Self-taught, his work has been shown in two solo shows in NYC in 2008 and 2009. In 2010 he was chosen to participate in Curate NYC’s Emerging Artist Show at the RUSH Gallery. In 2011 two photographs from the Web Cam Girls series were included in the New York Photo Festival’s juried “Provocation” show at the PowerHouse Arena in DUMBO. Also in 2011 a photograph from the Web Cam Performers series was
included in two of Curate NYC online galleries. One gallery was curated by Chad Stayrook of the Bronx River Art Center and the other by Kira Pollack, photography editor at TIME. A guitarist and composer since the mid 1970s, he has played and performed in numerous punk and rock-n-roll bands. Since 2007, he has focused on a full time career in photography, relying on freelance commercial and corporate work to support his true interest in the art. Previous work experience as a designer, renderer and model maker in architecture and design firms, have sharpened his visual aptitude and spatial acuity. That skill has inspired a current project: a series of installations that are photographic in nature, sculptural and decorative in their ex*****on. It is an undertaking he hopes will provide a fresh way of looking at photographs. On his previously exhibited series Quiétudes, an on-going project of B&W photographs shot on 35mm film, Marianne Eggler, art historian and lecturer, has written this:
“Capturing elusive visual episodes glimpsed from the corner of the mind's eye, J.F. Vergel's photographic oeuvre conjures up the pure rapture of phenomenal events beyond fixed perception or rational cognition. In his new series of large-scale, black-and-white photographs, shifting form and dreamlike content engage with compositional format in presentations ranging from crisp chiaroscuro to a point of near abstraction. What seems far away in time and place but which could, perhaps, be just around the corner suggests intriguing associations - the here and now in dialogue with the not quite forgotten. The result is an exquisite body of work reveling in the fierce poetry of the moment somehow too quickly passed; like memento mori for the twenty-first century, Vergel's photographs put forth a glimmering state of melancholy beauty, which haunts the viewer long after the fact.”
Besides his B&W work, J-F Vergel uses color digital photography to explore the aesthetic boundaries of motion and vision in a series called New York Noises using the medium to dramatic effect by exploiting the simultaneous social connection and disconnect in the contemporary “wired world” as in the Web Cam Performers series and portraits shot via Skype. Drawing on his varied experiences as entertainer, designer and classically trained chef, J-F Vergel has a drive to experiment with what photography can achieve and consequently executes projects with thoughtful attentiveness to detail and aesthetics.