Bloomington is becoming more global through Groups Collective, a collaborative project between European fine art photographers Jon Tonks and Roman Franc. Tonks and Franc chose Bloomington, where they have exhibited before, as the first representative U.S. city for a Groups Collective series that captures group portraits of local organizations to promote the value of community.

Their goal: a historical record of Bloomington to be exhibited at Pictura Gallery, FAR Center for Contemporary Arts, before the exhibition travels around the world. This visual record will be produced by photographing some of Bloomington’s community groups, such as Little 500 cyclists, firefighters, and quarry workers, to document and celebrate Bloomington’s civic life.

According to the Pictura Gallery press release, Tonks and Franc have the ability to inspire their photo shoot subjects to “creatively participate in their ideas.” That ability derives from a “gregarious energy” that “actively connects participants with each other, in person, in real life.”

Roman Franc and Jon Tonks have created and exhibited their work worldwide, both individually and in tandem. (above) A group portrait at The Bell Inn free house and music pub in Bath, England. See more group portraits at the end of the article. | Courtesy photo

The focus of Groups Collective is to promote the value of community through the production of large-scale group portraits. Tonks and Franc are enthusiastic about meeting people and making personal connections to produce these kinds of photographs. The Groups Collective website states: “In a time where group identity is used to polarise and situate people against one another, these group portraits are a force in the opposite direction, bringing unity and camaraderie.” (View a selection of previous group portraits at the end of this article.)

Pictura Gallery’s mission is to share with the Midwest community “the best contemporary fine art photography” and to contribute to “the international dialogue of present day photography.” The gallery is also “devoted to collaborating with artists to help them build strong careers and maintain artistic excellence.” 

Groups Collective fits right in with the mission of promoting international dialogue. While Tonks has captured group images in various locations in the U.K. like the traditional English pub, Franc has photographed groups in villages and cities across the Czech Republic and beyond.

Tonks and Franc briefly revisited Bloomington in mid-February to meet with community groups and to scout potential photo shoot locations like Bill Armstrong Stadium, where the Little 500 cycling race takes place annually. They met with ministers, Indiana University ballet and String Academy officials, and IU women’s basketball players. They are also considering for their group photo shoots roller skaters, high school cheerleaders, city officials, firefighters, school bus drivers, quarry workers, artists, and local sports teams. 

Tonks and Franc are also collaborating with Osamu James Nakagawa, the Ruth N. Halls Distinguished Professor of Photography at IU Bloomington and director of the Center for Integrative Photographic Studies. Nakagawa might help them develop their images.

Tonks and Franc returned in late April for a six-week stay to photograph fifteen to twenty groups, and their production process will culminate with an exhibition for the entire Bloomington community at Pictura Gallery.

The exhibition will be on view June 6 through August 29. The opening reception will be part of the June Gallery Walk program and will coincide with the 6th annual Fourth and Rogers Block Party just outside of Pictura Gallery. There will be food trucks, live music, and art sellers from 5 to 9 p.m. Admission to the exhibition and to the party is free. All group photo participants are invited to the exhibition’s opening night, when Tonks and Franc will shoot one final Bloomington group photo of everyone at the party. 

Roman Franc and Jon Tonks have worked together for more than ten years. | Courtesy photo

Tonks and Franc first met in 2014 in Houston, Texas, at a FotoFest biennial convention. That is also where they met Pictura Gallery owners Martha and David Moore and the gallery’s co-curators, Mia Dalglish and Lisa Woodward, and were invited to Bloomington to exhibit their work.

For those solo exhibitions at the gallery, Tonks and Franc showcased images shot with medium- and large-format cameras. Tonks’s shows there were Empire and The Men Who Would Be King, and Franc’s were Sight Lines, Velvet Generation, and Never Too Close. After hanging these exhibitions at the gallery in the past decade, they selected Bloomington as the location for their Groups Collective project. 

Their latest Groups Collective project is the culmination of ten years of friendship. “It was an organic process,” Tonks says, about how their mutual encounters led to the project. Having traveled to European towns and cities for Groups Collective projects, they are excited about launching on a U.S. leg of their photo shoot tour. 

Pictura Gallery co-curator Mia Dalglish detects a sense of humor in the duo’s process and approach to their art. She describes them as “playful, quirky, and disarming,” qualities that encourage people to open up. This process of opening up is “celebratory,” she says, calling it “a crucial part of community building.” She also says they know the “real bedrock of Bloomington” and the different kinds of people who form it. That knowledge enables them to produce something “other than what’s expected,” she says. 

Together with Pictura Gallery owner Martha Moore, Tonks and Franc share their experiences and insights about Groups Collective.

Jon Tonks 

Roman Franc and Jon Tonks (right) take measure of a rehearsal studio before a photo shoot at the IU Musical Arts Center. | Limestone Post

A native of Bath, England, Jon Tonks focuses on telling stories about how history and geography impact our lives. He studied design before he pursued his interest in visual storytelling as a newspaper photographer, progressing toward a master’s degree in photojournalism and documentary photography at London College of Communication.

During his studies, he embarked on what became, for him, an influential trip to Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean. According to Tonks, such travel opportunities make photo shoots enjoyable. He also says the perks of working as a photographer include “getting to be nosy about people’s lives.” He quips, “The police, debt collectors, and photographers are the only ones who get to do that.” 

Tonks’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Le Monde, National Geographic, The Guardian, Sunday Times, Monocle magazine, the British Journal of Photography, and Source, among other publications. He was shortlisted three times for the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize and twice for the Terry O’Neill Photography Award. In 2014, he won the Vic Odden Award, presented by the Royal Photographic Society, for his first book, Empire: A Journey to the Remote Edges of the British Empire (Dewi Lewis, 2013), a visual chronicle of a journey across the South Atlantic that explores life on four British Overseas Territories. Empire was recognized by British photographer and photojournalist Martin Parr as one of his best books of the year.

