The answer is very simple, it is just the abbreviation for Alfons G. Jacob, a passionate photographer, born 1945 in Merano, Italy, grown up and educated in Switzerland, Austria and the UK. He discovered his photographic obsession in his teens with the age of thirteen. Inspired by his mother’s B&W photography from the late thirties and encouraged by her Voigtländer TLR camera manufactured at about the same time, he was desperate to discover the magic of light and shadow.

Subsequently to take to pieces his mother’s Voigtländer he got his first own camera with a built in light meter on his 14th birthday. At boarding school he joined every course available on the subject film and photography and soon became the youngest member of a working group, studying the whole variety of related topics e.g. photographic techniques, depths of field, shutter and aperture functions, dark room practice, composing a picture etc.

The first B&W photograph he created under extreme backlight conditions, a “portrait” of a horse against the sun during evening twilight, soon became his first piece of artwork being awarded by the jury, who had to evaluate the achievement of the students participating in the course. Later he applied as volunteer at a Television Station and Film Production Company and obtained professional education as Assistant Director for TV-Productions, taking part in nearly 100 productions with a wide spectrum e.g. sports, documentaries, weekly and daily magazines, TV-shows and dramas.

Amongst many commercial projects and photographic productions for the advertising and PR business, including brochures, advertising material, catalogues, trade exhibition material etc., he worked for as photographer, one of his generally admired photographic achievements, was his work on a project designed by the renowned Architect, Lord Norman Foster, “Masterplan in Progress”, that was introduced and presented to the public with his photographs and exhibited at the Biennale of Architecture in the year 2000 in Venice, Italy. Another achievement during the years he ambitiously enjoyed ballet photography, is a sequence of undisclosed photographs of the legendary dancer noble, Rudolf Nureyev during morning exercice.

“Taking a Photograph does mean to initially sketch an image in the mind and after that finally reproduce it with the camera”. This philosophy became with utmost supremacy AGJ’s statement of belief, although it might sound slightly outdated in these days. His photographic interest is and was always focused on and dedicated to the beauty of nature, photographic adventures with a challenging cultural background, art photography, ballet, architecture, portrait and people photography and travel photo journalism.

AGJ’s archive consists of more than 27,000 photographs, predominantly transparencies but also negatives and digital images. He is currently working on various publications i.e. “English Roses”, Anthology of more than 200 Rose portraits, photographed at HRH Queen Mary’s Gardens, Regent’s Park, in London and “Roots of Inspiration”, a book about Vienna’s Vineyards at the “Nußberg”, but predominantly focused on the creative power of various famous artists in the 19th and 20th century, such as Ludwig van Beethoven, composing “scene by the brook”, part of the 6th Symphony “Pastoral” (1808), at the scenery illustrated in the book.

July 2010