people • places • stuff

I am Jack Sutton, a photographer, researcher, and writer based in Santa Barbara, California. My pictures range across several standard photography genres—landscape, portraits, street, and so on—but my work is not guided by any articulate philosophy or checklist of subjects, only by what strikes me as visually interesting. I find, though, that I’m drawn to subjects at the margins of everyday life: sidewalk people, street musicians, carnies, trudgers, trendoids, and desert rats; abandoned buildings, doors ajar, cracked windows, rusting oil tanks redeemed with graffiti, a gaudy house on a two-lane road; things overlooked or left behind. These can be sources of unexpected and ironic beauty, but they tend to flit by, registering only in the corner of the eye.

I hope you enjoy the photos. Drop me a line if you’re so inclined.

"I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs." —Garry Winogrand

"A photograph is neither taken nor seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos." —Henri Cartier-Bresson