Your photography is a record of your living,
for anyone who really sees. - Paul Strand


JEREMY TAYLOR [FORTY YEARS IN PHOTOGRAPHY]

by Karen Close
http://www.keylight.org/taylor.htm

Jeremy Taylor's outstanding abilities in black and white photography have long been respected and 
sought after by the elite of Canadian contemporary photographers and photo-based artists. In the guild 
tradition, Taylor has devoted his technique and love of the medium to the craft, skillfully printing his 
colleagues' negatives. His expertise as a master printer receives international recognition. Now, on the 
fortieth anniversary of Taylor's introduction to photography it is time to look at his personal explorations as 
an artist. Working quietly on the sidelines, Jeremy has produced a body of work that makes him the 
undiscovered jewel of Canadian photography. 1. His images are the result of a life long quest for integrity, 
structure and meaning. His vision leads him to portray the underlying forms and interrelations of life. A 
Taylor photograph is an invitation for communion with the image, oneself and the universe.

Past visitors to Keylight will recall last June's feature on Reva Brooks. Taylor produced the modern 
edition prints of the images for her June '98 Toronto exhibit at the Stephen Bulger Gallery. This completed 
a circle of events begun thirty-nine years earlier in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The serendipitous 
events are compelling. More significantly, they indicate the sense of interconnection Jeremy's works 
probe.

Born March 11, 1938 to artist parents his sensitivity was always apparent. At the age of three he was an 
eager model for his father, respected Canadian artist Frederick Taylor. When he looks into the eyes of 
these childhood portraits he can remember the intensity he felt sitting perfectly still, anxious to please his 
exacting father. Today, Jeremy credits his ability for deep meditation to this early training. His teen years 
set him adrift. Always sensitive, the family break up when he was twelve augmented his alienation. At 
fifteen he was diagnosed as a manic-depressive. Left to his own devices he sought repair in the lawless 
chaos of Montreal's jazz clubs. To the aspiring young drummer, with the beat of Gene Krupa in his heart, 
jazz seemed the answer. It was creative, all accepting, and exciting. At The Black Bottom, a major 
Montreal jazz club in the late Î50s and Î60s, it was possible the communist dreams he had heard his 
parents preach could be a reality; yet the actuality was a subculture, subversive and soul destroying, for 
his young sensibilities. Unable to complete high school and sensing a dead end to his talents in the jazz 
world, he took up the invitation from his father to come to San Miguel for a visit. In an attempt to encourage 
his son in new directions his father sent him the calendar of art courses offered at The Instituto Allende. 
Near the end of the list Jeremy found photography. He had seen some intriguing photographs on the 
back of jazz albums but that was the limit of his previous experience. Today he still ponders the 
casualness with which he entered his life's preoccupation.

In May 1959, shortly after his arrival in San Miguel, he was introduced to his father's friends the Brooks; 
he and Reva began life changing discussions about his aspirations to study photography. Jeremy 
purchased Reva's old Rolleiflex and she mentored him in his beginning efforts. His aptitude was 
immediately recognized and The Instituto granted him a scholarship to further his study. He remained in 
San Miguel for the rest of the year. The Mexican series is from these beginning months; ironically the 
negatives were never made into fine art prints until he was reminded of them and his former mentor in 
the fall of '97 when asked to make prints for Reva Brooks Toronto exhibit.

We see Jeremy's keen eye and compassionate presence in these earliest works from the days of his 
introduction to photography in Mexico. Unassuming and self effacing he was an unobtrusive presence, 
able to move in close recording the drama of human reality. In the young MexicanBoy, head in hands the 
intense communion between the photographer and his subject envelopes the viewer with both a physical 
and emotional impact: how we all struggle to understand each other and our circumstances. That Taylor 
moves so unnoticed among Mexico's citizens strengthens the candidness of his images. We all share a 
common emotional centre as witnessed in Family Group In Doorway. Jeremy, at twenty-one, recognized 
this truth and preserved it for our reflection. This innate intuitive perception has continued to be his gift as 
an artist
.
3. When he returned to his native Montreal, in the fall of 59, Jeremy looked at the city with fresh vision. 
His upbringing posed many questions. His paternal grand parents enjoyed an upper middle class 
lifestyle and encouraged their sons to achieve in like manner. Jeremy's father was a graduate architect; 
his older brother was Canadian industrialist E. P. Taylor. However, Fred Taylor never practiced 
architecture; instead he and his new wife (a first cousin) went to England to study art. Upon their return to 
Canada they resolved to get away from their parents middle class, conservative lifestyle and chose to 
settle in Montreal, at the time a centre of artistic and leftist ferment. Jeremy felt reactive to the 
contradictions and alienation of his formative years. In 1960 the young adult constructed his idealism 
through the camera lens.

