John Sykes, Jr. is a photographer and digital artist living and working in Little Rock. His work is breathtaking – and FUN! A newspaper photographer since the age of 15, John’s images are shaped by his experiences and range from the humane to the inane – always thought provoking, always engaging. More of his work can be found at Boswell Mourot Fine Art in Little Rock and at his website.

AAS: John, have you always lived in Arkansas?

JS: I’ve spent the vast majority of my life in Arkansas. I was born in central Florida, but my mom and dad moved the family back to their native Arkansas when I was three. I am a graduate of Heber Springs High School (go Panthers) and attended Arkansas State University and UA Little Rock. I left college before getting my journalism degree to take a job as a newspaper photographer. My family consisted of my mother and father and two older sisters. Both my parents are deceased. Dad was a truck driver and my mom a homemaker. Neither of my parents had much education but were curious and were both voracious readers, so having good books in the house was always important. Reading “The Story of Philosophy” by Will Durant was a big deal to me as a young person. I’m not sure how much of it I understood at the time but revealed to me the vastness of human perception. The greatest gift from my family is intense curiosity and an obsession with reading. If I was unable to read, I’m not sure I could retain my sanity.

AAS: So you didn’t really grow up in an artistic household? Where did you learn photography?

JS: No, but I grew up within a family of readers, and I think that a willingness to absorb information and a love of learning is a major part of the artistic process, at least for me. I was not a good learner in the strict sense; I didn’t do very well in school unless I was very interested in a subject. I always had other interests… art, science, writing, and eventually photography.
My father always enjoyed photography, at least in the taking of photos. He liked Polaroid cameras (he was an early adopter of instant camera technology) so picture taking was always going on around me. I later learned that my dad’s dad, Grandfather C.J. Sykes, was a photographer. I never knew him or his photography; he died shortly after I was born.
Growing up in a small town made learning photography in a formal way next to impossible. However, we did have a town library stocked with the Time-Life photography book series. Incredibly informative and beautifully printed, they were immensely valuable to me while I learned photography. This was well before digital photo technology. So, the craft of taking photos, developing film, printing pictures, was expensive, messy and somewhat arcane. That knowledge, mixing chemicals, working in a darkroom and eventually producing satisfactory prints, was what separated professionals from amateurs.
I basically learned those things on my own, with the help of the editors at Time-Life. I lived out in the sticks growing up, so after sundown it was possible to commander the family kitchen and turn it into a dark room. Growing up in an area without city lights or street lamps made it easy to make any room in the house into a darkroom. I was lucky our town had a small camera store, owned by a man kind enough to pass on knowledge and provide me with the budget-priced resources I needed to begin my career.
The landscapes around Heber Springs, located in the Ozark Foothills, are lovely and I determined to document everything in glorious black and white. As a pre-teen and young teen, I was a fan of Ansel Adams, who was immensely popular then. I also love the work of Paul Strand, Edward Weston and others of that school of “straight” photography.

“I don’t pound the pavement looking at art, I try to pound the pavement making art.”

AAS: You were a newspaper photographer for most of your life. How did you get started in that field?

JS: My hometown was unique in that it had two newspapers, both weeklies. For a town of 5,000 to have two competing newspapers was odd, but it gave me a chance to gain great experience. I starting shooting sports photos for the oldest of the two, the Cleburne County Times, when I was about 15 years old. The other paper, the Arkansas Sun, was owned and staffed by younger folks and I eventually ended up working for them. I worked full time there for two years while attending high school (which might partially account for my declining grade point average). I did both photography and some writing for the Sun and learned a tremendous amount about both during my time there.
I finally quit to attend college, but I spent most of my time taking photographs. I was incredibly immersed in learning photography and taking pictures, so like high school, college studies got short shrift. I moved to Little Rock and attended UALR, but I left school to work at the Sun again, which was under different ownership. I worked there for a couple of more years, then left again to attempt to finish college. I was married by that time and my wife then (now ex-wife) and I both attended UALR. Discovering that we had a child on the way, I applied for a photography job at the Arkansas Democrat. I missed out on a job opening initially but not long after I was hired as a staff photographer.
I was once again working in a town with two newspapers. My paper, the Democrat was taking on the dominant Arkansas Gazette. We embraced the role of underdog and surprisingly we ended up the last paper standing when the Gazette folded in 1991. I shot many house fires, press conferences and car wrecks. But I was also present at Bill Clinton’s first inaugural, I attended a Final Four basketball tournament, many football bowl games, flew into starving Somalia with the U.S. Air Force and met a lot of interesting people.

