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After
earning a newspaper journalism degree from Washington & Lee
University in 1976, I learned from over four years as a photo-technician
in a custom photolab that photography would be my first love. I
left the lab and went out full-time behind the camera in the fall
of 1980. I started out doing a good bit of magazine work and still
enjoy work in this field on occasion. I now divide my time mostly
between commercial photography (including architectural) and books
for both children and adults, which combine my writing and photography
skills. Also, I decided early on to organize my ever-growing image
library and now do an active stock photography business, with a
specialty in my home community of Shreveport and home state of Louisiana.
My
passion for and active exploration of the medium of photography
has taken me into almost every format, including digital, pin-hole
and stereo 3D. I have been teaching photography courses at Centenary
College since 1981.
PORTRAIT 2000 -- JANUARY 8, 2000
-- EXPO HALL
One
of my proudest photographic achievements was the unveiling of PORTRAIT
2000 in January 2000. This massive public art project, three years
in the making, gathered and presented portraits of 2,000 people
from all walks of life in Shreveport and Bossier City in a collective
portrait of a community. It was for the community when first exhibited
to help us understand who we were then and is also for future generations
who will wonder whose those folks were back at the turn of the millennium.
The project has been dismantled with the negatives, records and
digital files donated to the Archives at LSU-Shreveport. It was
never to be a book, but the project does still exist in the form
of an interactive CD-ROM, a J. Bowen Creative Services production.
Copies are available.
At
the culmination of Portrait 2000, I came to a fork in my professional
path: pull back and focus more on books and travel/location photography
or expand into more commercial areas. I decided to expand into the
wonderful world of commercial studio photography. (This does NOT
mean I have left books, editorial and location work behind!) After
having renovated the most perfect building in the most perfect location
in town, I am now in a place -- both figuratively and literally
-- to forge ahead into the second half of my career.
I
am thrilled with the possibilities the future holds.
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