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Tucked away in Bucks County is a place where make believe becomes real. From her New Hope studio, fine art photographer Jennifer Gershon transports us to a world of beauty and imagination. She has specialized in fine art portraiture and still life light painting for the past five years. What some artists are able to do with a brush, she is able to achieve with her camera. At first glance you might think her photographs actually are paintings. There’s a luminosity about them, a dramatic play of light, colors and textures reminiscent of the old masters.
“If I could paint, I would!” she said. “I have the utmost respect for painters. It’s less messy to make art with a camera.”
Her background in art history and interest in classical painting have provided a wealth of inspiration for her compositions. Artists such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jacques-Louis David, Ingres and the Pre-Raphaelites have all influenced her work.
In an interview from a 2023 issue of Whimsical Magazine, Jennifer said, “Light, color and expression are the main subject matters to me, so I like to establish light patterns that add a combination of punch and softness.” While she tries to achieve a painterly quality right out of the camera, she often takes 200-300 pictures from which she edits and uses only two to six of them.
In composing her photos, she goes with the energy of the person she’s photographing. “I collect all sorts of objects, clothing and costumes and find it inspiring to watch how the subject reacts to something. You just sort of get a vibe and then it’s pure improvisation. From there, we just make up stories and scenarios and see what happens. I’m not after the perfect pose.”
She spends time with her subjects to get a read on them and storytelling plays an important role in creating a portrait. “A subject may offer ideas,” she said, “but if they remain open to possibilities and to exploration, this is when the unexpected and often most gratifying images are realized.”
She doesn’t usually hire models for her shoots, but relies on friends or people she’s connected with through social media. Friends will often lend their kids and grandkids to be models. Above all, she enjoys the personal relationships that are forged between her and her subjects. “It’s very difficult to enjoy the process when there isn’t some personal connection, even if it’s just brief,” she said.
Contrary to what you’d think, Jennifer does little to prepare for her shoots. Aside from making sure the batteries are charged, she improvises as she goes along. “I literally put the sets together as the models are getting ready,” she said. The room where she works is small, but it doesn’t hamper her ability to stage spectacular sets.
Her favorite camera is her Nikon D850 and her lens of choice is a 70-200. “I shoot with a very narrow aperture to capture details,” she said.
In Jennifer’s world you can be anything—a king or queen, historical figure or movie star. It is, in a sense, a land of make believe for grownups. “The opportunity to play is something that I think adults forget to do,” she said. “My hope is that the experience of creating the photo is as enjoyable as seeing the actual photo itself.”
There’s an entire room devoted to vintage clothing, costumes, shoes and accessories that subjects can choose from. The workmanship in some of the clothes, especially those from the Victorian era, is exquisite. She holds up the sleeve of one dress admiring the fine lace and comments on the numerous buttons. “Imagine how long it must have taken to button all these!” she said. Everywhere you look there are racks of clothing and hats of all kinds, even a green silk leprechaun hat. “No one yet has worn the leprechaun costume,” she said, somewhat disappointedly.
Her photo sessions can be empowering for people, enabling her to reveal something about them that may not be visible in everyday life. She loves that moment when the first captured images of her subjects are revealed to them on the computer screen, often surpassing their expectations.
Besides people wanting portraits of themselves or their pets, Jennifer’s photo shoots have special appeal to clothing collectors, makeup artists, actors and artists. Dot Bunn, an artist who lives and paints in Plumstead Township said, “I have worked with Jennifer to develop digital images that capture the beauty of a still life or portrait that I am hoping to paint. There is something rare and beautiful in her work which elevates my creativity when using those digital images as reference for my paintings.”
Jennifer is a big nostalgia buff and her whole house is a museum of sorts. One room is devoted to her collection of old cameras dating as far back as the 1890’s. Artfully arranged, they share the room with her TV collection from the 1950’s.
Her fascination with cameras dates back to when she was a child. Her father, who was a pathologist, took pictures of microscopic specimens with his Olympus camera. One day Jennifer picked up his camera and was hooked.
He also had a library of medical books which fostered an interest in science. In addition, her grandfather was a pharmacist in Kansas City, MO where she remembers being intrigued by all the medical curiosities in the shop.
Her mother was an artist who studied fashion illustration and graphics at Parsons School of Design in New York City, NY. She painted abstract works and one of her paintings of a cityscape is hanging in Jennifer’s home.
