- Theater. The staging of a play; the scenery and properties of a stage production; the stage setting. 1831
- The settings, surroundings, or background of any event or action. 1871
“These images are stubborn. I can just barely not make out what they are talking about; talking to each other, they conspire in low voices.The stages, the objects, don’t quite enunciate. They portend, but never explain. Quotidian but Delphic, they just pretend to be important, to be spaces worthy of being photographed, worthy of memorialization, even of immortality. Apprentice icons, encoded but hollowed shells. Nothing and nowhere special. Nothing going on here, nothing to see, move along please. Pay no attention to the background hum.Referring to the subjects of his paintings, Jozef Czapski said “Each time it is almost nothing. But that ‘almost nothing’ signifies everything.’
I wish I had thought of that.”
Jan Rosenbaum has been involved in photographic imaging for more than 30 years. Initially trained as an artist in photography and printmaking, he began teaching at universities and exhibiting widely in the 1970’s. While his personal photography centered for many years on a deep investigation of the landscape as a genre for the exploration of the differences between photographic seeing and audience expectations, he maintained an active career as a photojournalist.
After moving to Maine in 1997, he joined the MFA Program at Rockport College/Maine Media College as faculty and MFA Committee Chair. Shortly after he began teaching in the AA and PC programs, as well as summer workshops.
Jan has self-published a book of his personal images, Motel Pools of Lake George: Last Day of Summer, First Day of Fall, 2009. Jan holds a B.F.A. from Wayne State University, an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art, both in photography, an M.S. in Imaging and Photographic Science from Rochester Institute of Technology, and an M.S. in Management of Technology from Polytechnic University of New York. His work is in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Cranbrook Museum, The New Museum, the Evanston Art Galley, the Wayne State University Art History Library, and in private collections. Current work can be seen on his web site, janrosenbaum.com.
Rosenbaum’s recent work will be included in SEVEN PHOTOGRAPHERS – a group show opening on September 6, 2019.
