What began in Vietnam as a way of remembering what I saw has become, after a long journey, a way of showing what I feel.
Welcome
About the Artist
J.B. Horton
My love affair with photography kicked off in 1969, during my tours in Vietnam — and it’s stuck with me ever since, minus one long break along the way.
I started out just wanting to remember what I was seeing. Over time, though, that turned into something else — a way of showing what I felt. Problem was, back then, I wasn’t ready to put my feelings out there like that. So photography got put on the shelf for about 25 years.
Turns out, that break was its own kind of journey. Once I’d worked through some things and made peace with myself, I picked the camera back up — and my photos changed right along with me. They stopped being just about what I saw and started being about what I felt too. I had no idea at the time how much that would end up changing everything.
Getting back into it got me curious about the craft itself — all the different ways you can say something through a photo. That curiosity led me into printmaking too, and I learned how it can push a photograph’s ability to say something, whether that’s loud and bold or quiet and subtle. Honestly, I didn’t even realize printmaking was its own thing separate from photography until I started digging into it.
These days, I’ll shoot just about anything — portraits, architecture, products, you name it. But abstract fine art is where I really feel at home. It lets me say things I just can’t say any other way.