My primary influence comes from my parent's idealism, middle class upbringing and freedom from 
violence or financial struggle. I was imbued with their communist principles of equality and sharing of 
Resources, and, of course, their appreciation and practice of classic artistic values.

Modern art burst upon the twentieth century with a flourish of utopian dreams. One of the movements 
with particularly idealistic goals was Russian Constructivism. It has been described as the "Socialism of 
Vision"4. "Before Stalin there was one moment in Russia when advanced art served the power of the Left 
not only freely but in the highest spirit of optimism and with brilliant, if short-lived, results. It happened 
between 1917 and 1925, when the promise of communism was new and the newness of art fused with 
it." 5." They were imagining a perfect state of explicitness, in which things and the relationships between 
them were made clear to human sight as theologians supposed they were to God, a millennium of 
consciousness, which art had the enormous responsibility of bringing about." 6 The aesthetic leaders of 
the October Revolution created an art of expectation for a future of equality and organized energy in which 
the arts would act as a transformer. 7. Mayakovsky-Rodchenko believed "the best medium for achieving 
this aim was, of course, photography photography was instant socialism: it was cheap, real, and its 
images could be indefinitely repeated, copied, and distributed. Photography, Rodchenko argued, would 
supply the real monuments of the future." 8.

Did the young Jeremy absorb the essence of these dreams as he listened to his parents and their 
friends animated conversations about art and politics? As one examines his body of work the parallels 
with constructivism and its vision of arts ability to illuminate social problems seems key to a full 
appreciation of Taylor's meaning.

Roaming the streets of Montreal, with his 8x10 view camera, Taylor discovered the beauty of a big city as 
a work of art in itself, with the promise of greater freedom and an understanding for his sensibilities. 
Each artist's vision is influenced by the history of art that precedes. In Jeremy's architectural images from 
the Montreal Walls series there is strong affinity with Piet Mondrian. "One cannot read Mondrian's writings 
without becoming aware of his desire to integrate in a utopian spirit his theory of art with the whole of 
social life and the promise of a more general emancipation through an advancing modernity." 9. When 
one perceives the visual link with Mondrian in Taylor's works, it is a short leap to accept the conceptual 
link and applaud the message as we move out of this millennium. Within the carefully constructed 
parameters of his rectangular canvases Mondrian revealed how the classical ideal of unity could be 
achieved in asymmetric and open relationships. The Impressionists and Cubists had distinguished 
looking at asymmetry and openness of the whole, while witnessing day to day human activity, as a new 
aesthetic - a way significant of a changing outlook in norms of knowledge, freedom and selfhood. 10. 
Consider the parallels between Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie and Taylor's Balcony, Linoleum, 
Ladder. In the former, Mondrian creates a random play of small units within the symmetry of the large as 
a stabilizing force. There is affinity with this organization in the architectural, textural and pattern elements 
of Taylor's work. Just like Mondrian the photographer senses a control in the opposition of the regular 
and the random and shows a respect for variation, balance and interest. The metaphor for a societal 
utopia is apparent. The benefit to humanity such an ideal could achieve is evident in the Couple on Back 
Porch: Montreal Streets series. The pair, dressed with pride, stands confidently posed on their tenement 
steps. Taylor's work from this period garnered encouraging recognition. In 1966 he presented his 
portfolio to Lorraine Monk at the National Film Board Stills Division in Ottawa. She made a large 
purchase of negatives and prints for the board's permanent collection and then published images in the 
books :Canada / A year of the Land and Call them Canadians. Works were included in Montreal's
Expo 67 exhibit and he had his first solo exhibition at the Loyola Bonsecours Gallery in Montreal
organized by the NFB.