AAS: Do you carry your camera with you even if you’re not on a particular shoot? You’ve captured some terrific candid shots like Hells Kitchen.

JS: While working as a journalist, always having a camera around was a no brainer. Nowadays I don’t always carry a camera, but most times do. Having a phone with a decent camera is a great help. I don’t take a lot of pictures with my phone but having it is sometimes a blessing. The Hells Kitchen image was taken in Manhattan while on a trip there with my wife, Caroline. Visiting New York City for the first time without a decent camera was out of the question. We were sitting at a cafe when we spotted the young woman and her dog. She noticed as I raised my camera and gave me the peace sign while her dog peed on the ground. It was a fun moment. I’ve never considered myself a street photographer, out capturing images of folks unaware. But I do keep my eye out!

AAS: What are some, maybe more subtle, differences between journalistic photography and fine art photography?

JS: Photojournalists are attempting to illustrate or explain a story or a moment. That sometimes means that what might be considered the best photo, the image with the best composition or peak moment, might NOT be the best journalistic image. Many if not most times they are the same, but sometimes the image that best illustrates a story might present things in a more informational but less artful way. The difference can be subtle.
The job of a photojournalist is to inform as well as entertain. Photographs that do both are the goal. Fine art photographers are free to include elements that don’t necessarily pertain to the subject and would be distracting to readers attempting to understand what is being presented to them. Of course, again, the best photos are ones encompassing both ideals.

AAS: Your landscapes and nature scenes are breathtaking. Some you’ve done in black and white and some in color. Two examples I really love are Little Red River and Eye Cloud Colorado. Would you talk about those and the use of black and white versus color in landscape work?

JS: The easy answer is that the choice is incredibly subjective. Some things I see in the viewfinder involve shape and composition and the best way I feel to communicate what I am seeing is to produce a monochrome image. Light, dark and form come through best without any distraction from a bright color – or simply that the subject is mostly monochrome as it stands, and the shape and composition are its outstanding features. That’s what I recall from shooting Little Red River.
Other times the color is the subject. Eye Cloud Colorado features a clear graphic element, that of an eye, but it was the color of the reflected sky and the pink warmness of the cloud that made me decide to fire the shutter.

AAS: You are doing a lot of digital work now – something you call ‘Psykographs’. Before we get into examples, talk about what Psykographs are, and your process for creating them.

“Life and art share attributes. Some of my favorite shared attributes are surrealism and absurdism.”

JS: I think my digital work is a reaction to the strictness of the forms of photography I most practiced. I shot landscapes on black and white film, with cameras on tripods, printed in darkrooms without cropping. These were both limiting and freeing, if that makes sense. I shot news photographs while attempting to adhere to journalistic standards… show a subject without bias or prejudice, do not manipulate or alter an image in any way to deceive the viewer. This was an ethical standard that sometimes precluded producing… fine art..
‘Psykograph’ is a name I coined for my own personal artistic vision. To be frank, digital photography freed me from reality. It’s about being free to add, subtract or enhance anything I feel creates the best image, the best art. It could be as simple as aligning parts of an image into what I felt was the ideal composition, or perhaps combining dozens of elements into digital collages.
Some of my Psykographs are mistaken for drawings or paintings. I can see the raising of eyebrows by some when I tell them they are derived from photographs and are giclée, that fancy word for inkjet prints. Some people believe that by using digital images and computer programs to create art, one simply types a command and some art-making program shoots out an image. Some work can gestate for weeks, months or years before I consider them close to finished. It’s sometimes tedious, but I do greatly enjoy the process. At least when I find a stopping point!
Life and art share attributes. Some of my favorite shared attributes are surrealism and absurdism. I’m quite insular as far as my work is concerned. I enjoy visiting museums and galleries and always leave incredibly inspired. I don’t pound the pavement looking at art, I try to pound the pavement making art. Which probably leaves me woefully under informed about the current state of both photography and painting.

AAS: Rock Cloud Goat is certainly quirky, but your use of form and color make it so interesting and fun to look at.

JS: Rock Cloud Goat is one of my most recent works and reflects my never-ending attempt to simplify. It is also a perverse reaction to disparaging remarks from a photo editor about my tendency to center elements in my compositions. Certainly, it reflects my enjoyment of visual fruits of the schools of absurdism and surrealism. I enjoy surprising people and confounding them. While this work is an attempt to do both, I cannot explain why the image is what it is. While I do like clouds (they often figure in my work) and rocks (an early affection), I do not have a special love for goats.
What often turns the tables on and confounds me is being asked what I was thinking when I created a piece of art. It is hard to sound intelligent when muttering, “Uh, I don’t, uh, know really…”

AAS: The images with your dogs are wonderful and often what someone associates with your work. In Dog We Trust has so many profound elements. Would you comment on how that piece came about?

