Iconic photog Jones a ‘window to the world’

Jin-ah Kim

Lou Jones is a living witness to the history of photography.

His hair now shines silver, a testament to more than 30 years spent traveling the world as a corporate, editorial and commercial photographer. Twenty years ago, there were about 10,000 commercial photographers in the U.S., by Jones’ count, and the number is still the same today — despite the fact that nearly as many newcomers jump into the field every year.

“[There’s] a big turnover, a lot of people don’t survive,” he says. “Commercial photography is one of the last havens. You don’t have to be licensed. You can just run down to Best Buy, pick up a cheap little digital camera, walk outside, put a flash card in it, and call yourself a photographer. You can get a result without much effort.

“But above-average, creative, abstract, communicative photograph is just as hard to get as it’s ever been.”

Jones’ ability to produce that sort of evocative work has kept him thriving throughout a career spanning more than three decades. Now, he plans to spend more time working on books and exhibitions, like “Every Color Has a Different Song,” a showing at Pine Manor College's Hess Gallery that ended yesterday.

After having his work shown in some of the country’s largest and highest-profile galleries, Jones welcomed the opportunity to bring this show — which featured images taken around the world in a celebration of diversity — to the smaller space on Pine Manor’s Chestnut Hill campus.

“I like small galleries because they are intimate,” he says.

That affinity for intimacy runs through Jones’ work, and his workspace.

Neighbored by colossal, old-fashioned warehouses and soundtracked by the cacophonous clamor of trucks, Jones’ Roxbury studio welcomes visitors with bright red-and-blue painted doors. Inside, you may see a huge medical machine, shiny musical instruments, or a tiny little diamond. Products frequently come to the studio.

In the center, an island houses thousands of slides from Jones’ many travels and assignments. Behind the white curtains is more storage space, packed with negatives, files, equipment and props. Stacks of magazines and books are spread out on the floor, ringing the sofa set in the middle of the studio.

During a recent interview, Jones picked up nearby one travel magazine and leafed through the pages, saying, “There’s hundreds of thousands of dollars involved in the process.”

For all the complexity of the art, though, that process still relies on one simple thing.

“A lot of money on the line [is] based upon my index finger. Click, click, click, click, and click. My right index finger.”

That finger has taken Jones to the top of the photography world. He is a former president of the New England chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers and one of the charter members of the Advertising Photographers of America. His images have been exhibited in galleries throughout the world, including the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

In 2000, the International Photographic Council presented Jones with its highest award, and his name appeared in the premier edition of Who's Who in Advertising. His advertising and editorial client list sports some serious names: IBM, Nike, National Geographic, Federal Express and Aetna, among others.

Jones does not know how many cameras he has. He doesn’t have a favorite, either.

“Literally, the minute you start to learn how to use the camera, you gotta buy a new one,” he says. “They come and go. Bad to be attached to the camera.”

Jones said that technology that was developed quickly — like the digital camera, which he says he now uses for about 80 percent of his work — can both threaten and enhance the profession.

“In old days, we were always concerned with color of lights. We spent so much time to detect, register what color of lights we used,” he explains. “It used to drive film [photographers] crazy, and you can make terrible errors. With digital, it is not immaterial, but it’s almost immaterial. You can take pictures with almost any camera, and change colors and get all the colors right.”

These days, there’s a lot of work out there, but competition in the commercial photography business is intense — and unfortunately for the people taking the pictures, increased competition means lower prices.

“It’s a bigger pie, but we get smaller, smaller slices,” he said. “It’s our responsibility to ignore those beachheads that we lost … but we are responsible to find new beachheads.”

As far back as Jones can remember, he was always focused on the visual.

“I looked at iconic magazines — Life, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post,” he says, closing his eyes and letting the images in his memory wash over him. “I grew up on those things, and I was primarily interested in the window that it gives to the world.

“Now, I am a window to the world,” he says.

In addition to his commercial work, Jones has also used photography as an avenue for social commentary. Published in 1997, Jones’ first book, “Final Exposure: Portraits from Death Row,” chronicled his six-year odyssey documenting men and women on death rows across America.

Raised in Washington, D.C., Jones graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics. After working as a physicist in Boston for three years, he decided to pursue his childhood dream in his early 30s.

“I started really late … I started to learn how to talk to people, how to get them to talk to me about what they wanted from a picture,” he says.

Since then, Jones says, aggressive promotion has been his style, recalling how he “literally started knocking on doors and making phone calls to show my portfolio.” Through his meetings with art directors and designers, he became more sophisticated and began to understand professional photography. Looking at others’ pictures and reading supplementary text was also helpful, he says.

What wasn’t helpful — at least, not for him — was having a formal education in the field.

“I taught myself. I never took a course or class in photography,” he says.

From wedding to portrait photographs, Jones worked on many little jobs until he met Jean Pierre Regot, an established commercial photographer in Boston, who offered an opportunity to come to his studio.

What he found there was an education far beyond what he’d get in a classroom.

“I worked for him six days a week,” Jones recalls. “Lighting, how to process color films, how to shoot with large format cameras, medium format cameras, and how to use Polaroid to check my camera … He showed [me] what commercial photography is all about.”

What it’s about, Jones says, is something different from newspaper, wedding or artistic photography. He says commercial photographers need to learn a wider range of skills and that they tend to face different problems, which he solved with his knowledge of physics, using his understanding of natural phenomena like heat, light, sound and magnetism to improve the quality of his photographs.

“Science and photography are wonderfully married, and I think there is amazing synergy between two,” he says.

But there’s something more important than science or technique to Jones — his passion lies in the interaction he’s able to have with his audience through his pictures.

“My ultimate achievement is that somebody stops briefly and says, ‘That’s a pretty photograph,’” he says.