Jacob James – When travel documentary photographer meets wanderlust and knowledge on new cultures.
Jacob James was born in United Kingdom but not to stay.
This marvelous photographer make his passion for travel and knowing new places and cultures a form of art.
It’s not new the craft of being a travel documentary photographer: Steve Mccurry is maybe the main example in this field, the person that instantly crosses our minds when we talk about this.
But Jacob James reinvented the game, putting something more.
The works on his website are divided in three main categories: Life, Faces and Places.
The first one is about what makes a society, the folklore of people: we can find pictures of old men working, a crowd praying their god or kids playing in wide fields with a smile on their faces.
This is, in my opinion, the most emotional part of his project, making us think of the ordinary life of a folk, the same of ours.
Jacob James shows us what makes a folk, what’s deep in our roots as humans.
The second part of his works, Faces, is about the soul of people he met through his several travels.
There’s plenty of portraits of every genre, age and physiognomy of different kind of people.
But he shows us the difference in this categories only to make us understand that we are an only folk in this world, every human linked to another in the same way, living the same kind of life with struggles and emotions.
We are all the same, this is the echo that I can read in this beautiful collection of portraits. But we also are different, because sometimes we can’t understand how lucky we are to be born in a world full of benefits and comforts.
The look in the eyes of these people is various, expressing several kind of emotions and feelings, but all in their way they seems to be happy to be alive.
Jacob James makes us emotional only to think about the beauty that’s in our culture and ordinary life.
The third category, Places, is the one linked to our theme of wanderlust.
Travel documentary photography isn’t only about people or culture, because we can find the folklore of a folk even in their architecture, squares and suburbs.
In this section there’s a collection of pictures of several places in the world, but my favorites are the ones at sunset and night time: cities look in their best way with lights in contrast with the dark sky, making us think of how beauty hides behind the everyday surface.
With his photography, Jacob James makes us think about how much poetry there is between the lines, how much we are losing staying at home front of our smartphones.
Life is what you live when you’re not knowing the destination.
And maybe one of James’ places it’s a good way to start.
Go check his amazing work here!