JS: Irreverent might be one word that best describes me, so when I heard the phrase “God, Please Make Me the Person My Dog Thinks I Am”, then seeing an image from an old religious tract, I was inspired me to create In Dog we Trust. My parents were Baptists, but their hearts weren’t in it. But I was exposed to a certain amount of religious literature and imagery that made a very strong impression on me at an early age. Combining irreverence with a sincere love of dogs results in works like these.
The Psykographic digital collage In Dog We Trust combines photos of two of my dogs along with many other elements, including old images from religious tracts. All parts I shift around, change, shrink or enlarge, darken or lighten.

AAS: Another of my favorite pieces is The Plane Truth. Would you talk about that work?

JS: I am a child of the Cold War, so the retro/vintage elements in this work are appealing to me. I grew up fascinated by science and technology, especially the exploration of space, so images of spacecraft and airplanes always interested me. I cannot count the number of model planes and spaceships I put together as a kid, but I probably inhaled way too much glue back then. I also find it amusing to read odd or disconcerting messages on public signs. Put all that together and you get this piece of art. And you can’t go wrong with flying saucers. Although I don’t believe we are being visited by aliens. Life is surreal enough; we don’t need to imagine stuff.

AAS: How has all the years documenting society – the beautiful and the ugly – and traveling the world shaped your current work?

JS: I’m not quite a world traveler, but I have gotten to the UK several times, along with France and Norway. But the cliche about travel is a cliche because it’s true… it does broaden you. I’ve also been to New Mexico many times, along with Nevada, Colorado and Utah as well. Those are beautiful natural spots that I love to photograph.
My wife Caroline, who saved me from myself and has taken me many places after I tricked her into marrying me a few years ago, lived in Europe for over 20 years and has given me perspective on society and my place in it. I remain somewhat optimistic about humanity, though the last few years have severely dented that outlook. I’ve seen people, though my work and through traveling, at their best and worst and I marvel both at the humanity humans exhibit and the pettiness they spew. Humanity… a work in progress.

AAS: One of your most intense (in a good way) digital collages is America The Beautiful. Would you talk about its imagery?

JS: This work represents, in a sense, a set of bookends. An early version of it stands as one of the earliest Psykographs I created, and this latest version is one of the newest. The late version is a bit simplified and streamlined from a much older work.
It started from an examination of serial killers and viewing their mugshots. The underlying facial image is of a serial killer, although I cannot recall exactly which one. It’s all about the eyes. The point was to examine, in a sort of stream of consciousness way, what is it about the mind of someone who can kill. I cannot envision what it would take to do the things these killers do, but the imagery is indeed an attempt to do just that. It also is a vision of the state of mind required to adhere to beliefs that justify killing. That includes political beliefs such as Fascism or religious whims that turn the belief that god is love into god wants me to kill. These days the state of mind of the United States seems to be teetering on a bloody knife edge. So, therefore, America the Beautiful.

AAS: Are you still doing a lot of portrait work and commercial work?

JS: I marvel at the fact that I have been a working photographer for well over 40 years and I still enjoy doing it. I am doing some portrait and commercial work and want to do more. I am attempting to start a second career doing freelance photography, but the timing of my departure from the newspaper near the beginning of the Covid pandemic has made that a bit problematic. I enjoy portraiture; I produced almost all of the portraits used in the Democrat-Gazette’s High Profile section over the last five years or so, so I feel anyone wanting a fun, candid-style portrait should give me a holler.

But I won’t do weddings! There are local folks who do that very well so I won’t be trespassing there. But anything else? I love music and listening to bands, so I’ve always wanted to do band portraits and document the work bands do. I also enjoy photographing ballet and was in the process of documenting a local dance company before Covid shut everything down. I’ve done a bit of child photography and enjoyed that. I raised two kids from my first marriage and have two granddaughters. I have helped raise two stepchildren courtesy of my wife Caroline.
A project I am working on is documenting, in a sort of Ansel Adams-ish way, the Little Rock Parks system, which I envision as either a show or a book. I am also working on a show to be called ‘Immediate Data of Consciousness’, featuring a wide range of works, which I hope will happen when the Covid pandemic allows.

 So, like a well-cared-for dog, I have all of my shots and I’m eager to please!