I received my MFA in Photography from the University of Michigan, and my BA in Photography from the University of Dayton.  Life has taken me to different places around the world.  I was born in Chateauroux, France, spent parts of my childhood in Germany, and lived in Michigan and Ohio before making South Bend, Indiana, my home thirteen years ago.  I teach digital photography and electronic imaging at Bethel University, and Ivy Tech Community College.

I have always been drawn to innovative processes of image making, and to new visual experience.  A wide range of art has influenced my work.  In 15th century Bruges, I would be a student of Jan Van Eyck, creating complex spaces through triptychs and breathtaking images through elaborate detail.  Had I been born in 17th century Holland, I would have been making perspective boxes and cylindrical paintings as I share their fascination with unique and experimental ways of making art.  In the 19th century, I would have been exploring impressionist visions, and in the 20th century, integration of art and modern technology.

In my creative process, every autostereogram begins as a carefully orchestrated still life installation.  I photograph it from several angles, merge those espials into a single image, digitally remake the image, and finally, with the help of a lenticular lens, transform it into a dimensional lenticular construct which relies on the active participation of the viewer to be fully brought to life.  The boundaries of the static picture plane are broken and transformed, with elements of the image either being submerged or floating above the surface.  The slightest change of the viewing angle or the light allows for infinite possibilities of aesthetic discovery.   Lenticular art, like live theater, never repeats itself. 

Over the years, my work has taken several paths: memory explorations, which transform human documents, such as old photographs and daily life trivia, into dimensional still life meditations on history and immediacy; fantastic transformations of old tech and other banal objects; and abstract conceptual explorations of strata, light, and movement. 

Jeff Combs
2019