08/17/2026
I’ve been thinking about fine art photographer Jack Leigh, a lot lately. Special thanks to Laney Contemporary for their fine showing of his work.
Before I understood photography, I understood his images. My grandmother and I used to sit at bedtime with "The Ogeechee: A River and Its People," slowly turning the pages and inventing entire lives for the people and places inside them. Those nights taught me how to look more closely at the world and how to imagine it more deeply than it first appears.
A photograph is only a split second, but what we bring to it is everything: memory, imagination, recognition, longing. That’s what still draws me to Jack's work, not just what is captured, but what is completed in the viewer.
Seeing Jack Leigh’s work again recently brought all of that back. Not just nostalgia, but a way of seeing I didn’t realize I had been carrying with me.
The day after Esther Griffin Photography took me to the artist's talk, I found myself in the Georgia woods noticing everything differently, the light through the oaks, Spanish moss hanging still in the air, water moving through the marsh grass. I kept thinking, Jack would have seen that.
I’m not a photographer, and I’m not trying to be. That would miss the point entirely. What his work does is something quieter and more generous than imitation, it slows you down. It asks you to pay attention. It reminds you that looking itself is a kind of practice.
And in a way, that’s what PTC has always been about for me.
Port Town Collective is a reminder to see differently. To notice what’s already there. To treat the everyday with care and curiosity. It’s about staying with a moment long enough for it to reveal something back to you.
That feels connected to Jack Leigh’s legacy too, not just the photographs themselves, but the way they teach you how to look.