Jason Landry

Jason Landry (born 1972) is a photography collector and former owner of Panopticon Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts. He was a frequent contributor to the HuffPost, has blogged for The Good Men Project, and Big Red and Shiny. His stories and essays have appeared in South Shore Magazine, Spot Magazine, In The Loupe
, and in Don't Take Pictures. Landry is the author of Instant Connections: Essays and Interviews on Photography.
Early life.
Landry grew up in Greenland, New Hampshire and graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1991. After leaving college after one year, he began working for the local telephone company, which went through a few mergers, from New England Telephone to NYNEX to Bell Atlantic before settling on Verizon. After 10+ years at the Fortune 500 company, Landry left the corporate world behind to concentrate on a different career.
Landry returned to school in 2004 and earned his B.F.A. in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2007 and an M.F.A. in Visual Arts from Lesley University College of Art and Design in 2009. While in graduate school, he was on the Board of Directors of the [http://www.bu.edu/prc/ Photographic Resource Center at Boston University before working for them as their Education Manager, Project Manager, and Programs and Operations Manager.
Career.
In 2010, Landry purchased Panopticon Gallery from Tony Decaneas. Panopticon Gallery, established in 1971, is the oldest fine art photography gallery in New England and one of the oldest photography galleries in the United States specializing in contemporary, modern and vintage photography. He represented established and emerging photographers with a primary focus on developing and expanding their careers, connections and art network. The gallery regularly assisted collectors in buying, selling and locating photographs and supports local educational institutions, regional art museums and estates. Landry sold Panopticon Gallery in 2017. It is still located inside the Hotel Commonwealth in Boston, Massachusetts.
Landry was the Founding Director of the M.F.A. in Photography program at the New Hampshire Institute of Art from 2013 to 2017.
Author.
Landry is the author of, Instant Connections: Essays and Interviews on Photography. This book intertwines essays, interviews, quotes and autobiographical stories around the central theme of photography. Secondary themes in the book have to do with the idea of making connections, having mentors and building your personal network. It features interviews with such artist as Vik Muniz, Leonard Nimoy, William Wegman and Harold Feinstein, and quotes from such artists and collectors as Chuck Close and W.M. Hunt. The essays are meant to inspire, motivate and educate—some are informative and critical, while others contain humorous and quirky anecdotes. Instant Connections caters to the fine art photography world and is not a critical theory primer in the likes of Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag, rather the author has injected his own contemporary twist to everything.
Stories and news about Instant Connections as well as interviews with the author have appeared in newspapers, magazines, blogs and have appeared on Radio BDC.