You've almost certainly seen him at MMAAC, especially if you spend time in the darkroom: a tall guy, good looking, pleasant personality; Jeff Krueger. He works as Darkroom Volunteer on Thursday evenings and is in the darkroom frequently, usually at one of the medium-format enlargers and printing on 16" x 20" paper. And the images he prints never have people in them: they're almost all about architecture - buildings, ruins, and the occasional landscape.

If you've taken the time to really look at his stuff, you've seen there is something special about it. Part of its uniqueness derives from the way it is printed - immaculately and with a clarity and depth that pull at the eye. But beyond that, there is a feeling about the structures in these photographs, a kind of thoughtfulness or waitfulness, of past or imminent or latent action. The hand of man is here, indelible in the manufacture and arrangement of building materials, but also in the attitude of watchful mystery inherent in the images themselves. Who designed these edifices? Who built them? Who used them, and how? And who was just here wondering at them, who has been guarding them, who is about to arrive to share the experience of them? And why?

Jeff is 29 years old. He was raised in Connecticut by a geologist father who runs a small dinosaur museum and a mother who programs computers for an insurance company. He moved to Minnesota in 1987 to study geology, English, and fine art at the University of Minnesota. A painter at the time, he declared himself a Fine Arts major in order to spend his junior year at Sunderland Polytechnic in northern England. There he was required to take instruction in three subjects other than painting, so he chose printmaking, sculpture (a disaster), and - reluctantly, believing it to be a non-art, a kind of cheating - photography. Within a few months, he knew he was going to be a photographer. The speed of the medium matched the speed of his vision. He loved being able to capture an image in a split second and then walk away with eyes open, reacting to the environment. After three months of travel in Europe, he returned to Minnesota and graduated from the University with a B.F.A. in the fall of 1992.

Jeff's life as a professional photographer began with a fateful meeting with Christian Korab, an architectural photographer who gave him an unheard of opportunity as a full time photo assistant for nine months. He began freelancing after this period, and he credits his freelance work with various photographers employing vastly different techniques for increasing his technical knowledge and for extending his vision.

His association with MMAAC actually began with it's parent organization, Film In The Cities, which he joined in 1992 in order to gain access to a darkroom. Once he became affiliated with MMAAC, he states, he began to take his work and himself seriously. In fact, he counts the MMAAC Works Grant he obtained in 1996 and the resulting show of his work at pARTs gallery in Minneapolis as a turning point for him, leading him to the confident assertion that he could show his work and, apparently, not die or even be humiliated.

He began applying for other grants - many other grants. He didn't expect to win most of them, but his diligence resulted in a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant in 1997, which he used to introduce himself to color photography via a class at MCAD [Minneapolis College of Art and Design], and, in 1998, another MMAAC Works Grant, with which he developed a show of photographs of ancient Greek architecture. Other achievements include work shown at the 1995 and 1997 State Fairs, repeated participation in the pARTs Lotto auction, and inclusion in a panel of 20 photographers invited to speak at the Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson, Wisconsin.

Jeff has become a teacher as well, conducting basic photography classes at MMAAC the past two years. He asserts that teaching revitalizes his work by reminding him of how many options there are in the medium. He also loves to watch people get excited about photography. He feels his job as a teacher is to spark that excitement and then to step back and let them run with it, to help them get to the point they're striving to reach.

Today he views photography (and all the arts) as a craft. The responsibility of any artist, he believes, is, first and foremost, to be conversant in their medium, and then to be able to say something with it. And his philosophy about his own work? In his words, "The subject of my work is architecture. The things I grapple with revolve around history and, more precisely, our present interpretation of history. I tend to photograph older historic structures, and of course to look at a remnant of the past is interesting and important in its own right. I am also concerned with the meaning a particular structure has today. The decision to keep or eliminate a structure tells us a great deal about our present values, and about what kind of past we would like to create for ourselves today."

 [Note: MMAAC later became IFP MSP.]