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BIO

Jon Deshler was born in Southern California in the early 1960s. At age 11 his dad gave him his first 35mm SLR. In Junior High School photography blended with his other love, music and in 1976 Jon shot his first jazz photograph of Maynard Ferguson.

 

For over seven years, on a paper route budget,

Jon shot jazz in local Southern California clubs

and theaters, including the first Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl in 1979. In those years he managed to shoot important national names as well as significant sidemen and studio players from the Los Angeles media machine. 

 

In 1986 Jon graduated from the Pasadena, Art Center College of Design, as a photography major. This was at the end of the film era, at the dawn of the digital revolution. All of the techniques and methods that were studied and mastered by him and the small group of his graduating peers were

of traditional film and chemistry based techniques which had been the standard for decades prior. 

 

In 1988, Jon relocated to Portland, Oregon where he began to cultivate commercial and editorial work from local and national clients. In those years, in the late '80s and '90s, Jon began to incorporate new computer technologies into his operation, while maintaining a fully functional B&W and E-6 darkroom in studio. Ironically, many of his clients in the '90s were companies like Intel, In Focus, HP, Nintendo, Sony, Xerox, and other Pacific NW and national high-tech corporations.

From 2002 - 2008 Jon worked out of his Wilshire Blvd. studio, just west of downtown Los Angeles. In those years Mr. Deshler completed projects for companies like Panasonic, Theater LA, Nokia, Java Jacket, Billy Steinberg, NEO, and Nephron Pharmaceuticals, in addition to managing and facilitating the creation of an in-house marketing department and ad program for a small tech company - Dolphin Imaging & Management Solutions.

 

In 2013 Mr. Deshler had a solo one man exhibition of his historic Los Angeles jazz archive, at the new Valley Performing Arts Center Gallery, on the campus of California State University, Northridge. Called Los Angeles Jazz Passages, this exhibit with over sixty images was held over for a four month stay, the small self-published book of which was promoted and sold on Los Angeles jazz radio - KJAZZ. 

In 2009 Mr. Deshler began a slow transition back to his beloved Oregon, creating a studio in what was an early 20th Century meat-locker/cold-house, in Marquam, Oregon. www.abiquastudio.com

 

In the Fall of 2017 Jon had a One Man Show at Mt Hood Community College entitled: Naked Revelations. Including close to 100 prints, some of which were platinum prints, the Opening for this show was said to be: "The best they'd seen!" 

Currently Mr. Deshler is shooting products, people, and animals in his Oregon studio while performing jazz all over the Willamette Valley.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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