Thomas Jackson (b. 1971, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a photographer and installation artist whose work explores the evolving relationship between the natural and manufactured worlds. Creating temporary, site-responsive installations in open landscapes, Jackson introduces vividly colored materials into forests, beaches, fields, and other environments, then photographs the resulting encounters between constructed form and natural forces.
Jackson's installations draw inspiration from collective systems found in nature—the flocking of birds, schooling of fish, insect swarms, super blooms, and other forms of emergent behavior. Earlier works employed mass-produced objects such as plastic cups, plates, straws, hula hoops, and takeout containers, suspending them in large formations that appear simultaneously alien to and strangely at home within their surroundings. The resulting photographs create an intentional tension between nature and artificiality, beauty and disruption, suggesting the uneasy relationship between consumer culture and the environments it inhabits.
In recent years, fabric has become central to Jackson's practice. Lightweight textiles respond directly to wind, gravity, changing light, and the contours of a landscape, allowing natural forces to become active collaborators in the work. These installations represent a shift from imposing a predetermined form upon a site toward a more fluid negotiation between the artist's intentions and the unpredictable conditions of the natural world. Their movement, fragility, and temporary existence are essential to the finished photographs.
Despite their surreal appearance, Jackson's photographs are created entirely in camera with minimal post-production. At a moment when digitally fabricated and AI-generated images increasingly blur distinctions between the real and imaginary, the physical construction behind Jackson's photographs has taken on additional significance. The works operate both as visual illusions and as records of actual, temporary events—elaborate interventions that existed in a particular landscape for the duration of their making.
Jackson's work has been exhibited widely. Recent institutional exhibitions include Chaotic Equilibrium, a solo exhibition at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, and Rapt in Wonder at the Houston Center for Photography. Earlier exhibitions include Emergent Behavior at the SFO Museum, Phenomenon at the Bolinas Museum, and Unnatural Phenomena at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. In 2023, Jackson created Collaborative Nature, a large-scale public installation in Tiburon, California, in which hundreds of brightly colored textile forms responded collectively to the winds of the San Francisco Bay.
His work is held in public, institutional, and corporate collections including the University of Oregon, Rotch Library at MIT, Center for Photography at Woodstock, U.S. Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka, JPMorgan Chase, Fidelity Investments, Delta Air Lines, Berkshire Partners, United Talent Agency, and others.
Born in Philadelphia and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Jackson earned a B.A. in History from the College of Wooster. He began his professional career in New York publishing and later worked as an editor and writer at Forbes Life. His interest in photography books eventually led him to photography, first through street photography and landscape before developing the hybrid practice of photography, sculpture, and installation for which he is known today. Largely self-taught, Jackson was named to the Critical Mass Top 50 in 2012, won the installation/still-life category of PDN's The Curator award in 2013, and received second place in CENTER's Curator's Choice Award in 2014.
