George R. Janecek

Born 1946 in Queens, New York

​

George R. Janecek has been taking photographs since 1959. At the age of thirteen, he and his family moved to Jordan, where his father was tasked to head the Regional Administrative Office of the United Nations, which at that time was headquartered in Jerusalem, Jordan. During a port-of-call in Gibraltar, his father bought George a 35mm camera. This is where it all began.

 

Janecek’s work has appeared nationally and internationally in exhibitions and various publications, including Life Magazine. His photographs encompass the lives of ordinary, working people: from dancers, stone masons, and commercial fishermen on the East Coast to coal miners, ranchers, cowboys, Native Americans of the Mountain West and the Indigenous peoples of the Sierra Tarahumara in Mexico.

 

Janecek has spent the last several years documenting a three-generation racing family vying for a land speed record at Bonneville. He's spent over twenty-five years documenting the life of Clifford Duncan on the Ute reservation to produce a book celebrating the life of the Ute spiritual leader. His current project is documenting the lives and work of the miners at the Castle Valley Mine in Emery County, Utah.

​

portrait by Ken Reece

Reece Farm, Norman, Oklahoma

April 2, 2017

​