Jesse Boyd-Reid

Jesse Boyd-Reid is a Melbourne based contemporary artist working photographically to explore the effects of natural and constructed environments on family and intimate human relationships.

Jesse grew up in northern New South Wales, before completing his undergraduate degree in Fine Arts (Photography) at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. In 2018 he was awarded the Lionel Gell Scholarship for Artistic Excellence and was accepted into the Arctic Trust’s residency program in Svalbard, Norway in 2019.

Born into a family of artists; Jesse’s life has revolved around artistic practice from a young age. He has developed a refined sensibility to the still image. Curious about the emotional nuance of everyday life, Jesse uses his own family as his subject matter, to reveal ways in which the personal is an expression of the universal. Jesse’s work builds on a long tradition of photographers concerned with the intimate vernacular of personal relationships.

Jesse explores the intersection between contemporary art and documentary photography by both documenting and re-framing family gatherings, ceremonies, and rituals. In our era of hype and visual overload, Jesse’s skills of quiet observation gift us powerful images that are an affirmation of the value of direct attention to lived experience.

A small pool of white light

The photographs in this body of work follow the ebb and flow of my family’s passage through life. They document personal relationships as well as intimate spaces and remind us of the cyclical nature of life and death.

This work springs from the simple act of being present and capturing moments. The images do not aim to be definitive or final, they simply claim agency for witnessing. These images exist as a collection of unmediated moments; private scenes of intimacy, belief, ceremony and stillness that my family has allowed me to document in an effort to understand the range of experiences that make up our lives. Whether a psycho-sexual encounter with a snake or a moment of light falling on an object or an absent but tangible presence, through the collation of these photographic portraits, still-lives, and landscapes, an intimate monograph of family life is woven together.

To view more of Jesse Boyd-Reid’s work please visit his website.