RANDOLPH, Vt. (WCAX) – Jack Rowell has captured tens of thousands of images during his 50-plus-year photography career, and some of them are now on display at the White River Crafts Center in Randolph.
“Well, to me, she looks like she’s reminiscing,” Rowell said, describing one of his portraits.
From studio pictures to down-to-earth folks, the 70-year-old photographer has documented it all. Photography has opened doors for Rowell throughout his career. “Gets me places and meet people that I never would,” he said.
As a 12-year-old growing up in Groton, he started focusing on people of rural Vermont. His images are sometimes gritty but always real, much like Rowell himself.
“I never finished high school,” he said. “I didn’t have enough credits, cause I spent too much time doing what I wanted to do. I never was a good student. And also it was the early ’70s, so I was partying.”
Rowell also drank heavily and smoked up to four packs a day. He gave up cigarettes and alcohol decades ago. “Once I get into something, I dive in headfirst,” he said.
But photography has always been his passion.
Reporter Joe Carroll: Talk about who you like to photograph.
Jack Rowell: Well, usually when I’m asked that question, I say my favorite things to photograph are big fish and good-looking women.
And Fred Tuttle, a renowned retired dairy farmer from Tunbridge who became a star of the quirky 1996 Vermont independent film “Man With a Plan.”
“I spent my whole life in the barn, now I want to spend a little time in the house,” Tuttle said in the film, which documents Tuttle’s folksy campaign run for Congress against a slick career politician.
“Oh, he loved it, oh my goodness,” said Rowell, who served as associate producer on the film. “I became an associate producer because I had a light meter and the director didn’t.”
“Spread Fred” became a slogan in Vermont and beyond and also led to Tuttle’s real campaign for the U.S. Senate two years later, which mirrored the movie in many ways.
“I photographed him twice for People magazine,” Rowell said. “And I knew how to photograph Fred, Fred didn’t always photograph good.”
For the last three years, Rowell has been looking at his past work in an effort to make a coffee table book — his first. “The book is ‘Jack Rowell Photographs.’ Nice and simple,” he said. It contains 121 images in both color and black and white. “It’s been a lot of work. I’ve never been very good about cataloging my stuff. So, I have been going through boxes and boxes of old… that have old negatives in them.”
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