Possessing what he describes as “a romantic vision of portraiture, landscape and architecture” Jack creates photographs that read like books. They tell stories, have trajectories, and to a unique degree, texture. Asked to describe his outlook on creativity, he referred us to the following words, extracted from the Bio on his website. We hope you enjoy this look into the world of Jack Montgomery.

(Note: we pick it up as he describes the very beginnings of his romance with the camera.)

”A few days later I persuaded my daughter Molly to sit for a portrait, the first of tens of thousands that would follow. I quickly realized that making images of people was my passion. I was blessed to be surrounded by my daughters, numerous nieces and their friends, many of whom engaged in the process of portraiture. While I did not fully recognize it at the time, I was capturing a very special and transitory time in their lives. As parents, we tended to assume that these years with children intertwined in our lives would last forever, and that the house would always be filled with their presence. But of course it was only a matter of time before their rooms would stand empty; the kitchen filled with shrieking and laughter only in the days surrounding Thanksgiving and Christmas when they all journeyed home to celebrate our family life. I see now that our children and their friends and cousins were racing away from that instant when the shutter clicked -- at a speed that quickly launched them into adulthood. Those youngsters who I initially photographed are now nurses, accountants, farmers, opera singers, political activists….

Since that first summer with my camera I have photographed many people, usually focusing on groups. Firemen in Lower Manhattan after 9/11.  Maine’s Holocaust Survivors. Judges. Fetishists. Old villagers in Tuscany. Haitian sugarcane cutters in the Dominican Republic. Dancers, circus performers and naturists in Russia. Collaborative portraiture with these groups has given access to people and places that would never have been available to me without having my camera in hand. I am now well more than 60 years old—a wonderful age for reflection and looking back—and I realize that my later life has been defined by this obsession, joined with the aesthetic of my early years along the shore. The vast majority of these images were made within a mile of the coastline of Maine and Massachusetts. Many portraits were made on islands. For me, it is the juxtaposition of the nearly perfect, emerging subject against a ground of slow decay and deterioration that illuminates the true nature of aging, and the particular beauty of this stage of life.

The camera is a mirror that I hold up to my models.  “Show me who you are, how you see yourself, and how you would like others to see you” is the implicit instruction. The result is what you see here.”

Contact & Inquiries:

Reach out to Jack for more about his photography and exquisite printing technique, for print purchase inquiries, or just to catch up. You can reach him at:

email: jackmontgomeryphotography@gmail.com
web: jackmontgomeryphotography.com
instagram: @jackmontgomeryphotography
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jackmontgomeryphotography/