{"id":294869,"date":"2025-11-16T09:41:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T09:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/294869\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T09:41:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T09:41:31","slug":"jack-rowell-a-journey-through-vermonts-photographic-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/294869\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Rowell: A Journey Through Vermont’s Photographic History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\tOverview:<\/p>\n

Upper Valley photographer Jack Rowell’s book, “Jack Rowell: Photographs,” will be published this month. The publication is a culmination of his life’s work, photographing mostly in the Upper Valley. Rowell’s book is a record of his community and how he sees it, and his camera is his way of relating to the world. The book includes portraits of people he likes, his friends, and photographs he took during his drinking years in the 1970s and ’80s. Rowell’s book is also a monument to his time, when Vermont, and the world, were wilder places.<\/p>\n

\"\"A construction worker in Claremont, N.H., in 2007. (Jack Rowell photograph)<\/p>\n

Leafing through the photographs in his forthcoming book is a walk back in time for Jack Rowell. The book was still at the printer\u2019s during a recent interview, but he unrolled sheets of proofs on a table in Randolph\u2019s White River Craft Center.<\/p>\n

As he turned the pages, he talked about the people whose portraits he\u2019s taken, people he likes, his friends. He talked about the Tunbridge Fair, his first serious subject, and photographs he took during his drinking years, the 1970s and \u201980s, when Vermont, and the world, were wilder places.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cJack Rowell: Photographs\u201d to be published Nov.22, 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty much my life that I\u2019ve photographed since I was a teenager,\u201d Rowell said.<\/p>\n

Yes, but there\u2019s something more going on in \u201cJack Rowell: Photographs,\u201d which is due out at a launch party on Nov. 22 at the craft center. Rowell, a Central Vermont native who is, as many photographers are, by turns gregarious and owlish, has photographed mostly in the same place for much of his life. His book is also a record of his community and how he sees it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis camera is his way of relating to the world, but it\u2019s not superficial. It\u2019s a real attachment,\u201d Sara Tucker, a Randolph native who\u2019s bringing Rowell\u2019s book out through Korongo Books, the small publishing company she runs with her husband, Patrick Texier, said in a phone interview. \u201cYou become his subject, and you become his friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book is a kind of culmination, a monument to Rowell\u2019s career, and also to his time, when the Vermont he was born into more or less vanished. <\/p>\n

\"\"Photographer Jack Rowell. (Courtesy Jack Rowell)<\/p>\n

Rowell, a fifth-generation Vermonter and longtime Randolph resident, considers himself a Tunbridge native. His parents split up in 1960, when he was 5. His father, a fun-loving, but hard-working woodsman who operated Tunbridge Tables, selling rustic furniture he made himself, moved to Groton, Vt., just north of Orange County. His mother, a devout evangelical Christian, moved to Randolph. Rowell went with his dad, his sister, Janet, with mom, though Jack spent weekends with his mother, attending church and joining a youth group.<\/p>\n

The artistic impulse hit him early on. \u201cI remember the first time I got in big trouble,\u201d he said. He was 5 or 6 years old. \u201cI was drawing a fish on the wall, under a table. I caught hell for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

His father took him hunting and fishing, and the outdoors were a constant. When he was a young child, his mother would carry him around to the deer heads mounted on the wall so he could pat their fur before bedtime. <\/p>\n

Rowell was a good student, until he was assigned homework, which got snared on his undiagnosed dyslexia. He found a refuge in science and the arts, and bailed out of the Groton schools, which had little of either, in favor of Randolph\u2019s then-new junior high.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cFish On: The Inland Sea\u201d taken in 1994, from the upcoming book \u201cJack Rowell: Photographs.\u201d (Jack Rowell photograph)<\/p>\n

Though he continued to draw and paint, he never liked how his attempts came out. Photography came to him in the form of a Kodak Instamatic he got as a present, then a more advanced camera loaned to him by a family friend who\u2019d brought it back from service in Vietnam. His eighth grade science teacher, John Lackard, showed him how to develop film and make prints. Photography provided the artistic revelation he needed.<\/p>\n

Tucker, who was a year ahead of Rowell in school, remembers him as \u201ca bit shy and awkward. But he was interesting,\u201d because he carried a camera everywhere. \u201cHe was the only kid I knew who was serious about work,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Jack Rowell\u2019s father John C. Rowell in an undated photograph. (Jack Rowell photograph)<\/p>\n

