Rowe, Jessica

American, b. 1975

BiographyThe keepsakes and decoration of Midwestern and Southern family homes fill Jessica Rowe's photographs from the series A Different Now. The title of the series references the way these objects and collections evoke the past while existing in the present. Yet no matter how dated the décor or aging the keepsake, these places are not static time-capsules sealed away: they are the backdrops against which family life plays out daily. Rowe shoots in homes which have been occupied by a particular family or individual for at least 25 years. The items arranged, displayed, or tucked away in these homes are of such personal significance that they cannot help but suggest portraits of their possessors, but (among other things) they also demonstrate the need to honor, or at least remember, particular people and events.

Rowe began the on-going A Different Now series in 2000 as her graduate school thesis project at the Institute of Design. Specifically, she began shooting at her grandparents’ houses, though she marks her first successful shoot to an Oak Park home. The home in Park Ridge, IL has since been sold, but at the time belonged to a long-standing friend of Rowe’s paternal grandmother. The woman had known Rowe’s father since he was a boy, but had never met Rowe prior to this project.
Jessica Rowe was born in 1975 in Olivet, Michigan. Director of the short films Unopened and Dream Document, Rowe earned her BA from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts (1997) and her MA from Illinois Institute of Technology, Institute of Design, Chicago (2001). She is an instructor at Columbia College Chicago, and her exhibitions include About Face: Photographic Portraits from the Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago; Remnant at Open-End, Chicago; Terraria at Open-End Art, Chicago; A Different Now at Goldpeak Gallery, Chicago; and Interior Light at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. Photographs from A Different Now are included in the permanent collection of The Art Institute of Chicago. She has had two portfolios in the Midwest Photographers Project. January 10 through March 3, 2005, the Museum of Contemporary Photography showed a selection of the A Different Now pictures with photographs by Susan Carr in the exhibition Open House. Rowe has lived and worked in Chicago since 1999.