Jonathan Mark Jackson

Double Figure was made in Northfield, MA along a bank of the Connecticut River. It was around the time of the beginning of the pandemic in the U.S., and flocking to the hills felt appropriate and safe. At the time I was also researching paths of the Underground Railroad in the state. I became fixated on making this kind of double portrait, where the figure is following itself through the brush. I felt that the action of double exposure visualized the kind of ancestral/historical interference that I often think about. Being able to step in the footsteps of someone else.

Jonathan Mark Jackson (b. 1996) received a Bachelor’s of Art degree within the Art & The History of Art department at Amherst College. He is currently pursuing his MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design. Jackson’s work seeks to engage with historical facts through objects, landscape, and the human form. Through the combination of photographs and language, Jackson calls attention to the mysterious forces that cloud, torment, and stall the formation of a Black American identity.