“It's tempting to believe the magic of photography is the way it allows the photographer to share a moment in time, or to tell a story about a place he visited. Consider instead, that photography's greatest power may be its ability to manifest our dreams on paper...”

Jean Miele is an American artist who uses photography to explore the borderlands between fiction and reality. Miele’s personal interest in perception, spirituality and mysticism have inspired and informed his artwork since the mid-1980s. Although recognized for his digital work, Miele’s photographic background is firmly rooted in the traditional “wet” darkroom. Initially, he used enlargers to create multiple-image black-and-white landscape photographs. Today, he fuses 19th & 20th century ideals with 21st century techniques and materials to create strong, quiet images, intended to remind us that moments of perfection are possible – in photography, and in our lives.

Original prints of Miele’s images have been exhibited internationally and acquired by collectors worldwide. Solo shows include “Classical Landscape Photography and the Digital Darkroom” – which was viewed by more than 100,000 visitors at the Fernbank Museum in Atlanta, Georgia. Miele’s 2007 “Seeing Is Believing” black-and-white landscape exhibition was the first solo show by an American artist at Oslo’s “Fotografiens Hus” gallery. His work has been featured at the prestigious Photo London photography fair, and his photographs have appeared in literally thousands of publications, including recent articles in “Fotografi,” Norway’s premiere photo magazine, and the Houston Center for Photography’s journal: “Spot.”

Based in New York City, Miele’s work encompasses exhibitions, commissioned work for clients, and a busy teaching schedule of workshops, seminars, and one-on-one instructionals that demystify digital technique and empower students to realize their own photographic vision. He lives with his wife Carol and daughter Cally, and he travels often, continually adding images to several ongoing bodies of work.

Also see Exhibitions

 Do you ever wake up in the morning and wonder, “will today be special?”

Sometimes I think I spend most of my life waiting. Waiting for something fantastic to happen: an outrageous coincidence that makes me believe god must exist; a moment in a café or at a party, when everything suddenly seems exactly as it should be; finding a breathtakingly beautiful place, bathed in stunning light, where time seems to stand still, if only for a moment.

I make photographs to remind myself that there is more to this world than meets the eye.

I make photographs to remind myself anything is possible.

I make photographs to remind myself the next magical moment in my life is absolutely worth waiting for - or searching for.

Philosophy: Digital Technology in the Service of the Mind's Eye

I like to think of my photographs as a fusion of classical 19th and 20th century photographic ideals with 21st century technology. Many of my images pay homage to classic photographs and I consider myself, photographically, a direct descendant of a very traditional line. I never would have become a photographer had I not fallen deeply in love with pictures by Carleton Watkins - and Gustave Le Gray - and Duane Michals - and Jerry Uelsmann (and many others). In fact, I have a nice little collection of 19th and 20th century photographs by Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, anonymous "vernacular" photographers, and several as-yet unknown masters.

I made traditional B&W silver prints in a "wet" darkroom for many, many years, and have always held myself to a very high standard of photographic craft. These days, I'm making the most beautiful prints of my life - mostly inkjet, although sometimes LightJet - and I'm thinking about making some platinum prints from digital negatives. I work primarily from digital capture, but I'm also in the process of scanning and reworking film from my archives. I use a Mac and Adobe Photoshop, and make every exhibition print myself. I enjoy doing all of the digital "darkroom" work personally because, for me, especially with black-and-white, interpreting and transforming the image is just as important a part of the process as taking the picture in the first place.

A Few Words About Digital Prints

Whether digital prints are worthy photographic objets d'art is an interesting question - that's often obfuscated by a false dichotomy: "traditional or digital?" That's not the question. Digital prints (both ink-on-paper and on light-sensitive materials) are merely the latest in a long line of photographic printing processes. I found a lovely treatise by William Leyshon, who details no less than eighty-one different photographic printing processes! Daguerrotype, Talbotype, cyanotype, tintype, albumen, Ceroleine, Woodburytype, Ambrotype, platinum, gum-bichromate... these are just the most well-known. Each successive process did not obliterate the previous, though. In fact, many of these older (and very beautiful) processes, are undergoing a contemporary renaissance. The real question is whether a photographer is making beautiful prints, and whether her work moves you. Generally, arguments that favor "traditional" printing over digital assume that wet-darkroom silver prints require greater mastery, and that there's no craft involved with "digital." Ironically, this thinking closely parallels the sentiments of many 19th (and 20th) century painters and art critics who, concerned about the implications of photomechanical reproduction, argued against the acceptance of photography itself as an art form.

Ever wonder if daguerrotypists thought those albumen "upstarts" had things way too easy? I know they both would have looked down their noses at photographers who bought their paper pre-coated from a store.  ;  )

For more about traditional processes, check out:

Bostick & Sullivan
and
The Center for Alternative Photography