Taylor's quest for spiritual growth has taken him along many and varied paths. After his marriage in 
1968, he and his wife, Illona Susgin, travelled in their Volkswagen van to photograph in the southern 
United States. He met Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock and Brett Weston. The meeting with the younger 
Weston reinforced Jeremy's admiration for Edward Weston's sense of form and composition; Taylor was 
favoured by a visit to the Weston home, introduced to original Weston prints and enjoyed photographic 
discussions with Brett Weston. These conversations took Taylor into new directions. He was so 
impressed with Bretts contact prints done in New York city in the 1940s that he went right out and 
purchased his own Deardorff 11x14 view camera in San Francisco. During this trip, Taylor was also 
fortunate to study with Ansel Adams at a workshop conducted in Yosemite Valley, California. On a 
spiritual level, he rediscovered yoga, after his initial introduction in 1964 with Swami Vishnudevananda, 
and permanently switched to a vegetarian diet. A profound respect for truths inherent in natural forms and 
structures is evident in the works from this trip. Consider Rock, Pebbles and Shadows taken at Point 
Lobos, California. There are so many levels of seeing for entry into this work and contemplation of divine 
creation. This work and others in the series illustrate the photographer's sense that the joy of the journey 
is derived from a love for the questions it stirs. The images from this period offer no answers. Rather, 
they are visual manifestations of questions - questions we all ponder. Jeremy's photographs confirm 
Edward Weston's hypothesis: "maybe only a fragment, but indicating or symbolizing life rhythms." 11. 
Significant for a full appreciation of Taylor's artistic expression is remembering that these are the works of 
a master printer editing his own negatives. Accented details and lighting effects are the conscious choice 
of the man who first viewed the image in his lens. There is no intermediary in the technical expertise. 
Evidence of the influences of Weston and his mentor, Stieglitz, is strongest in Gypsum Sand and 
Mountain Range, White Sands National Monument in New Mexico or White and Grey Rock, Point Lobos, 
California. If one accepts nature as the standard of supreme good and beauty, then within nature can be 
found spiritual Equivalents, as Sieglitz termed them. Gypsum Sand and Mountain Range speaks to the 
cyclic, but also to harmony, peace and eternity.

Taylor's private struggles continued to fuel his quest; his marriage ended in 1971, a year after the birth 
of his son, Malcolm. In search of spiritual support, he was initiated into meditation and lived in ashrams, 
first in India and then in the Divine Light Mission in Denver, Colorado. Life in the mission required 
complete renunciation of possessions, family and his photography. It was at this time that noted 
Canadian photographer, Robert Bourdeau, with whom Taylor had maintained a professional friendship 
since their meeting in the mid '60s, asked to purchase Jeremy's 11x14 view camera. Bourdeau still uses 
this camera today. In 1976, after four years, Taylor decided to leave the ashram, move to Toronto and 
once again pursue personal growth through photography. The draw of photography on Taylor is a 
continuing thread in his life. He had been strongly affected by Edward Weston's work when he first saw it 
in 1960. Sixteen years later he became reacquainted when a major retrospective of 250 works came to 
Denver; again he felt an overwhelming affinity. Coincidentally the Denver mission had indicated to him 
that he would have to reconsider the conditions of his stay there. They had been told by the U. S. 
government that all expatriates living in the ashram must either take out U. S. citizenship or return to their 
native countries. Implied in this was the necessity to become self sufficient. Jeremy felt his skill in 
photography could support him. Because he did not speak French he chose to relocate in Toronto where 
he supposed he would be able to establish himself as a fine art printer. The challenge was difficult, but 
working at a succession of menial jobs he acquired enough equipment to set up a darkroom. The series 
from this period, Austere Horizon: views of Lake Ontario taken from the Toronto Beaches districts 
reflective.
The series presents a sense of oneness. The images seem to act as psychological and spiritual 
analogies for meditation; there is a centralized position of some subjects, expansive skies, faint horizons, 
still water. From my arrival in Toronto I began to find my own way. JEREMY TAYLOR

The emptiness in Pier, Gravel, Footprints, Sky is portentous. The distant marker in Stones, Buoy, Faint 
Horizon draws us into nothingness. Despair is palpable. We almost wince away from the rock shrouded 
by seaweed in Centred Stone. Once again, in 1987, Taylor gave up photography, selling his equipment to 
purchase a piano. This began a period in which he explored classical music. From the discipline of 
study, and the stimulation of concerts and recordings he attempted to find meaning.

