Emerging Talent: Ashley Jordan Gordon
How would you define your style?
From a very youngage I have been entranced with communicating both the story and feel of amoment… The narrative and the atmosphere of what I was witnessing and/orexperiencing.
Without directly intending to, I have instinctively developed into a dynamic colorist… whatever spectrum of color my work lands on, the vibrancy of the color has become a common and often integral piece of the communicative nature impelling me, and compelling the viewer in, in my photos. Educated as a documentary photographer in college, my training has paired well with my proclivity and adoration of working with natural and ambient light. For me, a defining & clarifying moment - and honor - in understanding my style further was reading the words of friend and collaborator, The Gentle Author, author of London’s brilliant ‘Spitafield’s Life,’ when he wrote of my work, “You might think that it is in the nature of photography to reveal the present moment. It should be easy to take a picture and say, “This is how we look now,” yet one of the most elusive subjects to reveal in photography is the distinct reality of the present day… It is a strange experience looking at Ashley’s work because the clarity of her vision makes me I feel I am looking through the lens of time, yet being shown a world that still exists outside my own front door.”
How did you start shooting?
I delved into art of all kinds at a very young age, but I was clearly leaning into photography enough by my 10th birthday that a photographer family friend gave me a book of French photographer André Gamet’s work, telling me that it would expand my world wide open, and inscribed that he was very happy I chose photography as my future orientation in life!! He was right.. I tore through every photography class I could get my hands on in high school and college. Also very passionate about writing (i.e. telling stories) and working in the environmental activism field, I spent a year after college juggling jobs working at an environmental non-profit, at San Francisco gallery SF Camerawork, and assisting in a photography studio. A collective craving to tell stories, to find more ways to make a difference, and to let the feelings, atmosphere and art piling up inside me out, I realized my way of doing so would be as it always was.. Through the visual storytelling of photography. Mere weeks later found me on a Skype call with two dear friends who were living in London, a city I’d always wanted to move to, and them insisting I move there instead of traveling through Asia alone with my camera as I’d planned. I said yes on the spot, deciding I’d start my freelance career in London. Two months later I did just that, and seven months later I was working successfully in London and had a piece being exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery.
At every turn in my life, through lots of travels and some big moves, following my gut instinct and heart for what I should do with my work has, without fail, always served me better than any logical or ‘normal’ decision I have tried to make instead regarding my career path. I lead and shoot with my gut, where the passion can come through consistently, and I believe that is what has sustained and pushed me forward and allowed for my work to develop, for everything to grow.
Who has inspired your style?
Despite working in color as frequently as I do, with an immense
affinity for portraiture and travel photography, my first great loves in
photography were and are the French and American black and white photographers
of the early/mid-20th Century… from Walker Evans, Edward Weston, the FSA
photographers, the f/64 Group, Diane Arbus, W. Eugene Smith, Eugene Atget,
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lange, Arbus, Andre Kertesz, Penn, Mapplethorpe, Steichen,
Stieglitz… Paul Strand! The list trails on and on…
From that first love forward, there are many I could list, but some stand outs
at present are Gilles Bensimon, the pages of National Geographic, Anne Menke,
Lauren Dukoff, Jason Florio, Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s portraits, and without
fail, Richard Misrach, who was the first photographer I encountered, after
hearing him speak when I was 16, that made me realize a photographer could
simultaneously be a compelling fine art photographer and forceful environmental
activist all at once. I am also hugely moved and influenced by light based
multimedia artists like the amazing Olafur Eliasson, whose work from his early
years to present I find hugely compelling and inspiring.
Recent Work to Note:
Between my daily work which oscillates between the fields of portraiture, lifestyle, travel, and music, I have a few projects currently underway that I am extremely excited by, and which have in turn been a galvanizing wellspring pushing me in the rest of my work as well. One of which being that I am a proud member of The Arctic Circle 2015 Summer Expedition. This June, while living & working aboard a Barquentine Tall Ship, I will be embarking on a month long expedition exploring with a select group of international artists & scientists in the Arctic Circle & Svalbard, sailing just 10 degrees latitude south of the North Pole. My project research has included a Visiting Readership at Oxford University, with research stints in their inexorably engaging libraries. I am concerned with how a space like the Arctic has become a ‘living spatial relic’, and how its existence as such, paired with its perception throughout time functioning only between a duality of extremes, has impacted the space itself as well as the rest of the world.
To view more of Ashley’s work, check out her site , blog, and Instagram