Is the Van Gogh of photography from Northampton?

August 23, 2018

1933

Jack Savage has been catapaulted into the public eye after winning a famous photography prize…

My name is Jack Savage, and I was born 1980 in Northampton, England. I was educated at Nottingham University and carry an MA in American Studies and Film. Within the last couple of years I have gone from a relatively obscure artist, to the winner of the Pangea Prize at Siena International Photography Awards 2017, and recipient of over 50 prestigious international awards.

The highlight of my career thus far has unquestionably been winning the Pangea Prize at Siena International Photo Awards 2017. The winning image ‘The Crow of Lviv’ is pictured below.

Crow

This iconic image has been published in magazines and journals and the web worldwide, and contributed heavily to my current postioning within the world’s fine art photography community.

The genesis of my photographic career began in the culture of the 1990’s. I have been interested in photography and cinema since before I can remember. My teen years were spent movie making via the medium of super 8 cameras and film.

savron

In the intervening years my passion became rare vinyl, collecting and selling the genres of soul, doo-wop, northern, blues, jazz and psychedelica. I then came back to photography 8 years ago with a slightly limited skillset, but desperate to improve.

Unquestionably cinema and film remains my greatest inspiration and influence. I have been a movie buff since childhood, and my work is the process of ‘a creation of cinematic visions – based on my own life and experience. I also have a great love for particular cinematic genres, such as horror and sci-fi, striving to feed my unconscious creativity, to produce something unreal from the imagined future.

Music is also a primary inspiration, and at certain times, became a quite dangerous obsession when I think back to my record collecting years, and my complete immersion within the rare vinyl music and scene.

I am a studio, portrait and landscape photographer, and use a Canon 5D MK 3 and a variety of different lenses, before I subject them to the psychedelica of my mind in Photoshop. Our particular studio is well kitted out with computer screens etc, and a large area to photograph people and objects with a wide range of lights and backgrounds.

I am an Adobe certified expert in Photoshop CC and teach from the studio, so in that respect I am lucky when it comes to being able to articulate and perfect my ideas. I usually produce my work in the midnight hours, and have been known to create all night, and teach photoshop the entire following day. Exhausting, but ultimately rewarding.

My advice to any young photographer is to keep following their own particular vision or dream. My interests in other subjects such as criminolgy, history, film studies and music have enabled me to visually translate these issues within my own work. There also comes a time when commercial or financial needs may compromise one’s artistic vision. For me personally it was beneficial to resist this temptation and stick to my guns. Work and improvement will always bring just rewards in any chosen field.

My future projects involve modelling as Vincent Van Gogh in Amsterdam for one of Europe’s greatest portrait photographers – Ewa Cwikla, as well as teaching a three hour workshop in Grado, Italy at the Photography Masters Conference VIII. I teach worshops in photography and photoshop from a spacious studio in Northampton, England (9 Images Photographic Studios).