Jennifer sketched extensively during her high school years and kept several sketchbooks which, regrettably, were lost during a family move.
Her formal education in photography consisted of middle school and high school darkroom classes using her father’s film camera, which, she said, “I’m not sure I ever gave back to him!”
She was born in Cherry Hill, NJ and grew up in Haverford, a suburb outside of Philadelphia. Jennifer attended Connecticut College and received a bachelor’s degree in art history in 1990. Three years later she received her master of arts in teaching degree from the same school and was certified to teach Spanish grades 7-12. She did some temporary teaching and subbing for a year or two, but became frustrated with too much repetition in the daily schedule and discipline issues. “It was difficult to earn beyond a certain ceiling and challenging to have to always be “on,” she added.
It wasn’t until her 40’s that she re-educated herself on photography, eager to learn all she could about lighting, using the strobe and umbrella. During this period she mostly photographed abandoned buildings and places she had traveled to.
Fifteen at the time, she traveled to the Netherlands to study one-on-one with renowned fine art photographer Gemmy Would-Binnendijk. For two days she and her son, Ehren attended the workshop. Nineteen at the time, Ehren served as the reluctant model. “He was dressed in tights and ruffled collars and was not happy,” Jennifer said.
From Gemmy she learned much about lighting, including something called dodging and burning, a technique used during the printing process to manipulate the exposure of select areas on a photographic print.
Jennifer also studied light painting techniques with Lancaster, PA based teacher Harold Ross. She uses light painting to create her still life compositions.
On his website the process is described: “Light painting requires working in a completely dark studio, opening the camera for an extended period of time, and “painting” the light onto the subject. This reveals greater shape, texture and color.” Over the course of one weekend Harold taught her how to base light an image using multiple flashlights and LED lights.
She credits both of these instructors with helping her hone her craft. “They set the bar for me,” she said, They’re the best of the best and showed me what can be achieved.”
Additionally, she learned from Natalia Taffarel, a photo retoucher from Argentina. During Covid 19 lockdowns, she studied color schemes and composition with her online.
When she’s not behind the camera, Jennifer works in the legal field as a contract manager for Paramount Global in New York City. She’s been there for the past 26 years, but portrait photography is her creative outlet or fun “side hustle” as she calls it.
Her work has been exhibited in Bucks County, Philadelphia and New York and she’s a member of the Professional Photographers Association of Pennsylvania (PPA). This year she won an award for Best Body of Work at the 31st Annual Phillips’ Mill Photographic Exhibition for her photos “Blue Monday,” “Bristol Derby” and “Reidemeister’s Dilemma.”
“Blue Monday” features the surreal photo of a woman dressed as a mermaid. Surrounded by iridescent bubbles, she is simultaneously vacuuming the floor and holding a vintage phone receiver. Shades of aqua predominate and it’s unclear whether she’s underwater or indoors.
“It all started with the aqua color of the old vacuum cleaner,” Jennifer said. “From there we just improvised.”
Her advice to other photographers is to experiment and play. As a guest on the Modern Romantic Podcast, she said, “Don’t analyze it. You have plenty of opportunities to do it another way. Make use of what you have. When you have to make it work with whatever you have on hand, you have fewer decisions to make and your creativity will stretch further.”
Jennifer also offers individual and smaller group workshops at her home on request and may offer larger group workshops in the future. She has also presented at PPA in Carlisle, PA and has done a few presentations/QA sessions online for photo clubs.
Looking ahead she’d like to return to doing more lighted still life and location shoots. Her plans also include possibly photographing more artists in their studios, portraits of local figures and more in depth personal portraits exploring identity. “I have thought about still life commissions memorializing significant objects of loved ones,” she added.
She enjoys living in Bucks County with her two sons, Ehren and Emmet and has recently adopted a young rescue dog. But the stars of the family are her phenomenal felines. Photographer William Wegman may have his Weimaraners, but they have nothing over Jennifer’s four Devon Rex cats. Intelligent, mischievous and elegant, they appear in many of her photos. With their wavy coats and enormous eyes, they make great subjects who are willing, well, most of the time.
Jennifer’s photographs can be viewed on her website, jenngershon.myportfolio.com and also on facebook.com/vizzuals and Instagram@vizzuals. She can be reached by email at jenngershon@comcast.net
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Michele Malinchak is a freelance writer who has a degree in art and enjoys oil painting.