John Jacob began his career as an artist, working with reproductive media including
photography,
Xerography, rubber-stamps,
mail-art, and
artist's books. During the 1980s, he taught classes on color Xerox and the rubber stamp as a print-making medium, at Pratt Manhattan, with mail-artist Ed Plunkett, and founded the Riding Beggar Press ("If wishes were horses...") to promote his and other artists' work.[1] His first sale, of a sheet of artists' stamps for $75, was from an exhibition curated by
Buster Cleveland for the 13th Hour Gallery[2] (NY, 1984).
Jacob's efforts during this period include the irregular mail-art magazine PostHype (1981–85), and the International Portfolio of Artists' Photography (1983–86), an assembling book project conceived to integrate mail-art, book-art, and photography. Increasingly interested in issues related to
censorship, and working with artists in the
Soviet Bloc countries of
Eastern Europe,[3][4][5] the final issue of PostHype (4.1) documented a mail- and phone-art project entitled East/West: Mail Art & Censorship.[6] In 1987, in a self-proclaimed withdrawal from mail-art, Jacob published The Coffee Table Book of Mail Art: The Intimate Letters of J.P. Jacob.[7] With an advertisement declaring "Each copy contains a valuable original artwork by a famous mailartist!!" Jacob gave away original works to recipients of the publication until his collection was exhausted. Jacob continued to exhibit as a photographer through the 1980s, presenting his last one-person exhibition, entitled I'm Trying to See, at the Liget Galeria,
Budapest, in 1988.[8] He occasionally exhibited under the pseudonym Janos Jaczkó after that.[9]
Eastern Europe and USSR
Since the mid-1980s, Jacob has worked with artists in Eastern Europe and the former
USSR, guest-curating exhibitions for institutions in the United States and Europe, including the Liget Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, the List Visual Arts Center at
MIT, the Allen Memorial Art Museum at
Oberlin College, and the Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, Halle (Saale), Germany. From 1986 to 1989, he was supported by grants from the
Soros Foundations, Hungary and USSR. Émigré writer
Jerzy Kosinski contributed an introductory statement to the exhibition Out of Eastern Europe: Private Photography (1987), describing the work presented as "the penultimate art of spiritual confrontation".[10] Jacob's exhibition The Missing Picture: Alternative Contemporary Photography in the Soviet Union (1990) was the first one-person exhibition of
Ukrainian photographer
Boris Mikhailov in the US, accompanied by a parallel exhibition of works by four young Soviet photographers inspired by him.
Recollecting a Culture: Photography and the Evolution of a Socialist Aesthetic in
East Germany (1999), commemorating the 10th anniversary of the fall of the
Berlin Wall, presented the archive of the FotoKino Verlag, publisher of the GDR's professional photography periodical, Fotografie, with works dating from 1929 to 1989.[11] The American photographer and theorist Diane Neumaier, in her history of Soviet
non-conformist photography, credited Jacob's work as foundational to that of later historians such as herself.[12] His essay "After Roskolnikov: Russian Photography Today," edited by Neumaier for the
College Art Association's
Art Journal, critically examined the impact of Western attention, including his own, on the art of post-Perestroika Russia.[13]
Career and research
Jacob has been an arts administrator since the 1990s. He became director of exhibitions for the Photographic Resource Center at
Boston University in 1992, and was named executive director in 1993. Jacob's exhibitions for the PRC include There is No Eye, a retrospective of photographer/musician
John Cohen (2002),[14][15] and Facing Death: Portraits from Cambodia’s Killing Fields (with
Robert E. Seydel , 1997).[16] Other exhibitions Jacob curated for the PRC explored the intersections of photography with dance and music,[17][18][19][20] including the first presentation of photographs by
Lou Reed.[21][22]
In 2003, Jacob was named founding director of the
