About
Katharine T Jacobs is a graduate of Oregon College of Art and Craft. Originally from the rural foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Katharine began her education at California College of the Arts in Oakland, California. There she learned to shoot with a large format camera and discovered Polaroid type 55 film. In 2007 she moved to Portland, purchased her own 4×5 camera and started photographing friends, family and countless strangers. Her focus in street photography and large format shooting would inspire her journey across the United States and the production of her largest body of work to date; American Strangers.
In 2018 Katharine was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis which greatly impacted her life and her work. From the time of her first symptoms up until her official diagnosis she was working with Lyceum Portland and making images to help her cope with the physical struggles and fear of the reality that she may be living with a chronic illness, which resulted in creating the series Heavy Handed As a conceptual artist, she found the correlation between vitamin D deficiency and was inspired to make Cyanotypes, which are exposed with sunlight. Shortly after her diagnosis Katharine escaped an emotionally abusive marriage and moved back to rural California. Her series Intimacy started out subconsciously and simultaneously to her work on Heavy Handed. When her marriage was exposed to be a guise for infidelity and drug use she was able to see that the work was truly about lack of honesty, longing for love, touch and human connection. Katharine continues to use portraiture as a main focus in her work in both the studio, in nature and her backyard. In junction with multiple exposures and mixed media she uses the photograph as a vehicle and a reference point that empowers the viewer to interact with objects and items they may not have. Katharine Jacobs lives and works in Mokelumne Hill, California and is a graduate student at San Jose State University.
