Artist Bio

Jack Montgomery is a Maine-based photographer whose portraits and other images explore themes of challenge and survival. His current work is an ever-expanding series entitled Lucid Dreams.  “Since childhood, I have been keenly aware of a realm beyond my vision, one which I may occasionally glimpse in the space between wakefulness and sleep,” comments the artist.  “As I approach my mid-seventies, I no longer harbor hopes of breaking into this world during my lifetime, but I am now more determined than ever to explore its boundaries.” His current images are captured on film and then put to watercolor paper as photogravures and palladium prints, part of a career-long exploration of materials and processes that hearken back to pre-digital image making.

Over the last 30 years, Montgomery’s subjects have included Holocaust survivors, villagers and sex workers in the Dominican Republic, and gender non-conforming adults and youths. His most recent exhibition featured images taken in small villages in Sicily during Holy Week processions.  His work is in permanent collections ranging from the Portland Museum of Art to the Bibliothèque nationale de France. His images have appeared on numerous book covers, including To Kill a Mockingbird. A monograph of his images of young women coming of age (Werkdruck 17) is published by Galerie Vevais in Germany and his series on Holocaust survivors (Soul Survivors) will be published in the winter of 2023-24.

Jack and his wife live in Freeport, Maine.