Gregory Eddi Jones

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Mirror

Among the most renowned works of the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio was his visualization of the myth of Narcissus (Narcissus, 1597-1599), a story of a young man so in love with the sight of his own image in a reflecting pool that he rejected the love of all others. Further iterations of this myth have been visualized by Nicolas Poussin (Echo and Narcissus, 1630), Salvador Dali (Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1936-37), and Vik Muniz (Narcissus, after Caravaggio, 2005)

 

 

Now, over 400 years later, smartphones and social media have become mobile reflecting pools we all carry with us. The “selfie,” an image form that has been popularized in our era (and a term made popular by the photo-hosting site Flickr in 2009), is an expression of self-love. As these image-types are cast into the matrix of web-based communications, the expression is magnified as a request that others share in the same measure of love and admiration for the subject-producer.

 

Gregory Eddi Jones is an artist, writer and publisher who lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. He holds a BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology and an MFA from Visual Studies Workshop. Jones’ visual practice examines and re-authors existing image products through the mechanisms of digital and internet-based tools. His concerns focus on analyzing the politics of photographs and other images common to the American cultural lexicon. His first book, Another Twenty-Six Gas Stations,  has gone on to be acquired by over two dozen institutional artists’ book and photobook collections, including libraries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, RISD, George Eastman Museum, and Columbia University.

Since 2012, Jones has been editor and publisher of In the In-Between: Journal of Digital Imaging Artists, a platform highlighting artists working at critical intersections of photography and digital media.