The road to Kam Jacoby’s current retrospective has taken him through advanced degrees in printmaking, graphic design, and an MFA in photography. He thinks about photographs a lot and works hard at the image making process. He uses a variety of cameras, both film and digital, and prints, mounts, or mats, most of the images himself.
Along the way, he worked as a photo lab tech, taught art at a local high school, and photography at several colleges, including Allan Hancock in Santa Maria. “Teaching has provided me … a degree of freedom to pursue whatever [photographic] ideas capture my attention,” he says.
One of those ideas is a selection of 12 prints, titled “Central Valley,” which he started in 2023. His plan was for a solo trip though 30 of the Valley’s small and big towns, using Route 99 as a starting point. “Just me and the camera. I didn’t really know what I was going to shoot,” he said.
