Posing for Vermont Photographer Jack Rowell

Kate Mueller
May 10
3 min read

Editor's note: To help me prepare for a talk about the work of Vermont photographer Jack Rowell, author of Jack Rowell: Photographs, I asked the artist Kate Mueller to write something about her experience of modeling for him in his studio. The talk in Rochester (May 16) is called "Being Seen," and it delves into the effect of Jack's work on the many people whose lives he has touched. —Sara Tucker, publisher, Jack Rowell: Photographs

I met Jack in the mid-1980s through Jim Wallace, my then boyfriend soon-to-become husband. Before I met Jack, Jim told me about this young guy he knew—a passionate photographer, feisty and a bit irreverent.

Jim had been a ticket taker at the Tunbridge Fair, back when there were still girlie shows, and it was during that period, in the late 1970s, that Jack, then a young guy in his mid-twenties, had documented the fair in all its rough-hewn glory. Jim loved and praised Jack’s photos. Jim had a copy of Tunbridge Fair, showcasing Jack’s photos, and he had other photos by Jack. Among them was a photo Jack had taken in high school of his girlfriend—her slender white form, angled, her tilted head veiled in black hair. Another of a woman in a wet T-shirt emblazoned with “Decadence, a way of life.” With one arm akimbo and a side-eyes gaze under arched plucked brows, she seems about to make a cheeky remark, while behind her big puffs of surreal clouds drift.

I loved them all—their immediacy, rawness, art. Not long after, I met the man himself, almost exactly one year older than me. We hit it off right away. Jack—intense, hoarse-voiced—radiated warmth. Though opinionated, he was paradoxically also open, gracious, and curious. I remember the slightly unkempt long black hair, the big mustache, and the penetrating look. He stood hunch shouldered, the toes of his black-booted feet turned out.

There has always been a bit of pulled-back polite flirtation between us. We admire each other’s art. For his fortieth birthday, when I learned he harbored a love for paleontology, dating from childhood, I gave him a painting I had just completed of a fossilized horse skeleton embedded in stone: horse skull flung forward, bone legs galloping, urgent motion forever preserved.

It was around then, in the mid-1990s, when I became pregnant, that Jack proposed a photo shoot. Or maybe Jim and I told him we wanted a shoot—I don’t quite remember. But I was all for it. I was near term and huge bellied. I stripped down in Jack’s studio, and we got into a wonderful flow. I somehow found grace in my oversized condition, and working together we came up with several dynamic, even transcendent, shots.

Some five months later I came back with my infant son—postpartum and slimmed down—to do another naked shoot. I remember the feeling wasn’t quite working. I couldn’t quite get the flow. I think we both felt it. Then we asked Jim to take off his clothes and join me, and the very last shot—of Jim and me cradling our new son—worked. I think this is often the case: the last shot or the test shot is the best shot.

As a big fan of Jack’s work, I was thrilled and honored when Jack first got in touch with me in spring of 2023 to ask if I would help him and Sara Tucker, his publisher, in producing a book of his photos. I was immediately completely onboard but also nervous: This was Jack’s life work. It was important that we produce a beautiful book. And we did! Jack, Sara, and I were a great team, and the process was remarkably smooth with few hitches.

In the four-plus decades that I’ve known Jack, there have been many hiatuses when I rarely saw him. But we never lost touch. I attended his show at the Main Street Museum in 1996 and The Hale Street Gang photo exhibition at the Chandler and was there at his opening at Studio Place Arts in 2018. In the way of old friends, of kindred art spirits, whenever we see each other, it’s like no time has passed. —Kate Mueller, May 4, 2026

YOU'RE INVITED

Join Jack, Sara, and other Korongo members at the Rochester Public Library in Rochester, Vermont, at 4 pm on Saturday, May 16. Jack will sign books and answer questions. Sara will talk briefly about his work.