Tonks’s work has been added to private collections in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. It has also been included in the collections of Stanford University, The Martin Parr Foundation, The Hyman Collection of British photography, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Tonks’s commercial clients include Microsoft, Eurostar, Nokia, Samsung, Neptune, Channel 4, Santander Visit Wales, and Halifax.

For Tonks, the major challenge of being a photographer is the need to balance the freedom of working for one’s self with the anxiety that comes with financial insecurity. He encourages emerging photographers by saying, “Remember, you’re on your own path, and that you have unique experiences.”

“

The police, debt collectors, and photographers are the only ones who get to be nosy about people’s lives.

”

—Jon Tonks

Roman Franc 

Roman Franc sets up his large-format camera in the lobby of the IU Musical Arts Center. | Limestone Post

Born in Brno, Czech Republic, and the adopted son of Black Horse, a Navajo medicine man, Roman Franc had aspired to enter the legal profession while pursuing his interests in sports and games. Somehow, he ended up doing something entirely different. He earned an MA in education in 2008 at Masaryk University in Brno and an MFA in photography in 2014 at the Institute of Creative Photography, Faculty of Philosophy and Science at Silesian University in Opava, Czech Republic.

Franc is now fulfilling Ph.D. requirements while teaching at the Institute of Creative Photography and engaging in curatorial and publishing projects. For example, he prepared a retrospective and monograph of photographer Karel Novák for the Moravian Gallery in Brno. Franc’s primary focus is nontraditional portraiture and staged photography. Six of such photography series are My Little Miracles, Collectives, Brother, Portraits, Sokol: The Loyal Guard, and My Name Is Hungry Buffalo.

Franc is also the author and co-author of several books: House of Essens, My Name Is Hungry Buffalo, Watch the Birdie! and The Zbrojovka Phenomenon. In 2017, My Name Is Hungry Buffalo earned recognition as one the most beautiful books in the Czech Republic.

Having contributed toward projects for the office of former Czech President Václav Havel, Franc organizes and teaches photography courses and workshops for various private and public institutions besides Silesian University.

His photographs have been included in notable collections, such as the Moravian Gallery in Brno; the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro; and the Zillman Art Museum in Bangor, Maine. He is currently represented by Boswell Mourot Fine Art Gallery in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

Tonks and Franc agree they are each other’s inspiration. While Franc is good at working with colors and with talking to people, Tonks is ambitious, always finding ways to get things done. “Roman is also good at making scrambled eggs,” Tonks quipped.

Martha Moore

Retired schoolteacher Martha Moore never imagined she would become an art gallery owner. Yet, she has always been interested in art. Her New York City birthplace and her family’s involvement in the arts stimulated an interest that was further encouraged by photographer David Moore, to whom she has been married for 44 years. 

In 2005, she noticed the absence of Midwest art galleries that exclusively curated contemporary cutting-edge photography. This observation inspired her to start one in Bloomington with David. Their goal was to create a space that reflected Martha’s commitment to education and David’s expertise in contemporary photography. That dream was realized when Pictura Gallery was established in 2008 at the northeast corner of East 6th Street and North College Avenue on Bloomington’s downtown square.

As programming expanded, the gallery was relocated in 2018 to the FAR Center for Contemporary Arts at the corner of West 4th and South Rogers streets. Within this larger space, the gallery owners could coordinate free children’s workshops and accommodate other art forms. Moore recalls, “We had Ross Gay participate in an ekphrastic poetry event. We had a dance company exhibit. We even had comedians come all the way from Chicago.”

David and Martha Moore stand outside of the FAR Center for Contemporary Arts at West Fourth and South Rogers streets, just prior to its grand opening in 2018. | Photo by Chaz Mottinger

For her, the most challenging aspect of owning an art gallery is the need to generate revenue from sources other than fine art photograph sales. While the nonprofit status that Pictura Gallery acquired in 2019 enables gallery owners to apply for grants, for-profit events like weddings at the FAR Center sustain the gallery’s nonprofit activities like arts education workshops. 

As for the rewarding experiences of an art gallery owner, Moore is excited about Pictura Gallery’s photography fellowship/residency program that will launch with the Jon Tonks and Roman Franc exhibition. She says that their sense of humor is evident in their work. For example, Tonks would produce a photograph of a charming house on a hilltop, only to reveal that the edifice is actually an outhouse. 

“These guys redefine what ‘portrait’ means,” she says, in what she believes will be “a really uplifting project.” 

Only living, contemporary photographers are exhibited at Pictura Gallery. Moore says that her goal is to “bring in great photographers from all over the world” and to “show work that makes people think and start up a conversation.” An example of such an exhibition at Pictura Gallery had featured photographs of trees from which lynched women had been hanged. Moore anticipates the possibility of generating more positive thoughts and conversations through the upcoming Tonks and Franc exhibition.

Depending on the success of the Bloomington edition of Groups Collective, Tonks and Franc might launch a similar project in another U.S. city. Franc says the duo are open to ideas for potential photographs even after they return to Europe ([email protected]).

Fourth and Rogers Block Party

The opening reception of the Groups Collective’s photographic series by Roman Franc and Jon Tonks will take place on Friday, June 6, from 5 to 9 p.m. during Gallery Walk and the 6th annual Fourth and Rogers Block Party at West 4th and South Rogers streets. Franc and Tonks will take a final community photo during the event, which will also include food trucks, live music, and art sellers. Admission to the exhibition and to the party is free. 

The Groups Collective exhibition will be on view from June 6 through August 29 at Pictura Gallery, 202 S. Rogers St., Bloomington, Indiana. The gallery is free and open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. (Closed Sunday and Monday.)