Spencer Lowell

Spencer Lowell (born 1983) is an American photographer based in Los Angeles.[1]

Spencer Lowell
Born1983 (age 37–38)
Los Angeles
NationalityAmerican
EducationArt Center College of Design
Known forPhotography
Websitewww.spencerlowell.com

Lowell first gained international attention with his photographs of the Mars rover in 2007.[2] He has contributed photographs to cover stories of publications such as Time, Wired, Fortune, and Popular Science. His works have been described as pairing "scientific pragmatism with an unbridled creative energy."[3][4][5][6]

Career and style

Lowell was born and grew up in Los Angeles.[7] He became a photographer at the age of 16, working for a one-hour photo lab. After high school, he worked in several camera stores and labs while practicing photography as a hobby.[8]

During his last semester at Art Center College of Design, Lowell took a printmaking class. Since he had always been fascinated by space exploration, he created a series of platinum palladium prints of Hubble imagery. Printing them as negatives, Lowell created an analogy for the creation of art: wherever the emulsion was left on the paper, that would be where matter was forming in space. When Lowell displayed the prints for his graduation exhibition in 2007, he met Dan Goods, the visual strategist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who commissioned him to photograph labs and scientists at JPL. Taking an interest in the Mars rover Curiosity project, he photographed it throughout its construction for over two years. The photos were picked up by several major magazines, including a ten-page story in Wired UK. According to Lowell himself, this work propelled his career.[2][9]

In 2012, Lowell was an artist-in-residence of the Tara Oceans expedition.[10] He rejoined Tara in 2014, documenting the work of the sailors and the scientists who analyzed plastic pollution in the Mediterranean Sea.[11]

Lowell has contributed photographs to several cover stories in major magazines.[3][4][5][12][6] He made his first cover for Time on 30 September 2014, when the first case of Ebola had been diagnosed in the United States. As the magazine was to go to print the next day, Lowell conceptualized, pre-produced, shot, edited and retouched the cover image (a man in a hazmat suit) in a single day.[13]

Much of his commercial portfolio includes portraits of scientists and technology,[14] such as an auto plant, an airborne research lab,[2] an "infrastructure tourist",[15] or a work of art that is powered by magnetism.[16] His works have been described as pairing "scientific pragmatism with an unbridled creative energy."[3][17]

In 2016, a series of images by Lowell was acquired by the Queens Museum. Entitle New York, New York, New York, the images were from a scale model of New York City and also sold by the museum at the Frieze Art Fair.[18][19]

Personal life

Spencer Lowell lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons.[7]

References
  1. Taylor Umlauf (2 January 2013). "Preparing for the Rose Parade". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  2. Conor Risch (13 January 2016). "Career-Changing Personal Projects: Spencer Lowell's Mars Rover Study". Photo District News. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  3. "Spencer Lowell". Annenberg Space for Photography. 30 March 2015. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  4. Carol LeFlufy (24 November 2015). "Spencer Lowell FORTUNE Magazine cover". Eye Forward. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  5. "Popular Science (US)". coverjunkie. 31 December 2015. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  6. "Spencer Lowell's Cover for Wired UK". Commune. 4 November 2012. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  7. "Information". Spencer Lowell. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  8. Kate Osba (23 April 2012). "10 minutes with Spencer Lowell". This Is The What. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  9. Tom Cheshire (4 July 2011). "In pictures: Wired meets Nasa's next Mars rover". Wired UK. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  10. "Tara Oceans". Nowness. 6 November 2012. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  11. "Tara Méditerranée: when art meets science". Tara Expeditions. 2014. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  12. "FT Weekend Magazine". coverjunkie. 9 June 2013. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  13. Heidi Volpe (21 October 2014). "The Daily Edit – Time Magazine: Spencer Lowell". aPhotoEditor. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  14. A. Moret. "Spencer Lowell: The Urban Alchemist". Installation. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  15. Allison Arieff (29 October 2015). "The Infrastructure Tourist". The California Sunday Magazine. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  16. Shayna Rose Arnold (6 December 2012). "Hot Shot: On Location at LACMA With Photographer Spencer Lowell". Los Angeles Magazine. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  17. Matthew Segal (20 April 2015). "Q&A: Capturing the Los Angeles Port Police in Action". Los Angeles Magazine. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  18. "Spencer Lowell Frames Views of New York from 1:1200 Architectural Scale Model". Design Boom. Retrieved 19 May 2016.
  19. Syrkett, Asad (11 May 2016). "Aerial Photos of Tiny NYC Scale Model Show Beautifully Dense City". Curbed. Retrieved 19 May 2016.
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