Our next Artist You Need To Know is Jeff Nolte.
He was born in 1950, in Zanesville, Ohio, in the United States: Nolte is a photographer and teacher whose practice is often centred around social and public spheres and expanding portraiture to encompass larger stories and ideas.
With many of his works – as with The Mauro Years in the gallery below – Nolte captures both the personality and psychology of his subjects, in a moment in time but also often in terms of a progression of experiences and memories. In writing about The Mauro Years, arts writer Gary Michael Dault offered the following: “What can you do with a Mauro except wait and worry and get him to stand still in the photographs? Mauro is not to be believed, except in this photographic version of his sideshow life. Here is Mauro and here are the Mauro years. Look and wonder.”
Employing both small and large formats, Nolte’s aesthetic encompasses both documentary work and extensive experimentation with non silver processes. After studying photography at Sheridan College (1969-1970), Nolte earned a BFA (1975) and MFA (1979) from York University and a Bachelor of Education from the University of Toronto (1988).
He was a sessional instructor at York University in the area of photography (from 1981 to 1997) while simultaneously teaching with the Toronto District School Board (1980 – 2012). Nolte’s impact in terms of photography as a teacher, in Canada, has been just as influential as with his own practice, and this can speak to why so often people – in unscripted, real moments – are the focus of his photography. Several of the images below were taken around Toronto, and offer vignettes of the city, both through locales and the people who live within them and move through them daily.
Nolte has been awarded numerous grants from both the Canada Council & Ontario Arts Council and his work can be found in the collections of the Allan Memorial Art Museum (Oberlin College, Ohio, U.S.), Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa, ON), the Art Gallery of Hamilton (Hamilton, ON), Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris, France), Carlton University Art Gallery (Ottawa, ON), Canada Council of the Arts (Ottawa, ON), the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON) and the Ontario Arts Council (Toronto, ON).
Nolte has exhibited in numerous venues. These include First Canadian Place Gallery, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Jane Corkin Gallery, David Mirvish Books, a touring exhibition that began at the Dalhousie Art Gallery, in 1990, and visited nine venues including the Winnipeg Art Gallery and Edmonton Art Gallery, Kiev Art Centre (Ukraine), the Institute of Contemporary Culture located in the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto), FOTO GALLERY (Kracow and Warsaw, Poland), Bertha Urdang Gallery (New York City), The Art Gallery of Ontario and Neikrug Gallery (New York City).
Nolte lives and works in Toronto, ON. More of Jeff Nolte’s work can be seen here, and a testament to his facility as a teacher – helping to shape many young artists – can be seen here, in an article in the Globe and Mail.