Again in 1992 the photographer was lured back. Joseph Campbell notes: "The way of the mystic and 
the artist are alike except the mystic has no craft. Craft holds the artist to the world. The mystic goes off 
through his psyche into the transcendent. The artist goes to many of the same places but is held to the 
world." 12. For Jeremy Taylor photography is a vital expression. Four decades of darkroom experience 
honed his expertise and eye; meditation deepened his perceptions; dedicated personal study nurtured 
his intellectual curiosity. The challenge in Taylor's Pathways series is ambitious. The photographs were 
made in Toronto around the Don Valley, including the Moore Park Ravine but the sense is of Walt 
Whitman's look at America in Leaves of Grass. In his preface, Whitman lamented:" but folks expect of the 
poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always attach to dumb real objects they expect 
him to indicate the path between reality and their souls." 13. Taylor's photographs respond to this 
challenge.
The ravines of Toronto are a landscape of miniature forms, intimate co-minglings of species; whereas, 
western landscape is monumental and bold. Sometimes with my camera I come to a complete stop 
struck by the complexity and persistence of growth in this tenuous urban niche.
Everywhere there is movement, even within things standing still like twigs, leaves and grass. Nature 
never stops as she creates a life-sustaining path through these delicate structures. For our eyes though, 
a path is an artifact of movement, countless steps taken and more to come.

When I look at my photographs from the Don Valley, which often have no centre, no figure/ground 
convention, I discover new ways of seeing and my eye is trained in an unfamiliar rhythm.
- Jeremy Taylor
Winter Grass pulsates with a sense of rebirth. Grass, which is matted and static after winter, appears 
more like the warm fur of a sleeping animal protecting the new sprouts awaiting spring. Twigs defiantly 
thrust erect waiting for buds to form. In Trees and Bridge the random and the regular are balanced. It is 
difficult to tell which lines are bridge and which trees. The bridge is like a tree but with stronger more 
geometric lines - the branches of its support system. There is symbiosis. In Leaves, Tree Trunks the 
viewer is invited into a verdant richness of foliage suggesting the Romantic woods of A Midsummer's 
Night's Dream or the forest of Arden in As You Like It where joy and restoration are assured. The vines 
invite entry into a primordial existence, yet the reality is the Moore Park ravine, surrounded, unseen, by 
concrete twisted into the jungle of the Don Valley Parkway.

Taylor's fascination with how the random and the ordered are balanced is pursued further in his latest 
series: Intersection. This series began in 1993 with studies of billboards and their placement in the 
Toronto cityscape and continues to the present. In these works the seemingly diverse details of the city's 
streets coalesce into a Gestalt whole. 14. The series poses many questions. Is eternity only a taunting 
illusion, like an open glass box where our stay will be but a brief respite, as suggested in Bus Shelter? In 
Roads, Bridge and Sky the written signs are diminished, but their suggestions are more ominous. Will 
we have to label nature to recognize it once the whirligig of the "Masonry World" transgresses it? These 
images speak to Andre Breton's expectations for surrealism. We view elements small and large 
juxtaposed into new asymmetric wholes somehow balanced yet in disharmony. Our sense of order is 
uncertain like the couple in Two People Waiting. Does Taylor fear we are becoming numbed like those in 
Mime and Pedestrians? If this is his fear, his genius is that his works reveal places of reconciliation by 
showing the viewer frozen moments of visual harmony. 15. Consider one of his most recent works 
Riverdale Park and White Buildings, made in 1997. This image speaks to us of a place beyond the 
temporal of daily activity - a wide expansive space offering solace.
The inspiration for Jeremy Taylor's work is the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual bounty of 
human experience. Taylor's forty year photographic offering shows us that art can lead us away from the 
often-jaded contrivances of post modernism, and bring about a renaissance of the noble intentions with 
which modernism began and which seeing through the eye of spirit furthers.

The camera is a fluid way of encountering that other reality. - Jerry N. Uelsmann

Photography is a tool for dealing with things everybody knows but isn't attending to. - Emmet Gowin

 

 

1.     From conversations with photographer Har-Prakash Khalsa.

2.     Ibid

3.     Robert Hughes, "The Faces of Power", The Shock of the New (England 1980), 93.

4.     Ibid, 83.

5.     Ibid, 82.

6.     Ibid, 85.

7.     Ibid, 95.

8.     Meyer Scharpiro, "Mondrian: Order and Randomness in Abstract Painting", Modern Art 19th and 20th

Centuries: selected papers (New York 1978),242.

9.     Ibid, 242

10.   Edward Weston, The Daybooks of Edward Weston (George Eastman House, 1961)entry for        

September 4, 1924, 190.

11.   Joseph Campbell, The Way of Art, Sounds True Audio Recording.

12.   Walt Whitman, from "Preface to Leaves of Grass", American Poetry and Prose (Boston 1960), 586.

13.   From conversations with photographer Har-Prakash Khalsa.

14.   Ibid.

15.   Ibid