, Smithsonian
2014    Material Witness, Recent Photographs by John Fraser, Toronto Image
            Works Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
            Evidence, Recent Photographs by John Fraser, The Rangefinder Gallery,
            Chicago, IL
2013     The Story of the Creative, See // Exhibition Space, Long Island City,
            NYC
1984     National Photography Invitational (6 person), Evanston Art Center,
            Evanston, IL
1982     Photographs by John Fraser, Kemper National Insurance Company
            Gallery, Long Grove, IL
            Photoregional Exhibition (juror: Graham Nash) J. B. Speed Art
            Museum, Louisville, KY
            Photoimage '82, Illinois Department of Transportation Gallery,
            Springfield, IL
            Images in Photography (6 person), David Adler Cultural Center,
            Libertyville, IL
1980     Photographs by John Fraser, Deerpath Gallery, Lake Forest, IL
            Photographs 1977-1980 by John Fraser, Dunn Library Main Gallery
            Simpson College, Indianola, IA
            Inner Visions (6 person), Warrick Gallery, Evanston, IL
            The Best of the Midwest, The Artist Guild of Chicago, Chicago, IL
1979     All Media Fine Arts Exhibition, The Artist Guild of Chicago, Chicago, IL


Selected Collections:

            Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL
            The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX
            Vanderbilt University Museum of Art, Nashville, TN
            The Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN
            The Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA
            Cleve Carney Collection
            The Grace Museum, Abilene, TX
            Lawrence Colburn & Teresa Bondavalli, St. Charles, IL
            Tim & Trish Preheim, Chicago, IL
            Don & Jane Hunt, Chicago, IL
            Joseph & Sara Cory, Birmingham, AL
            David Hunt & Doug Bella, Wayne, IL
            Brent Carter & Sally Gilbertson, St. Charles, IL
            Joanne Gustafson, Batavia, IL
            Michael & Julie Gustafson, West Chicago, IL
            Sean & Janet Gallagher, Geneva, IL
            Unnur Leifsdottir, Hafnarfjordur, Iceland
            Private Collections

Publications:


   

2015  

MATERIAL WITNESS : JOHN FRASER PHOTOGRAPHS
Volume I : 2010 – 2014

Hardbound with Dust Jacket. 76 pages, with full-color depictions of 30 photographic compositions.

Premium Lustre Paper, 12” x 12”, Short Biography, and with an essay by Ben Dallas.

This book was produced using the Blurb creative publishing service.
This book, and its PDF, are available directly through www.blurb.com.

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/7978561/2b411d6a18158debc212d82c7f0d668797851713

Bookstore, Fine Art Photography.

Depicted above : COMPOSITION IN WHITE (London) 2014

2012   

One of my recent photographs, UNTITLED, PHOENIX 2011, was selected for the book, EXPOSURE, the result of entering the Artists Wanted produced ”Exposure: a competition celebrating the power of the image”, 2011, in NYC.  

1978   

Photographic Commission for the concert poster/announcement of La Boue, the Chicago based, experimental music collaborative duo of David Cloud and Jeffrey Thomas, for their performance at Artemisia Gallery, Chicago.