Biography

Jon Goell originally set out to become an artist, but during a year abroad at the American College in Paris, he discovered street photography and the photographs of Cartier-Bresson and Doisneau. He used his father’s 1935 Leica to get started.

At Boston University (1962–63, and 1964–67), Jon photographed for students and the college, worked as a photo assistant for photographer Steve Grohe, and shot Sunday Magazine stories for the Boston Globe.

While in graduate school (painting) at the University of Arizona (1967–69), Jon worked for the Tucson Daily Citizen, and shot a personal documentary about urban Indians with writer Art Smith. After Tucson (with the MFA unfinished), Jon free-lanced and worked for architectural photographer Morley Baer in San Francisco. While Jon has never had formal photographic training, he read widely, photographed incessantly, bugged photographers for information, and learned the business end from the A.S.M.P.

During the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, Jon Goell worked as an assignment photographer in Boston and later nationally, working up from news to corporate, magazine, and advertising, concentrating on people and in-camera special effects. Clients included Polaroid, Business Week, Inc Magazine, Fidelity, Washingtonian, USA Today, WGBH, Mac World, and many New England (and later Washington DC) high-tech and design firms, magazines, ad agencies, corporations, and colleges.

During those years, Jon exhibited personal and professional photography and art in professional galleries, colleges, and other venues. Many of his clients won design and advertising awards for projects containing his work.

While in Boston, Jon co-wrote and starred in “The Photo Show,” a how-to TV series for WGBH-TV. He also periodically taught professional photo courses at the Art Institute of Boston and the New England School of Photography.

In 2000, after three decades in the photography business, Jon joined the photography faculty at Montgomery College in Rockville, MD, teaching traditional and digital imaging, and advanced lighting and photo business courses. He finished an art M.A. at George Mason University in 2004, and that same year worked on a cooperative Montgomery College photo project called “Portraits of Life,” which documented Holocaust survivors living in Montgomery County.

Since 1998, Jon has worked on several documentary television films as an interview subject, photographer, and restorer of old photographs. These projects have included Martha Lubell’s Daring to Resist and Queen of the Mountain (both NPT broadcasts), a History Channel film, The Hidden Tomb of Antiochus, and a similar film for Turkish television. These last three partly dealt with the work of archeologist Theresa Goell.

Jon Goell has been deeply involved with photography in one form or another for his entire adult life, and continues to be. Over time, this website will present the best of his photography and art, and he hopes you will find something in it to enjoy.