Jack Spencer

(American, born 1951)

Jack Spencer is an American photographer best known for his portraiture and manipulated images of eerie, antiquated scenes of the American South. His first book, Native Soil, featured images of horses, trees, and the southern landscape. One image included is Snow Ponies, a manipulated photograph depicting two white horses on a white background, a glazed gelatin silver print that is a typical representation of his work. Spencer’s later projects included more diverse subject matter, such as his documentation of Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations and the struggles of Sudan refugees. Born in 1951 in Kosiusko, MS, the photographer went on to attend Louisiana Tech University, and cites Edward Steichen and Robert Frank as important influences on his work. “Steichen once said that a photograph is a lie from start to finish,” Spencer once observed. “There’s no way to capture all of it, I can only capture a small piece of it, a brief stitch in time.” Today, his works are in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina, among others. He lives and works in Nashville, TN.