06/04/2026
By now, many of you have heard that my dear friend Jeff Schewe has died. Although I will have more to say, and more pictures to post, it was hard to even get this far in expressing my grief and appreciation for having Jeff in my life.
Jeff was a deeply talented photographer with an eye for irony, design, balance and beauty in many forms. He had a sharp wit, and an occasional gruff demeanor that could sometimes mask the caring man inside. He liked the hard-ass biker persona he had perfected, and some of it was true, but he was so much more complex and tender than that. His sarcasm was well trod ground and he loved being a smart-ass. I loved him.
On Friday May 22 I had set up a visit with my friend Mac Holbert who was recovering from a health issue in Vancouver, WA. On my arrival Mac walked me to a garden area and we called Jeff who we knew was in the hospital with breathing difficulties. It was great to talk with Jeff, but he had the bad news that lung cancer had been found. A new treatment was planned and I started exploring airline tickets to Chicago. Mac and I were obviously very concerned, while I was also relieved Mac was doing so well. Jeff had told another close friend not to fly in yet, that he was going to fight this. It seemed we had some time. We did not, Jeff died the following Wednesday. A wave of devastation swept across the photo community we had all built over the last 30 years.
It’s impossible to sum up the way you know and love a friend in a few words. The emotional loss is very heavy and the friendship we shared precious.
Jeff was a man of self confidence and ego, that also had no problem taking classes and doing portfolio reviews with people far earlier in their career than he was. He was curious, wanted to learn, sought perspective on his work and had taken his commercial career and transformed it into a body of truly special fine-art work. To say he was an accomplished photographer would be an understatement, he was a very fine photographer, of great sensitivity and skill. He was also my friend of 30 years.
Together with Seth Resnick and John Paul Caponigro, Jeff and I taught three workshops together in Antarctica. Those experiences sharpened some of our differences, but also strengthened our bond in great adventure. In 1997 he rode his motorcycle out from Chicago to visit me in South Dakota as I was working on "With a New Eye," my national parks project. He made a portrait of me on that trip that he continued to refer as the only photograph he ever had in Life Magazine, that picture of me. We thought of that as ironic.
Over the last five years, I got to see Jeff most every week in the virtual Photo Chat community I started at the beginning of the pandemic. Jeff attended most all of my 200 or so Photo Chats since. That weekly interaction, became a kind of joint teaching, expressions of our different perspectives and workflows, ongoing view of his own evolving work, and deepened our connection and friendship.
Jeff accepted my invitation in 2025 to show his Black and White in Antarctica work as the last Guest Photographer show in my gallery at the Pacifica Center for the Arts. Working with him on that show, its opening and closing events, and the people that it gathered together made us closer still. I was proud and honored to show his work. We interviewed each other about our work and I will make those videos available again.
In 2006, when our mutual friend Bruce Fraser was in his last days also fighting cancer, on a phone call in front a big Pixel Mafia dinner in New York, Bruce extracted a promise from Jeff to quit smoking. He did. Perhaps we had Jeff in our lives for another twenty years because of the promise made and kept.
There are so many stories to share, but I am still too sad to detail them now. I will try to share more later.
There is a deep unreality to a friend’s death. It is hard to believe that someone you love, have had decades of friendship and conversations with, someone you counted as a close friend, is simply gone. Of course, there is nothing simple about it. It is a complex set of shared values, trust, respect, affection, revelation, no longer with us. It is true, our memories, his photographs, Jeff’s many friends will continue to hold him in their minds and hearts, but knowing that the living Jeff is gone is so deeply heartbreaking that I feel more lost in this complex world and that the world is much emptier without him.
My heart opens and goes out to Jeff’s wife Becky, and to all of his friends whose lives were also enriched by this complex, good, and talented man. Jeff, I will always hold you in my heart.
Photo: Jeff Schewe with new friends. Port Lockroy, Antarctica. 2009.
More pictures and video on my June 2026 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4x9jcPJ
