BIOGRAPHY
Jan Reiss is a photographer, world traveler, and nature lover, whose rich color digital compositions reflect her respect, admiration, and enthusiasm for the beauty of life in all its myriad forms. Largely self-taught, Jan tells a story unique to the viewer through images that are both simple and complex.

Growing up in Seattle, Jan was immersed in the natural beauty of Washington State's Olympic and Cascade mountains. Her love of photography as an art form was sparked during her formative years living and traveling in a variety of countries, including France, Kenya, and Morocco. Jan's work speaks from the heart and reflects a cultural diversity, textured beauty, and rich humanity through a perspective that is at once expansively global and intimately local.

Jan’s work is in private collections across the country, as well as in Australia, Germany, and Mexico. A multilingual Fulbright scholar with a PhD in linguistics from MIT, Jan combines photography with her work as a communications professional at Harvard Medical and Dental Schools. She has a husband and two children, as well as two cats and a dog, and she lives in Massachusetts in a house next to woods with wildlife and a stream—an environment that she treasures every day.

ARTIST STATEMENT
My goal as an artist is to create visible poetry to uplift the human spirit, whether through studies of nature, still lifes, impressionistic pieces, or more abstract work. Much of my earlier photography involved documenting the grace and elegance of nature through close-up images of flowers, plants, and insects. I continue to believe in the importance of bringing to light those tiny parts of the natural realm that are so often hidden from human consciousness. These other worlds have an order and beauty that exist quite apart from the day-to-day human reality but are nonetheless just as important.

My work has evolved from photographing only nature itself to also photographing objects from the natural world in human contexts. I often choose subjects that some might find imperfect and fit only for rejection: a broken shell, a dried flower, a dead bird. I find a haunting beauty in these objects, and in photographing them I try to capture their original essence while at the same time acknowledging that something important has been lost.

In my most recent work, I have moved toward more abstract ways of observing the world around me. I am particularly interested in images viewed through glass and water, as well as reflections. I enjoy the idea that each viewer will bring a unique perspective to these images and may find something that resonates with his or her own story.

As I travel through life with my camera, this is my mission: to embrace the unexpected yet rejoice in the everyday; to admire the symmetrical yet revel in the random; to let my heart always be open to what is before me; and to appreciate to their very depths the moments when the art of the world reveals itself, taking my breath away in joy, in recognition, in connection—and to capture all that magic with the click of a shutter.