Welcome to the JEFF DUNAS ARCHIVE.This site contains the print archive of photographer Jeff Dunas.
Additional archives will be added as our inventory process continues.
Please contact the Jeff Dunas Studio or a gallery near you to acquire a print or book seen or referenced on this site.
“American Pictures is a project began in 1993 with a 5-week journey documenting every town on the Oregon Trail (backwards, in fact). When embarking on an expedition of this kind, one needs a subtext – and that subtext was looking for images from my childhood. I wanted to document the America I remembered from the late 50s and 60s when I was a kid. It is a composite memory composed of memories of places I went, images in our family album (a source of endless fascination) and the backgrounds from pictures published in Life and Look magazines. As I drove through the towns, I’d spot something that triggered a memory for me- and I knew there was a picture to make there.“I also realized it would be the last opportunity to take an archive of work into the next century. There were other trips (1994, 1996) that helped to complete the project.”
These images are available in editions of 27, with 7 being larger than 30×40. There are vintage 11×14 gelatin-silver prints available of many of these images as well.
American Pictures: Color will be published as a companion book to American Pictures.“While photographing for American Pictures, and working in black and white, it was exceedingly difficult to photograph in color at the same time. That said- there were times when color informed the image to the extent that I would shoot both. The resulting color work was purchased by several museums very early in the life of the project and I thus embarked on three new trips crossing the United States but this time only photographing in color. The first trip was made in 1998 crossing the country through the middle – photographing extensively in Colorado and neighboring states, followed by other trips in the Southwest and the South. In 2007 I spent several weeks photographing in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma on assignment for Toyota photographing miners, loggers, oil field roustabouts and small towns.”
Images from this body of work are printed in editions of 27 with 7 being 30×40 or larger.
“State of the Blues (Aperture, 1998, Konemann, 1999) began with the death of Muddy Waters and a single image I made of the legendary bluesman Hubert Sumlin shortly after. I realized that these seminal bluesmen were going to disappear and hoped to convince one of the magazines I worked for frequently to give me an assignment to document them and make portraits. Blues wasn’t really on their radar at that time (1993-4) though the House of Blues announced it would open its third venue in Los Angeles that year. I had a connection to them through Issac Hayes, whom I’d photographed in the 70s and was introduced to Nigel Shanley, then the chief evangelist for the club. I obtained permission to set up my “studio” anytime I was interested in photographing an act that would appear – and thus begun the series.“The work began to take form in mid-1995 and by 1996 I had completed nearly 100 portraits and left to document the places where the blues was born – leading to a series of documentary images that told the story of why they had the blues. I also began interviewing many of my subjects and the resulting book contains portraits, documentary images and a text woven from the interviews conducted.”
State of the Blues was designed by Michelle Dunn and originally published in an edition of 13,500 – which included 3000 soft-cover copies sold as museum catalogues at 12 American museums that presented the ensuing exhibition of the work beginning in 1998. A further 80,000 copies in three languages (German, French & English) were printed by Konemann in Germany in 1999.
The series is printed in editions of 27 with 7 being 30×40 or larger. A limited number of 11×14 and 16×20 toned, gelatin-silver prints from the original museum printing are available in addition to modern day permanent pigment prints.
Nudes represents Dunas’ longest-running series, with the early work beginning in the mid-seventies. Numbered editions of 27 exist with 9 reserved for prints larger than 30×40″.Please contact the Jeff Dunas Studio for a link to this body of work.
Beginning in 1985, I began to work on The Blue Series, a series of nudes made by “painting with light”. This involved making a number of different kinds of light sources when were “painted” on the subject in a completely darkened space. A museum catalogue, Blue Series / Bicromie, was published in Italy in 1991 by Edizioni del Museo, Brescia.This work is available in an edition of 27 prints, with 7 30×40 or larger.
Please contact the Jeff Dunas Studio for a link to this body of work.
Voyeur, the third monograph by Jeff Dunas, was published in American, British and French editions in 1983 by Melrose Publishing Co, Columbus Books and Les Editions Love Me Tender respectively in an edition of 30,000 copies. The production of the book was unusual for its time as it was printed on heavy Jobs paper and enclosed in a printed slip-case. A limited edition of 100 signed & numbered copies was published. It was printed by Berger Levrault in France. Please contact the Jeff Dunas Studio for a link to this body of work.
In 1989 Jeff Dunas photographed the American Indian Dance Theater at the Joyce Theater in NYC. A full set of these portraits were donated to the American Indian College Fund. In early 1990, through a mutual acquaintance in Santa Fe, Dunas met Jeff Hengesbaugh, historian, collector and self-described long distance horseman. At Hengesbaugh’s invitation, Dunas was invited to photograph a group of mountain men and women before they journeyed by horseback from Glorieta N.M. to Santa Fe, an annual ride. Several years later, he spent a week at a mountain men encampment in Fort Bridger, Wyoming and later made still-lifes of many of the unique objects from Hengesbaugh’s collection of fur trade era objects.
La Route Nationale 7″, otherwise known as the RN7, was the mythic route to the Mediterranean Sea (Cote d’Azur) for all of France and the northern countries of Europe until today’s major autoroutes were built beginning in the seventies. Families would pack to stay a month or more each summer in the south and would join La Nationale in Paris, at the Porte d’Italie, and begin the slow, bumper-to-bumper journey south. The RN7 passed through the middle of towns and villages back then, providing nearly the annual revenue for many of the small auberges (inns) and restaurants along the way. Once the autoroutes were built, the RN7 was moved outside of many of these towns, the result being some have literally dried up.“I spent several summers traveling the old roads (now the “D” or Departementales, (secondary roads) and photographing what used to be iconic favorite memories for many Europeans as they inched their ways to the le soleil each summer.”