Intern extraordinaire Isabella Knapp interviews Jack Jemison to learn more about the artist’s creative practice and work featured in this year’s Young Contemporaries 2025 exhibition.
Jack Jemison spends his time on the road, traveling through small towns across South Carolina to document vernacular culture. Using photography, he focuses on everyday physical objects—storefronts, signage, religious symbols, and material artifacts—that reflect local consumer habits, beliefs, and traditions. His work explores how culture is expressed in these overlooked details and encourages a deeper understanding of the environments that shape community identity.
In his upcoming senior thesis, Material Culture in the Southeast, Jack plans to “investigate the way culture manifests in physical objects.” Through his lens, he seeks to tell the untold stories of history, heritage, and identity woven into everyday artifacts.
A Junior at the College of Charleston, Jack is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in both Studio Art and Urban Studies. His passion for photography was sparked during COVID, a time when the world was forced to connect through tiny screens and camera lenses. However, it was in the summer of 2023—while studying abroad with the CofC Studio Art department—that Jack’s artistic vision took on new depth. Surrounded by the people and scenery of Rome, he fell in love with the way culture is connected to a place.
Jack has been traveling across South Carolina, uncovering objects that reflect the rich tapestry of diverse cultures. He’s not just taking photographs—he’s preserving history and bringing people closer together, one frame at a time. Two of Jack’s photographs, 97 and Wolf, were on display in the Halsey Institute’s Young Contemporaries 2025.
Jack continues to wrestle with the balance between the inherited fiction and objectivity of artwork. Every photograph is, to some degree, a construction—something every photographer must learn to embrace. As Jack puts it, “There cannot be a total truth to photography. This is something I’ve had to reconcile with, but it is fueling the work forward. Working through that with professors and peers in class has been essential to the process.”
What began as a documentary and sociological investigation is now evolving into a more introspective, psychological exploration. Follow along with Jack’s journey and view more of his meaningful work in his digital portfolio at jackjemison.net and on Instagram @jackrrjemison.