Inge Morath Foundation by Morath's husband, playwright
Arthur Miller, and daughter, film-maker
Rebecca Miller, and in 2014 facilitated the acquisition of the
Morath archive by the
Beinecke Library at
Yale University and a collection of her master prints by the
Yale University Art Gallery. From 2011 to 2015, he served as Program Director for the
Magnum Foundation's Legacy Program, and as contributing editor for
Esopus (magazine) re-created early Magnum distributions, in a series entitled "Analog Recovery," from the vast Magnum archive. He is presently McEvoy Family Curator for Photography at the
Smithsonian American Art Museum. Among Jacob's exhibitions for SAAM, the Art Newspaper ranked Diane Arbus: A box of ten photographs the first most visited photography exhibition and the ninth most visited art exhibition worldwide for 2019, with 1,677,000 attendees; and it ranked Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen the thirteenth most visited art exhibition, with 1,132,800 attendees.[23][24]
Jacob is married to Noriko Fuku, professor and director of the Art Communication Research Center at the
Kyoto University of Art and Design (semi-retired 2017). Jacob's curatorial projects with Fuku include Patti Smith & Friends: Drawings by Patti Smith, Polaroids by
Oliver Ray, and Photographs by
Michael Stipe (2002), for the Museum Eki,
Kyoto,[25] and Man Ray: Unconcerned But Not Indifferent (2007), for the
PhotoEspaña photography festival, Madrid.[26] The exhibition traveled throughout Europe and to the National Museums of
Japan in
Tokyo and
Osaka.[27]
Jacob's papers and the archive of the Riding Beggar Press are held by the Beinecke Library at Yale University.
Erich Hartmann: New York Stories, 1946–57. Co-curator with Anna Patricia Kahn. Amerika Haus, Munich, Germany, 2012.
Inge Morath: First Color. Magnum Photos Gallery, Paris, France, 2009.
Well Disposed and Trying to See: Inge Morath & Arthur Miller in China. University of Michigan Art Museum, Ann Arbor, 2008.
Man Ray: Unconcerned But Not Indifferent. Co-curator with Noriko Fuku. European Tour: PHotoESPAÑA / Museo ICO, Madrid, Spain, traveled 2007–2009. Japanese Tour: New National Art Centre, Tokyo, traveled 2010–2012.
Chinese Encounters: Words and Photographs by Inge Morath & Arthur Miller. Pingyao International Photography Festival, Pingyao, China, 2005.
The Road to Reno: Photographs by Inge Morath. Chicago Cultural Center, 2005 Traveled 2005–09.
There is No Eye: Photographs by John Cohen. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 2002.
Recollecting a Culture: Photography and the Evolution of East German Socialism. Selections from the FotoKino Archives, 1947–1990. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1999.
Patti Smith & Friends, Drawings by Patti Smith, Polaroids by Oliver Ray, and Photographs by Michael Stipe. Co-curator with Noriko Fuku. Museum Eki, Kyoto, Japan, 1999.
Facing Death: Portraits from Cambodia’s Killing Fields. Co-curator with Robert E. Seydel. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1997.
Chimæra: Aktuelle Photokunst aus Mitteleuropa. Co- curator with T.O. Immisch. Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, Halle, Germany, 1997.
Extended Play: Photographs, Video, Fashion Design, and Works on Paper by Musicians (Willie Alexander, Laurie Anderson, Peter Blegvad, John Cohen, Kevin Coyne, Chris Cutler, Kim Gordon, Mike Gordon, Tony Levin, Eric Meza, Lou Reed, Vernon Reid, Patti Smith, and Sandra Stark). Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1997.
Matthias Leupold: Fahnenappell & Gartenlaube. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1995.
Photographs by
Dennis Hopper: 1961–1967. Co-curator with Robert E. Seydel. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1994.
Return and Exile:
Sylvia Plachy's Photographs from Central Europe and
Susan Rubin Suleiman's Budapest Diary. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1984.
Virginia Beahan & Laura McPhee: No Ordinary Land. Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1982.
The Missing Picture: Boris Michailov. List Visual Arts Center at MIT, Cambridge, Mass., 1990.
