John Woodruff

John Woodruff was born in West Hartford, CT, in 1954. In 1979, he received a B.S. in biology from the University of Hartford and a minor in photography from the Hartford Art School.
John fell in love with photography through the Polaroid camera. Its immediate results were addictive. Eventually, his father gave him his 35mm Exacta. It had an inherent film transport issue and would frequently overlap at least part of two frames. What some viewed as a mistake was to John the find of a lifetime. To this day he continues to use, at least in part, the concept and power of overlapped (and disparate) images.
Upon graduation, John accepted a job as a studio photographer working for advertisers and industry. He gained extensive knowledge in large format
(4×5, 8×10), processing E-6 and C-41, black and white in nitrogen burst tanks, color printing, lighting with continuous source, and composition.
Eventually, he broke out on his own focusing on architectural photography for architects and builders.
Throughout his career, John continued to focus on lens-based art showing frequently in the Hartford, New Haven, Western MA, and NYC areas. His science and art background generally push him towards images that reflect the two and his photographs tend to be constructed rather than photographing the “moment.” John frequently works on two series at a time since “moving from one line of thought to the other helps give me a break from one or the other and frees up my mind a bit to keep either fresh. I also find myself reinventing a lot of what I do by recycling past and present images.”John typically likes to work with paper, organic shapes, disparate images, and the illusion of depth. His visually charged images tend to linger at the intersection of painting and photography, imagery and abstraction.