He took photos for The Herald of Randolph (now the White River Valley Herald) and when he ended up a few credits short of what he needed to graduate high school, he embarked on a career in photography.<\/p>\n

He had gotten a head start, just by photographing life around him. The most vibrant scene in Orange County was the annual World\u2019s Fair in Tunbridge. <\/p>\n

To say it was a different time doesn\u2019t quite do the photos justice. In one, a man in the fair\u2019s notorious beer hall brandishes a knife as he looks at the camera. In the next image, he\u2019s pointing a handgun at the young photographer.<\/p>\n

Those photographs are from 1983, but Rowell took the fair as a subject much earlier. The Herald of Randolph published a book of Rowell\u2019s work, \u201cTunbridge Fair,\u201d in 1980, when Rowell was in his mid-20s.<\/p>\n

\"\"Grant Corwin at the Tunbridge Fair, circa 1976. (Jack Rowell photograph)<\/p>\n

He seemed on his way toward his life\u2019s work, but he had another occupation as a part-time drinker. As the writer Raymond Carver said, \u201cBooze takes a lot of time and effort if you\u2019re going to do a good job with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drinking shows up in \u201cJack Rowell: Photographs,\u201d too. There are a couple of photographs he took at the Villanova, a long-defunct bar in Randolph, \u201ca place I used to drink at a lot,\u201d Rowell said. \u201cIt had a bad reputation, but it was nowhere near as bad as people made out that it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Miaja Bradley at the Vermont History Expo in Tunbridge, Vt., in 2010. (Jack Rowell photograph)<\/p>\n

In another photograph, taken July 4, 1983 in Warren, Vt., a young woman sports a T-shirt that reads \u201cDecadence: a way of life.\u201d She let Rowell pour his beer down the front of the shirt, with predictable results. \u201cI was probably shit-faced when I took it,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

In a foreword to the book, Chris Jackson, a longtime friend of Rowell\u2019s illuminates this chapter, pointing out that it\u2019s hard to be a freelance photographer in Vermont if your driver\u2019s license is taken away. Rowell took steps to get sober in 1993, Jackson wrote.<\/p>\n

Though he put it behind him, Rowell still owns it. \u201cI don\u2019t regret anything I did,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rowell did all kinds of photography to make ends meet. He photographed stoves and other products for Vermont Castings. He took family portraits and shot weddings. He has been a regular in the pages of Image, the Upper Valley-based magazine.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s become known as an exacting photographer of great technical skill, particularly with studio and on-camera lighting. Part of the reason his portrait subjects look so vital is due to how flawlessly they are illuminated.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe really opened my eyes to the technical side of photography,\u201d Myra Hudson, a Royalton-based photographer who has assisted Rowell, said. \u201cHe\u2019s pretty snobby about it. He\u2019s excruciatingly good at lighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Thelma Follensbee, taken in Lebanon, N.H., in 2012. (Jack Rowell photograph)<\/p>\n

Some of the commercial work was done in tandem with his sister, Janet Miller. She bought a lot of the equipment from Patch Studio, after the Randolph business closed. They photograph weddings together, combining Janet\u2019s people skills with Jack\u2019s technical acumen behind the lens.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019d run the camera and I\u2019d run the show,\u201d Miller said in a phone interview. <\/p>\n

For 25 years, they took photographs of all the Little League ballplayers in Randolph. They were particularly active from 1990 through 2010.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has made a career out of being an independent photographer,\u201d Tucker said.<\/p>\n

While some of the images in the book come from Rowell\u2019s commercial commitments, many are due to his own personal agenda. When he sees someone he wants to photograph, he asks them, and some subjects have sought him out. The people who stand in front of his lens all seem to share an energy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he is amazingly talented at capturing the human spirit,\u201d Hudson said.<\/p>\n

Another pair of photographs in the book illustrate Rowell\u2019s chops, and the care he uses in making portraits. He twice photographed Bill Duval, a Randolph man with an unruly but majestic beard. (\u201cBack in high school, he taught me how to roll a joint,\u201d Rowell said.) <\/p>\n

\"\"Bill Duval in a 1995 studio photograph, taken in Randolph, Vt. (Jack Rowell photograph)<\/p>\n