The Missing Picture: Alternative Contemporary Photography in the Soviet Union (Vladimir Kupreanov, Ilya Piganov, Maria Serebrjakova, Alexey Shulgin). List Visual Arts Center at MIT, Cambridge, Mass., 1990.
Hidden Story: Samizdat from Hungary and Elsewhere. Co-curator with Tibor Várnagy. Franklin Furnace Archive, New York, 1990.
The Metamorphic Medium: Contemporary Photography from Hungary. Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio, 1989.
Leupold/Leupold. Portland School of Art, Portland, ME, 1988.
The Photo Diary of Anna Bohdziewicz (selections from 1986–89). Photographic Resource Center, Boston, 1987.
Out of Eastern Europe: Private Photography. List Visual Arts Center at MIT, Cambridge, Mass., 1987.
Second International Portfolio of Artists' Photography. Liget Galeria & Galeria 11, Budapest, Hungary, 1986.
First International Portfolio of Artists' Photography. Büro fur Kunstlerische, Trogen, Switzerland, 1983.
Man Ray: Unconcerned But Not Indifferent (first European edition, with Noriko Fuku). Madrid: La Fabrica, 2007.
ISBN8496466809
Inge Morath: The Road to Reno. Göttingen: Steidl Verlag, 2006.
ISBN3865212034
"The Artistic Vision of
Edwin Land", in American Perspectives: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection, Michiko Kasahara, ed. Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2000.
ISBN9784473017635
"End Paper: Redefining the People's Culture in East Germany". Chronicle of Higher Education, January 14, 2000
Recollecting a Culture: Photography and the Evolution of a Socialist Aesthetic in East Germany. Boston: Photographic Resource Center at Boston University, 1998
"Seeing Sound/Hearing Sight:
Christian Marclay". Rundbrief Fotografie, Wolfgang Jaworek ed., 1998 5(3), Stuttgart, Germany
Patti Smith and Friends: Drawings by Patti Smith, Polaroid by Oliver Ray, and Photography by Michael Stipe (with Noriko Fuku). Kyoto: Museum EKI, 1998
"Aesthetic Revolution or Personal Evolution?" in Eternal Network: A Mailart Anthology,
Chuck Welch ed. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1994
"Photoglyphs", in Photoglyphs: Rimma & Valeriy Gerlovin,
Mark Sloan ed. New Orleans Museum of Art, 1993.
ISBN0894940449
The Missing Picture: Alternative Contemporary Photography from the Soviet Union. Cambridge: List Visual Arts Center at MIT, 1991
"Perspectives, Real & Imaginary: Czechoslovakian Photography at FotoFest." Spot, Houston Center for Photography, Winter 1991
Hidden Story: Samizdat from Hungary and Elsewhere (with Tibor Varnagy). New York: Franklin Furnace, 1990
"
Recalling Hajas" in Nightmare Works:
Tibor Hajas (with Steven S. High). Richmond: Anderson Art Gallery at Virginia Commonwealth University, 1990
"Metamorphic Game: The Art of Rimma & Valeriy Gerlovin", in Still Performances, Katy Kline ed. Cambridge: List Visual Arts Center at MIT, 1989
The Metamorphic Medium: New Photography from Hungary. Oberlin: Allen Memorial Art Museum, 1989
"The Legacy of
Witkacy." Spot, Houston Center for Photography, Spring 1989, 4–7
I am Trying to See. Budapest: Liget Gallery, 1988
Thomas Florscheutz (with Steven S. High). Richmond: Anderson Art Gallery at Virginia Commonwealth University, 1988
"The Politics of Experience: Identity and Identification in Documentary Photography". Views NE Journal of Photography, Winter 1987. Boston: Photographic Resource Center at Boston University
Out of Eastern Europe: Private Photography. Cambridge: List Visual Arts Center at MIT, 1987
The Second International Portfolio of Artists' Photography: Photography by Eastern European Artists (with Tibor Várnagy). Budapest: Liget Gallery and New York: Riding Beggar Press, 1986
The First International Portfolio of Artists' Photography. New York: Riding Beggar Press, 1985