Jake Rowland's photographs appear to show people at nearly the same age and, in their close resemblance to each other, perhaps related. Rowland successfully treads a fine line in these plausible yet uncanny likenesses of a hypothetical 'family,' made by fusing the identities of more than one sitter. In his series The River Rock Variations, Rowland digitally combines portraits of himself and his wife in a potent contemplation of the fusing of identities within a marriage.

-from the catalogue: PEEK, Art+Commerce, 2005.

album de famille. Génétique.
Images par Jake Rowland

presenté au 20 ème festival international de mode et de photographie à Hyéres, 2005.

Explorant les possibilitiés offertes par l'outil informatique, Jake Rowland les applique aussi à la fabrication d'une famile génétiquement imaginaire. Il refait sa famile au sens le plus ropre du terme ; bientôt, nous pourrons choisir nos parents autant nos enfants. Une image mélange le visage de son père, son frére et son fils, l'autre celle de sa gand mère et de sa fille. Le mèlange des caractères est subtil, quasi imperceptible et donne vie à une galerie de potraits hors du réel et dé rangeant. Ses photographies sont un regard narquois porté sur les membres de cette entité ; comment la rendre hybride par amalgames et bricolages de laboratoire.

-Pierre Ponnant, Blast Magazine, 2005.

Artist Statement:

Family Album and The River Rock Variations
Constructed Portraits 2004-06

In November of 2003, I began creating images in which I digitally combined the portraits of several people to form individual fictional character portraits. My subjects for these combined portraits were members of my family. I photographed using a medium format camera, scanned the resulting negatives and created digital composites of the faces of my family members, combining people based on their relationships and resemblances. The resulting prints were fictional portraits indiscernibly forged to represent the unseen ways that influence weaves its way through our lives.

In 2005, I created two more series of these fictional portraits. In one I decided to limit my subjects to two: my wife Allison and myself. I titled this series of combined portraits "The River Rock Variations" after the place where we first met. This work was initially inspired by the ways that one can lose sight of oneself in a marriage. In the second, the on-going series begun in 2003 titled "Family Album", I again limited my subjects to my family, combining mother with daughter, father with son, husband with wife and any number of variations therein.

Ultimately, through my work I am blurring the boundaries of gender, individuality and personal identity in a process of exploration. The images describe real relationships between members of my family, my wife and myself, and the people, friends and strangers, who surround me in my daily life. At the same time these images subvert the basic utility of photography as a recorder of visual reality in the most fundamental way. It is creating a visual clash between fact and fiction, while blurring the boundaries between my art and life, which compels me. My work serves as both a portal to my unconscious as well as an instrument of philosophical inquiry; it is my mode of exploring what it means to be human.

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