Florida Artists Group

Jean Germain Biography:

Retiring from teaching gave Jean Germain a chance to begin a second career as a photographer. While teaching in New York elementary schools, she worked with children who had learning differences. An experimental program she developed inspired her initial involvement with photography. Giving disposable cameras to her 5th graders, she effectively integrated classroom learning with the aesthetics of photography.  The method became a way for children to distinguish and express the difference between “looking and seeing”; a profound lesson Jean has taken into her professional photographic work.
Now as a fine-art photographer Jean Germain experiments with her 35mm film camera to create ethereal, provocative, and often-impressionistic images. Whether shooting panoramic landscapes, serene wildlife, dramatic architecture, or musicians in performance, she has developed a knack for capturing images while pushing the limits of film technology.
Continuing to remain curious, she will try all sorts of techniques from using special camera filters, shooting through textured glass, to combining two slides together creating a new image.
Jean often refers to her life as filled with serendipity.  While waiting for a tennis game back in 1980, she met Hal Davis, who had been Benny Goodman’s publicist.  That meeting and their subsequent friendship led to launching the Sarasota Jazz Club, with Jean designated its official photographer.  At the Van Wesel Performing Arts Center in Sarasota Florida for the next 26 years she sat in her assigned seat in row six photographing hundreds of musical legends from the Big Band era as they performed.  Only able to use existing stage lighting without a tripod, Germain experimented with film speed and Cokin filters getting remarkable results. Now 100 of those photographs comprise an award-winning book, Jazz From Row Six. It creatively documents the pure passion and joy these musicians have doing what they truly love - keeping jazz alive. Over the years a number of the musicians and Jean became friends. Jean’s greatest honor came when she, along side “The Dean” of jazz,  Milt Hinton, exhibited their photographs together in New York City at the 92nd Street Y in 1999 a year before he passed on at age 90.
She credits being a photographer as her “back stage pass” to a world of remarkable people and experiences.

Mrs. Germain’s work is in both private and public collections and exhibited in numerous galleries and museums. She divides her time between Sarasota Florida and Monterey Massachusetts.

Artist Statement:

This piece is titled, “Reflections.”  It is composed of two 35mm color slides “sandwiched” together creating a new image blurring the line between reality and fantasy.  The succulent plant needs very little water to subsist while humans cannot survive with out water; a statement about the condition of our environment.

Exhibitions, Invitational Juried Shows and Awards:

Solo Shows:
2013          Jazz in July, University of Massachusetts Fine Art Center, Amherst, MA
2012-13    The Vermont Jazz Center, Brattleboro, VT
2012          Art For The Soul Gallery, Springfield, MA
2011          Griffin Museum of Photography, Cambridge, MA
2011          Gold Silversmith Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
2004         Naoussa Gallery, Tyringham, MA


2013         Inspiration of the Spirit, St. Francis Gallery, Lee, MA
2013         Unclothed, Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro, VT
2010         Ringling College of Arts & Science, Sarasota, FL – Ageless Creativity group show one of six                            selected artists*
2009         Leepa-Ratner Museum of Art, Tarpon Springs, FL - Florida Artists Group*
2009         WIT Gallery, Lenox, MA selected photographs Jazz From Row Six
2008         United Nations Development Fund for Women [UNIFEM]-Invitational  Great Barrington, MA
2007         Art Center Sarasota, FL **
2007         Venice Art Center, Venice, FL *
2006         Selby Gallery, Ringling School of Art & Design, Sarasota, FL
2005         ComCenter, Bradenton, FL – solo exhibit 25 year Retrospective in 125 Photographs
2005         Boca Raton Museum, Boca Raton, FL*
2003         Phillips Gallery, Sanibel, FL
2002         Art Center Sarasota, FL **

* awards

Professional Experience:

    Instructor of photography:

• Interlaken School of Art, Interlaken, MA
• Celebrity Cruise Line in Alaska
• Cunard Cruise Line in the Caribbean and South America

 

Guest lecturer:

2013 Brooks Memorial Library, Brattleboro, VT
2012 Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA
Litchfield Jazz Festival, Kent CT.
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA
Rancho La Puerta, Tecate, Mexico