Artist's Statement and Biography
Light is my medium. My vision is my technique. Etymologically, photography in Greek means drawing or writing with light, phōtós + graphé. A ceramicist shapes clay in their hands. I shape light with my eye, my brain, and my heart, to paraphrase the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cartier-Bresson said it is an illusion that a photograph is made by a camera. A photograph, he said, is the result of a joint operation of the "eye, the brain, and the heart."
A photographer is someone who presents herself to the world before her, who presents herself to reality, prepared to document it, not to change nor distort it. She has this duty to remain true to reality. I create a work of art by looking at the world before me attentively. I approach my subject, whatever it may be--a landscape, a closeup of ice, a person's face--from a particular angle of vision, from a particular perspective unique to the moment and unique to the subject. I release the shutter when I am ready to communicate the result of my attention to the viewer, an attention which reflects the cumulation until that moment of the history of my life, my mood, my thoughts, and my motivation. The work of art that I create ex nihilo is accomplished in that split second, that "decisive moment" again to quote Cartier-Bresson, when I deliberately choose to record the light reflecting off the reality before me onto the sensor of my camera.
I don't like to think of photography as "capturing" anything. "Good capture," photographers say to each other, "nice shot." My eye is not a prison; I do not hunt. I regard, I listen, I watch, I hear, I feel, I smell, I perceive, I understand, and yes, sometimes I taste what is before me, in order to understand it. I am present to the universe and it is present in me. My desire to share this experience, to share my vision, is my voice, my means of communication with you. I want to bring you with me, to witness the beauty before me. I want to bring you so close to what I perceive that you enter the frame. I can do this. This is what I do. This is my task. This is my purpose. This is my calling. This is my life's work. To communicate with you. To share with you a particular vision of the world and its life forms--its inhabitants--that you can appreciate and understand. Such a shared experience creates compassion and defines love.
I am motivated by joy. I may have sorrow and pain in me, as we all do. That sorrow and pain borne of life is enveloped within the joy I choose to communicate with you. For the meaning of life is not that it ends, as Philip Roth wrongly claimed. The meaning of life is to choose joy. It is most definitely a choice, not a fate. This is why and how I am a photographer. To witness and share the decisive moments that constitute "life." That's all and everything that there is. And this is good.
Jeneen Hobby
Jeneen began photographing with a Pentax K-1000 in 1986. She exhibits her work and has won awards at juried fine arts festivals across the states of Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, in solo and group shows, in galleries, and online. She is represented by Heights Arts Gallery in Cleveland Heights, and by Something Different Gallery in Ohio City. Her work has been exhibited at the Cleveland Botanical Garden, the Cleveland Institute of Music, Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport, Shaker Heights Public Library, The Nature Center at Shaker Lakes, Avon Lake Public Library, Loganberry Books, and with Greyt Culture at Intro. Jeneen does philanthropic work with America SCORES, an urban youth development program, 85% of whose students live below the poverty line. In both 2021 and 2022 she won first place in the landscape category in the Cuyahoga Valley Photographic Society annual contest. Jeneen was one of four artists featured in the Fall 2022 Show at The Nicholson B. White Gallery of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. In 2023 she was featured in "Lens", Summa Health of Akron's exhibit on the healing power of art. In 2023 and 2024 Jeneen's work was featured at Sophie La Gourmande in Cleveland. In 2025, Jeneen was selected by The Guild of Artists and Artisans to have her work "Forest and Fog" exhibited at the Gutman Gallery in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Jeneen Hobby has a significant corporate presence. In 2026 her work will be permanently installed by LAND Studio at MetroHealth Outpatient Health Center in Cleveland.