With a master’s degree in French Literature from UC Santa Barbara, Jacques Garnier’s circuitous road led him into the photographic world some twenty years ago. Since then he has developed many projects and books, including The Legacy Project, a fifteen-year documentation of the El Toro Marine base that includes the making of the World’s Largest Photograph; Second Chances, a five-year exploration of the disappearing landscapes and man’s relationship to the environment in the Mojave desert; Revival, a visual observation on man’s struggles to live with nature; A Deconstructed Odyssey, an investigation into the polite by eliminating the clutter from building facades; and, most recently, Hymns to the Silence, poetic architectural abstractions meant to still the chaos and foster a new way of seeing.

Garnier explains his work as follows: “Photography, as with most arts, is the exploration of a vision, an interpretation of what is seen or perhaps even unseen. My recent photographs utilize a strong graphic element with liberal use of negative space to eliminate the clutter – the distractions in an effort to see more clearly what is before us. Once the superfluous has been removed, what is left is more open to contemplation – a meditation freed from some of the chaos that surrounds us.”