“It's tempting to believe the magic of photography is the way it allows the photographer to share a moment in time, or to tell a story about a place he visited. Consider instead, that photography's greatest power may be its ability to manifest our dreams on paper...”

Jean Miele is an American artist who uses photography to create “perfect” places. Inspired by a love of the black-and-white landscape tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries, he has been creating monochrome landscape photographs since the mid-1980s. His landscapes are solitary places, strong and quiet, intended to remind us that moments of perfection are possible – in photography, and in our lives.

Miele’s black-and-white prints are in numerous private collections and have been exhibited in galleries from New York to Norway, including a solo exhibition at the Fernbank Museum in Atlanta, Georgia entitled “Classical Landscape Photography and the Digital Darkroom” - which was seen by more than 100,000 viewers.

In both his fine-art photography and his assignment work for corporate clients, Jean is recognized for his finely crafted, highly stylized photographs. His images have appeared in literally thousands of publications, ranging from photo magazines, to advertising, to annual reports. Although known for his digital work, Miele’s background in the photographic craft is firmly rooted in the traditional “wet” darkroom. Initially, his idealized black-and-white landscapes were created with enlargers. Today, he fuses classical 20th century landscape techniques and ideals with 21st century technology, integrating traditional and digital techniques and materials.

Based in Brooklyn, New York, he lives with his wife Carol, and daughter Cally. Miele travels often, continually adding images to several ongoing bodies of work. For the last several years he has been focusing on a new series of black-and-white images entitled "Vestiges of Industry" which celebrates the vanishing beauty of pre-computer age machines and technology.

Also see Exhibitions

 Do you ever wake up in the morning and wonder, “will today be special?”

Sometimes I think I spend most of my life waiting. Waiting for something fantastic to happen: an outrageous coincidence that makes me believe god must exist; a moment in a café or at a party, when everything suddenly seems exactly as it should be; finding a breathtakingly beautiful place, bathed in stunning light, where time seems to stand still, if only for a moment.

I make photographs to remind myself that there is more to this world than meets the eye.

I make photographs to remind myself anything is possible.

I make photographs to remind myself the next magical moment in my life is absolutely worth waiting for - or searching for.

Philosophy: Digital Technology in the Service of the Mind's Eye

My photographs represent the fusion of classical 20th century landscape photography and 21st century technology. Many of my images pay homage to classic landscape photographs of the 20th century and I consider myself, photographically, a direct descendant of a very traditional line.

The Digital Darkroom Technique

I work with utmost respect for high standards of photographic craft and a deep appreciation for the work that has come before. In fact, I made traditional B&W prints in a "wet" darkroom for many, many years. These days, I use both digital and conventional cameras. I use Macs and Adobe Photoshop for all of the "darkroom" work. I print each image myself, because for me, especially with black-and-white, interpreting the image is as important a part of the process as taking the picture in the first place.

An Emerging Art Form

Digital photographic prints, like those I choose to create and exhibit, are merely the latest in a long line of photographic printing processes. Nineteenth-century salt prints, albumen prints, platinum prints and similar processes were all but replaced by silver prints during the 20th century. Although some photographers still choose to work with these older (and very beautiful) processes, silver prints are currently the most widely accepted form of black-and-white photographic objects d'art.

Although this is changing, there has been a great deal of debate over the acceptability of digital prints as fine art photographs. Generally, arguments that favor silver printing over digital printing emphasize the integrity of traditional handcrafted wet-darkroom prints over any kind of digital or machine-made prints. Ironically, this thinking closely parallels the sentiments of many 19th (and even 20th) century painters and art critics who, concerned about the implications of photomechanical reproduction, argued against the acceptance of photography itself as an art form.