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 was heavily influenced by the philosophy of photography as given through the works of Paul Caponigro, a master black&white photographer whose workshop John attended when he was seventeen.

John has spent the past twenty-five 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-long career to, well, building the rectangles. He’s been recently quoted as stating, “... separating yourself from the definition of your work is much like trying to bite your own teeth.”

John loves hiking through rain forests in lousy weather, traditional film, pomegranates & a good Pecorino, although he cautions others not to combine the last two all at once. 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