Having found the perfect spot, all that remained was to wait. Then wait some more. And keep waiting.
Surely, the prize would come bounding by eventually, and the tedious minutes that melted into hours would yield its commensurate reward. As an aged alligator rests patiently in a thicket adjacent to his prey’s watery path, so too does the photographer lie in ambush, anticipating his subject’s arrival to complete in just a millisecond the still moment that will forever document more than just a fleeting image, but capture interactions and emotions universal in the human experience.
For John D. Elliott, these moments come not as a royal procession sashays down a street lined with captive proles and cultists, but in society’s underbelly where human beings work, play, toil, laugh and cry. These are the places that truly document the pulse of humanity and with his camera Elliott has created a visual record where one does not simply look at a picture, but recognizes and even dissolves into the synergy captured by his lens. In all his photos, there is a sense not only of fine art where lines, lighting and expression become a clinic for the genre, but also a poignancy that refuses to smack you in the face and just simply whispers in your ear. One may not be able to define it precisely at first glance, but one does realize they are witnessing something with a deeper meaning, an essay on who we are as a being – warts and graces all.
Elliott’s current exhibit, aptly named “The Human Pulse,” is on display at The Appleton Museum where amateur photographers, seasoned professionals in the craft, and even the lay person who doesn’t know the difference between an aperture and a shutter, can appreciate the genius of what stands before them. The exhibit, in which all photographs are in black-and-white, spans over 40 years and 17 countries of Elliott’s journeys through more than 60 nations. Nowhere is a celebrity and nowhere is a prefabricated pose – everywhere are universal moments and actions that anyone would recognize, be they from Morocco, Milan, or McIntosh.
“If people are wearing uniforms or something like that, like at a parade, I wouldn’t photograph that,” Elliott says. “What you’ll see (in the exhibit) is me going beyond the veil of tourism and seeing where the real people are. I’m also interested in trying to humanize everybody, find a common human element, a common denominator in the people.”
To achieve this, Elliott has a simple strategy: abandon the guided tour, find an appealing backdrop, then wait for the relevant subjects to appear. Often a Jobian patience is exhausted during the wait, making the payout that much sweeter. As an example, Elliott points to a photograph in the exhibit titled, “The Bay.” The photo was taken in 2021 at a swimming spot off the beaten path. The perspective is from slightly above, back in the brush with some adult conversation in the foreground and children playing in the water beyond, all with a mountainous backdrop that seems oblivious to the human element. In the photograph, one can find nuggets hidden throughout – a girl sitting on her boyfriend’s shoulders deep in the background, two small children scavenging, perhaps for small fish or shells, adults engaged in a light-hearted discussion. It’s in Cuba but could just as easily be a scene on the shores of Lake Kivu or even the Rainbow River. To achieve the shot, Elliott sought his best composition, quietly set up shop, then waited.
“I kept looking for a situation where people would be really relaxed and they would be very much themselves,” Elliott said. “I went to this location one day and had to pay a taxi driver because it was out of the way – it was not a typical touristy place – so I spec’d out the day before and then the next day I was there from 8 o’clock in the morning to 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I felt in terms of perspective and composition, this is where I want to be.
“I had to make sure I was innocuous, and I do that by trying to blend in as much as possible – I carry my equipment in a local market’s plastic bag – and I bring a very small camera.”
In “The Bay” happy times are captured: families relaxing by the shore, children frolicking, girls waiting patiently to interrupt the adults’ conversation in order to chime in. It’s a scene to which nearly anyone on the planet can relate. But elsewhere in the exhibit are scenes that shine a light on the darker side of humanity.
“The joyous, positive, happy images are also a vehicle to transport the more sober social documentary images,” Elliott exclaims as he points to his photograph titled “Dim Prospects.” Taken in India in 1996, the image shows some brutal labor conditions at a paper plant where the women shoulder the bulk of the duties. In the image, several able-bodied men lean against a wall, relaxed and in stark contrast to the drudgery of the females.
“These women, they chop coal into smaller pieces all day, seven days a week. So, (pointing at a woman in the photo) she’s pausing, and she’s got that thousand-mile stare there. You see a lot of the men, they’re just hanging out, not doing anything. Women, in a lot of these developing countries, share the greatest burden of labor.”
The juxtaposition of the frolicking bathers in one photo and the soul-crushing labor in another becomes one of several arching themes of Elliott’s exhibit. Another theme is the timelessness of the human condition and the irrelevance of location. In one photo is a scene from a mud festival in Brazil, which looks very much like a nearby photo depicting the “Redneck Games” in East Dublin, Georgia.
Achieving this seeming sleight of hand is a result of the black-and-white imagery. The exhibit boasts no colors, only the gray and slightly sepia hues that capture emotion in the deepest sense.
“I want them to see the shapes and the visages, the faces,” Elliott says about the decision to use black-and-white for this series. “The colors in this case could be very distracting. I want people to focus on the composition and the scene, the situation and the faces. Black-and-white allows you to be more minimalist with less distraction.”
To demonstrate, Elliott points to “Street Talk” taken in 1983 in Napoli, Italy. In it, weary vendors sit over their produce waiting for customers.
“You would be distracted by the brightness of the signs, for example, or the brightness of the fruit and get less of an impression of the emotions (had the image been in color). So, black-and-white to me is more emotion-based; it allows you to distill the experience so that you’re not so fixated on the time and the milieu.”
Elliott speaking of his work is akin to hearing Frank Lloyd Wright dissect the vision behind Fallingwater, or Donald Ross deconstructing the layout of Pinehurst No. 2. He’s proud of his work and hopes to educate people on the nuances, the subtleties that elevate the craft from merely aiming a camera to creating art that is pregnant with messages that penetrate the psyche and elicit questions about our own humanity.
Elliott, 68, was born in New York and moved with his family to south Florida at age 13. The seminal point in his life came in high school when he went to Nicaragua as part of the “Amigos de las Americas” volunteer vaccination program in 1973 and 1974. There, he saw people devastated by poverty yet generous in what they would give to him as a stranger.
“When I came back from that first 3-week experience, all the toys I had – all the gadgets that teenagers have – I put them aside and I started focusing on how I can use my knowledge of photography – I had learned about photography in middle school – to connect with these people and to bring what I saw and what I experienced in Nicaragua to my community and to my family.”
He’s been a world traveler ever since, camera always at his side. After a career in media production and advertising, Elliott was commissioned in 2010 to be a U.S. Foreign Service diplomat with the State Department, where his assignments were to the Middle East and Latin America. When Service rules forced him to retire at age 65 in 2022, Elliott brought his family to Ocala. “I decided to retire and devote myself to the kids, photography and volunteer work.”
As part of that devotion, Elliott started the Ocala Photography Group which now boasts 225 members. “I’m fortunate to be able to focus on pet projects like that, and I also have an 8-year-old daughter that I attend to as a homemaker.”
His feet are in Ocala, yet his heart still resides in places like Ethiopia and Haiti, where the human condition glares in exponential fashion. But in central Florida, Elliott is still able to bring his art and its requisite message to the people, which is the main objective. Wherever he goes, he finds an audience in need of a message it has not seen.
“My audience is the masses of people who don’t realize what’s going on in the rest of the world,” Elliott says. “Many are just focused on their home, their community and their life, and they don’t realize what’s going on out there – millions of stories every day of people struggling and surviving and finding ways to bring happiness to their lives, even in spite of misery. I want to have them understand what I understand.”
