Jay King

(Chicago, Illinois, 1944 - )

North America, American

Encouraged by his father, an art director who supplied him with cameras and books on art and photography, Jay King taught himself to use a Rolleiflex camera and process film as a teenager. Taking photographs of crowds at Chicago's Riverview Amusement Park as a young man, the people and architecture of his native city were key motifs throughout the artist’s career. King graduated University of Wisconsin in 1967 with a B.A. in history, and an ongoing interest in how culture and the community he documented were evolving. Establishing himself as a studio photographer in Chicago in his native city, King pursued his own work independent of assignments undertaken for advertising agencies. As a street photographer, King was receptive to the influence of Robert Frank’s The Americans and Henri Cartier-Bresson. In the late 1980s, Jay King devoted his attention to the DePaul area of Chicago for the Changing Chicago documentary project. Photographing ordinary activities and commonplace occurrences in the neighborhood, he attempted to capture the variation in lifestyles and the ways in which different kinds of people coexisted. In 1982, the Chicago Center of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College organized an in-depth solo exhibition for the artist. His photographs are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Chicago Historical Society and Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others.

Illinois, United States

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