Artist: Jay Hochheiser

Jay Hochheiser was born and raised in Coney Island, Brooklyn in 1961, where he lived until moving to nearby Canarsie at age 10. The photographer took his first photographs on his father's Leica camera during a junior high school trip. The artist still painfully recalls how he absentmindedly left the camera on the grass, returning later to find it destroyed by a lawn mower. "I still remember being frozen with fear after finding springs and bits of metal strewn across the lawn," he says.

Hochheiser's relationship with the camera has paralleled his coming of age. At 16 he volunteered at NYU's psychology department during the summer. "Armed with my 35mm camera, I used to wander around Greenwich Village taking color photographs; color made me very happy at the time." Subsequently, he studied at Union College, Schenectady, NY, before returning to New York to complete his degree and pursue social work at NYU.

"I was always good at listening, observing and responding to people," he says. For Hochheiser, photography and psychotherapy go hand in hand. "In both disciplines one's attention must be wrapped and focused on the subject. Both psychotherapy and photography require that one take a hard, long look at life and seek the extraordinary in the ordinary." Hochheiser shoots what he happens upon by chance, never rearranging or setting up a scene. "I observe and record, leaving a scene just as I found it. I try to stay undetected by my subjects," he says.

The photographer investigated darkroom technique upon moving to London in 2000. There he studied at Saint Martin's College of Art & Design, under Peter Cattrell; the City of Westminster College - School of Art & Design; and informally with Natasha Bult, director of Black & White School of Photography. During his time abroad, he began working almost exclusively in black and white, a technique he prefers for its minimalist, reductive qualities.

Hochheiser's photographs have been featured at McKay Imaging Studio and Gallery, Red Bank, NJ; the Monmouth Beach Cultural Society, Monmouth, NJ; the Mitchell Sanborn Gallery, Keyport, NJ and The Coffee Gallery, London. Europe Redrawn (March 2007) at Café Joul with SEFA was Hochheiser's first solo exhibition in NYC.