BILL JACOBSON. SONGS OF SENTIENT BEINGS 1995. SILVER GELATIN PRINT EDITION OF 5 111 X 71 CM. COURTESY OF RHODES-MANN GALLERY LONDON
During the eighties and early nineties, he worked primarily as a commercial photographer. But in 1992-93, he emerged on the international scene with 'Interim Portraits,' a series of male portraits composed of ghostly, shadowy figures. ... In a more recent body of acclaimed work, with the rather Whitmanesque title 'Songs of Sentient Beings,' he continues to explore themes of desire and loss as they are bound by memory. In the modern era, photography has replaced oral language as the repository of personal and social memory. Intellectually and instinctually, Jacobson recognizes the unique role photography plays in defining a remembered past. His 'Songs of Sentient Beings' articulates this role through a formal language that revels in evocation and suggestion, rather than factal precision or exactitude. ...The figure appears as if they are continually receding from view, falling into a distance, or fading into distant memory...."