This mother and son have more than most in common; Leah Oates and son Maximilien St-Jacques share a passion for photography.Oates’s grandfather was an amateur photographer who passed on his interest to her. When she began art school she was a painter and printmaker, but says she always referenced photography in both and eventually realized she was a photographer.

She studied at Mass Art, Rhode Island School of Design and at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Oates also studied in Rome on a year abroad program at RISD and at Edinburgh College of Art on a Fulbright Fellowship.

Like his mother, St-Jacques was drawn to photography at a young age. “My mom and dad are both artists and I’ve been looking at art since I was in stroller,” he says. “My parents brought me to shows in New York and I absorbed all of this from age three onward. I had my first camera at ten and began taking photos. After studying chemistry in college, I decided to study photography. Since then and I’ve become passionate about this path.” Max studied photography at the School for Visual Arts in New York and will be studying photography in September in Toronto. A Canadian-American, St-Jacques spends half the year in Brooklyn and the other half in Toronto.

“My husband, a video artist, and I took thousands of photos of Max from birth to age two and at certain age he requested that we ask him before taking an image of him. Max then claimed the camera for himself. I think he was becoming a photographer as he turned the camera on his parents and utilized the camera to explore the world around him. I have done portfolio reviews with Max as I have done with many artists, and made suggestions on which work I think is visually strong and worth focusing on.

“I’m drawn to nature, the landscape and to the changes in both,” says Oates. “I grew up in rural Maine from age twelve to eighteen, and it’s just got into my system. My grandmother was a biologist and environmentalist. I was very close to both she and my grandfather, and I think this also influenced me.”
Among the artists Oates admires and inspire her are Man Ray, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, David Hockney, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Steichen, Helen Levitt, Diane Arbus, Sebastião Salgado, Robert Frank, Alfred Stieglitz and Lee Friedlander.

St-Jacques loves the work of Edward Burtynsky and Trevor Paglen. While his photography is different from his mother’s, he is also interested in nature and landscape. He uses a Canon digital camera.

“My work documents and captures daily moments that have varied colors and shapes in landscapes both urban and in nature. Landscape photography is about the interaction between humans and the environment as it changes and is shaped by people who affect the locations where they live,” he says.

Today Oates shoots with a Pentax k-1000 and 35 mm film camera that her father gave her in college. “I use multiple exposure and lenses. I then scan all my negatives and play with color, and composition similar to the painting or printmaking I did in the past,” she says. The results are a magical and mysterious blend of ex-ray precision and fleeting, natural beauty.

St.-Jacques, on the other hand, says “I photograph when I see something that interests me so keep me camera with me often in case. I use color and occasionally black and white with a tint. I’m mainly a color photographer as it’s more contemporary.”


“I use color,” says Oates, “as I can have more latitude to visually play with it. Black and white is timeless, historic and monumental, which is very compelling, but I aim to communicate something of the moment, and color pulses with vitality and life which I love.”

She explains that her ongoing series, The Transitory Space, deals with urban and natural locations that are transforming due to time, altered natural conditions and a continual human imprint. This series articulates fluctuation in the photographic image and captures movement through time and space.

“I make multiple exposures on specific frames in the camera which allows me to display a more complete correlation of experiences that a single exposure just misses,” she says. “Multiple exposures express the way we experience the world more accurately.” They also create movement while catching the moment.

Looking forward, St-Jacques anticipates his future study of photography and “refining his vision.”

Oates says her main goal “is just to make my work and to keep evolving as an artist. Art brings magic and meaning to my life. It’s like air, water and love.”
—By Elizabeth Meade Howard, Art Editor



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