Jonathan Ferrabee is a Canadian-based photographer, designer, and art director. He first studied photography with Helmut Shade while attending Carleton University’s school of architecture and industrial design in Ottawa, Ontario. He has since worked consistently on photographic projects exploring notions of how place is experienced and understood. His work views place as more than setting, imbuing it with formative power on the personal, private and momentary individual experience. In this conception, place becomes the bedrock underlying our inner mythologies.
Jonathan has attended master classes at The School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa (SPAO). Work from his series Incidental Architecture was featured in the 2022 APEX exhibition at the SPAO Centre Gallery. The Gallery’s 2021 A+ exhibition included work from his series Rural Occupation and it’s 2020 A+ exhibition work from his series Laurentide.
The Ottawa Photography & Art Label (OPAL), an Ottawa based and internationally distributed visual arts publication, presented works from Jonathan’s Incidental Architecture and Rural Occupation series in its ISSUE 4 distributed in January 2022.
Three large format archival prints from Jonathan’s series Incidental Architecture were recently purchased by the City of Ottawa’s permanent collection and featured in the City's exhibition Metamorphosis in the Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery through February 2023.
In his role as exhibition designer, Jonathan has designed dozens of exhibitions including for the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Museum of History, and the Canadian Museum of Nature as well as travelling exhibitions that have been featured across Canada and internationally. They include many notable art installations of work by acclaimed artists, for some of which he also contributed curatorial duties.