In the Studio with
J Henry Fair
February 5th, 2025
Aerial photographer and environmentalist, J Henry Fair virtually sat down with us to discuss his what he seeks to communicate through his work, how he measures success as a professional photographer and what inspires his work. Fair confronts issues of pollution,
patriotism, and environmental destruction through his art by depicting environmental devastation across the globe. Best known for his series Industrial Scars: The Hidden Costs of Consumption (2006 -), Fair portrays images of environmental destruction wrought by human intervention such as fracking, coal, steel, and aluminum mining, farming, and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. By capturing these images from an aerial perspective, Fair walks the line between aesthetic documentary photography and a more painterly abstraction of his subjects where vivid color supersedes the content of the image. While Fair’s primary objective is to create aesthetic images, his secondary goal is to raise people’s awareness of the correlations between consumerism, patriotism, and environmental ruin.
CBCA: What excites you to make your work? Why do you make art?
JHF: A photograph is always about something. I visualize an image and then go find it and make it. Sometimes this can entail hours of boredom interrupted by moments of high intensity. And usually in what I do there are no second chances. I make art, because I want to communicate something.
CBCA: How do you begin a work? Do you research? If so, how?
JHF: Most of my works begin when I hear about something I want to photograph. Often this happens when reading a news article. Then comes tremendous research to understand the process that I want to photograph and identify what element therein might make a good image.
CBCA: What thoughts go through your mind when you create?
JHF: Much of my most compelling images are taken from a small plane. During these shoots, the time becomes intensely compressed: One has a fraction of a second to get the right composition, and the technical aspects are so many and complex, that usually I am laser-focused on my equipment and creating the composition. It’s a good place to be, with nothing else in the brain.
CBCA: What artist(s) or movement(s) have influenced your work?
JHF: I am increasingly interested in creating narratives for viewers. As such, the new-age Italian cinema influences me a great deal with their exploration of the building of a story. I can watch “The Conformist” and “8 1/2” again and again. I love Giacometti, and the Russian Constructivists. And of course, music. Mahler, Bach, Beethoven, Radio Head, Frank Zappa
CBCA: What informs your work? What themes do you pursue?
JHF: People fascinate me, and all of my works are ultimately about them. Even abstracts of toxic waste are about people: what are we ignoring, and why don’t we care enough to look?
CBCA: What are you trying to communicate with your art?
JHF: Always a photo should be compelling. If I am making a portrait, I want to see the essence of that person. If I am making an environmental landscape, I want that compelling image to prompt a viewer to dig deeper and understand what she is seeing. To that end, I often include clues in the image which can visually understand the abstraction.
CBCA: Is there a reason you use different mediums for different pieces?
JHF: Photography is very technical, one must know what equipment is best suited for the purpose at hand. And final presentations all dictate specific formats, from museum exhibits to multimedia presentations. That said, the amazing quality and versatility of contemporary digital cameras is increasingly making the large equipment arsenal unnecessary.
CBCA: How has your work progressed? How has your practice changed over time?
JHF: I am a firm believer in the importance of craft in art. And I believe my art and my craft have improved. My understanding of the nuances of light and color have evolved, and the importance of narrative. At the same time, what has been demanded of me has changed, and the changing technology has drastically altered the scale of what we can do.
CBCA: As an artist, how do you define success?
JHF: With photography, there are two major moments of success. The most important for me is that feeling when I press the shutter at just that perfect moment, and my brain just knows and says “oh yes”. But of course it is a latent image, so one does not get confirmation until much later, in the edit process. I never look at the image while I am working. You must envision it and capture it and know you have it. This is the craft. The other is in the making of the final presentation (usually a print) in which one can say, “wow, that really is a beautiful image.”
CBCA: Describe a real-life situation that inspired you.
JHF: Usually, I am inspired by a piece of art that knocks me over or a real life situation that gives me insight I can use to make a picture later. One specific instance was going to Le Petit Palais in Paris, to which I had not been, and coming across “Grimaces and Misery by Fernand Pelez”. I was speechless for a half hour.
J Henry Fair
J Henry Fair
J Henry Fair
J Henry Fair
J Henry Fair
J Henry Fair