In the first image, taken on the street in 1993, Duval looks slightly vulnerable, turned to the side but with his face toward the camera. In the second photo, taken in 1995 in the studio, he stands square to the camera, wearing a black tuxedo jacket Rowell had handed him. He looks like a character in a 19th century Russian novel, capable of leading a proletarian movement or perpetrating great villainy. Duval died in 2008, at age 56.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think most of us take up photography to show how we see the world,\u201d Jon Gilbert Fox, a longtime freelance photographer in the Upper Valley, said of Rowell. \u201cI think in his case, it\u2019s just another level that\u2019s more intimate.\u201d<\/p>\n

What sets Rowell\u2019s work apart is how deeply he\u2019s rooted in his subject matter, Fox said: Vermont and its people. \u201cHe captures it so much better than everybody else, because he understands it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Everett Fleury with a large whitetail buck in East Roxbury, Vt., in 2007. (Jack Rowell photograph)<\/p>\n

Tucker, who\u2019s been an editor at Cosmopolitan and lived all over the world, now primarily in France, reconnected with Rowell when she asked if he\u2019d photograph the participants of a memoir-writing workshop she was running at the Randolph Senior Center. Those portraits, which appeared in a book and a related exhibition at AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon, made the project what it was, Tucker said.<\/p>\n

That work led to a project at AVA photographing former employees at the H.W. Carter and Sons clothing factory, the building that now houses AVA.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Jack connected with them in a really extraordinary way, because he\u2019s so down to earth,\u201d Bente Torjusen, AVA\u2019s former longtime director, said. A photo of Torjusen\u2019s grand-daughter, Vivienne, is in the book, as is a portrait of Thelma Follansbee, who worked at Carter for 36 years.<\/p>\n

Tucker financed the making of the book from the sale of her mother\u2019s Randolph house. Rowell\u2019s is the first art book Korongo Press has put out. Her hope is that it will break even, so she can finance another book with the proceeds.<\/p>\n

The book itself is unexpurgated, in that it contains portraits that likely haven\u2019t seen as much daylight as some of Rowell\u2019s magazine and commercial work. He\u2019s always said his favorite subjects are \u201cbig fish and good looking women,\u201d and the book includes some nude portraits, as well as a nod at one of Rowell\u2019s most beloved subjects, Fred Tuttle. <\/p>\n

\"\"Fred Tuttle, the star of John O\u2019Brien\u2019s \u201cMan with a Plan,\u201d in a 1994 portrait in Tunbridge, Vt. (Jack Rowell photograph)<\/p>\n

Rowell helped shoot \u201cA Man with a Plan,\u201d the 1996 film that starred Tuttle more or less as himself, a Tunbridge dairy farmer who decides to run for Congress. Tuttle comes off as a cheerful everyman, but off camera he had a blue streak a mile wide. Rowell photographed Tuttle watching a porn flick in a New York City hotel room after Tuttle had appeared on a late night show. He looks like the same impish Vermont farmer.<\/p>\n

Tuttle died in 2003, and his status in Vermont is beyond question. Rowell\u2019s is similar. He\u2019s had some health problems, which he asked a reporter not to mention, but which everyone else who knows him brought up. He had a triple bypass in 2004, then was nearly put on hospice care in 2019 and 2020 after a bout of pneumonia.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s spent the past few years immersed in his largely uncatalogued archive, putting together photographs for the book. There\u2019s only one photograph in the entire volume that doesn\u2019t have a person in it, which is an unusual view of Vermont, but a true one. Community is what the state has always been about.<\/p>\n

Rowell doesn\u2019t expect the book to change his modest life. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of my legacy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s kind of Vermont\u2019s legacy, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cJack Rowell: Photographs\u201d is slated for release at a party from 2 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 22 at the White River Craft Center in Randolph. The Chandler Center for the Arts will hold a reception and author talk from 1 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 23. For more information or to order the book, go to korongobooks.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Overview: Upper Valley photographer Jack Rowell’s book, “Jack Rowell: Photographs,” will be published this month. The publication is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,100168,829,154047,154048,154049],"class_list":{"0":"post-294869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-homecenterpiece1","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-lebanon-nh","16":"tag-randolph-vt","17":"tag-tunbridge-vt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}