Spiritual Tourism: About Bill Jorden

Bill Jorden is an award-winning photographer, video and television producer and writer, and a lecturer and consultant on photography and the growing role of spirituality and consciousness in society. His "Spiritual Tourism" series has been honored in an unprecedented ten national competitions in recent years, including two first prizes.

Right:
Bill Jorden, west coast of Ireland, August 1997.

The March/April 1993 issue of ZOOM featured an 8-page portfolio of Jorden's earlier panoramic tourist photographs from around the world. The summer 1996 issue of Lapis, a new national publication of New York's Open Center, featured four of his panoramic images from the Himalayas. His photographs and writings have also been published in Popular Photography, Camera 35, U.S. Camera, Travel & Leisure and Nikon World, and in a five-page layout in the official Nikon Handbook. In other publications, Body Mind Spirit in 1991 featured his "Yogic Flyers" color photographs -- the first color essay on this subject ever published. In October 1992, Jorden's Yogic Flying photograph and an interview with him were published in the Literary Gazett of Moscow, Russia's most prestigious weekly publication.

Right:
Pilgrim descending trekking trail from Gaumukh Glacier where a 29-kilometer-long glacier provides the source of the Bhagirathi River, which joins with the Alakhnanda River to form the Ganges) toward Gangotri, Indian Himalayas, June 1995.

Jorden's other recent "Spiritual Tourism" awards include acceptance in the Silvermine Guild Arts Center's Spectra '97 Exhibition judged by curator Robert Sobieszek of the L.A. County Museum of Art, and in Soho Photo Gallery's 1997 National Photography Competition, judged by Willis Hartshorn, the Director of the International Center of Photography. His work was also honored in the 5th Annual Phillips Mill Photographic Exhibition, judged by Stephen Perloff, Editor of The Photo Review. In February, it received an award in the first biannual Photo Americas Photography Competition, judged by Roy Flukinger of the University of Texas, J. Brooks Joyner, Director of the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Jo Leggett, Editor and Publisher of Photo Metro, and Peter Hay Halpert of American Photo.

He was also a finalist for his essay on "Spiritual Tourism" in the 1996 Golden Light Awards, sponsored by the Maine Photographic Workshops and judged by Kathy Ryan of The New York Times Magazine, and Janet Swan-Bush of Bulfinch Press. An image from his new series, "Modern Nature," was selected by Emmet Gowin for The Photo Review's 13th Annual Photography Competition in the summer of 1997.

Jorden's other recent "Spiritual Tourism" honors include selection by Mr. Sobieszek for the Carmel, California, Center for Photographic Art's Fifth Annual Awards Exhibit in 1995, and an award from curator Michael Walls in a nationally juried exhibition in Soho in 1996. His work was also included in the first two Houston International FotoFest Auctions in 1995 and 1996, and in Soho Photo's 25th Anniversary Auction in 1996, as well as in the Photo America's first biannual Auction in 1997. Among his other honors, his "Botanical Landscapes" won Grand Prize for color portfolio in the Maine Photographic Workshops' 12th Annual Show in 1986.

My quest to examine this relationship has taken me to such "unspoiled" places as Cape Breton, Nova Scotia; the South Island of New Zealand; the fjords of Norway; the dunes of Denmark; Point Lobos, California; and the Florida Keys. To render the landscape with view-camera quality, while capturing the tourists with 35 mm. spontaneity, I designed a light-weight, hand-held panoramic 6x12 cm. camera.

As Executive Producer of "LUMINA: Reports on the Arts," Jorden traveled around the world to produce video documentaries on many leading art figures, including Georgia O'Keeffe, Keith Haring, Pina Bausch and Buckwheat Zydeco. "LUMINA" received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the AT&T Foundation and PBS-TV. It was broadcast nationally as a one-hour special over the PBS television network in 1988 to critical acclaim, including reviews in The New York Times, the Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. "LUMINA" has also been honored and shown at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, and at international film and video festivals in France, Spain and the former republic of Yugoslavia.

Bill Jorden was one of the founders of Photograph magazine, the first independent publication devoted exclusively to photography as a fine art. An early pioneer of color photography issues, he published articles in Photograph and AfterImage magazines on William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz and Neal Slavin, as well as on Robert Adams and Ralph Gibson. His seminal article on the relationship of art, science and consciousness was featured in the premier issue of Camera Lucida.

Jorden received a B.A. in Journalism and an M.A. in English Education and Psychology from New York University, where he also pursued Ph.D. studies in English. While an undergraduate, he was a member of Kappa Tau Alpha, a national honorary journalism society. He also studied photography and art at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester with Nathan Lyons, Syl Labrot and Sonia Sheridan, at the School of Visual Arts with Shelley Rice, and at N.Y.U. with Barbara Michaels.

Bill Jorden has lectured on photography at several schools and universities, including Columbia and the School of Visual Arts. He is a member of the Steering Committee for the Lower Manhattan Loft Tenants, which represents thousands of artists in New York, and is curator of photography for the National Video Center, the nation's largest video editing facility, also in New York.