Propaganda

At an impressionable age when the Apollo mission made its historic lunar landing, John Emrys’ first career choice was bio- genetics. Balking at the concept of one plus two equaled three, Emrys kept seeing the answer as a pleasing shape. His love for physics & chemistry prevailed upon a right- brained streak, leading to a discovery of the nature of light & how it plays on everything.

Mostly self-taught [leaving others blameless for his level of accomplishment], Emrys has been heavily influenced by the philosophy of photography as given through the life works of Richard Avedon, Paul Caponigro, Helmut Newton & Albert Watson.

John has spent the past twenty years generating commercial photography for such clients as Clinique, ScotiaBank, The Wool Bureau of Canada, Labatt’s, H20 Cosmetics USA, Playboy Lingerie & numerous editorial magazines. He has recently produced a fifth fine-art project for the distinguished Canadian artist, Michael Snow. He's won some awards, too: several CAPIC, Nikon, Profoto and PDN Gold & Silvers, many of them for his ‘Body for Soul Lingerie’ LA campaigns & ongoing self-promotional series.

His decision to side-step commercial shooting for a year led to the Humber Media Copywriting Program, which he attended full-time. While much delight was found afterwards in writing for advertising, John found it to be somewhat absurd as a career choice [thankyou Trevor Pedler, for saying so]. A natural sense of art direction & design [nourished from years of working alongside creative directors & editors] turned out to be what the Grail really represented & for that, Emrys turned to a long-lived affair with fine carpentry.

So, after many years of arranging things in rectangles, Emrys recently formally split his life career towards, well, building with rectangles. He’s been oft-quoted as saying, “... always an interesting day on set when the assistant notices you've absently packed a small sledgehammer in with the lightheads.”

John loves hiking through rain forests in lousy weather, traditional film, pomegranates & Spanish sheep's cheese, although he admits the latter two in combination often produce nasty hiccups. Lately he prefers shooting fine-art nudes more often than not. A belief in the pure difference between perception & perspective has remained, while continuing to make use of metaphor in his photography.

Jeff Boxer, 2006