Sam Jones - USA
Sam Jones is a photographer and director currently based in LA.
His candid, intimate celebrity pictures have been published on Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Esquire, GQ, Time, Men’s Journal and Entertainment Weekly.
Sam Jones is an acclaimed photographer and director whose seminal portraits of President Obama, Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Bob Dylan, Kristin Stewart, Robert Downey Jr, Amy Adams, Jack Nicholson, and many others have appeared on the covers of Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Esquire, GQ, Time, Entertainment Weekly and Men’s Journal.
His photos have received numerous awards from American Photography, Communication Arts and Life magazine’s respected Eisie award; and his image for the cover of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was published in “The Greatest Album Covers of All Time”.
His collection of candid celebrity portraiture, The Here And Now: The Photographs of Sam Jones, was published by Harper Collins.
Other published works include Non-Fiction, a collection of cinematic portraiture, and Some Where Else, a photographic book and musical collaboration with musician Blake Mills.
Jones is also an acclaimed director, creating numerous national commercials for Skype, Sonos, Canon, Target, Dove and many others.
Jones’ is a sought after music video director who won MTV’s music video of the year for Foo Fighters Walk.
He has directed videos for Mumford and Sons, Tom Petty John Mayer, and many others.
He also directed the multi award winning interactive video for Cold War Kids’ I’ve Seen Enough”.
He won the IAA Responsibility Award for his AD Council Everyone Knows PSA.
He has also directed the ABC television show, Cougar Town.
In 2013 he launched Off Camera with Sam Jones on Directv’s Audience Network. Off Camera is an hour long show created out of his passion for long form conversational interviews.
Via worldwide broadcast, online magazine, and podcast, Jones shares his conversations with the artists, actors, and musicians who fascinate and inspire him most. Robert Downey Jr., Sarah Silverman, Dave Grohl, Laura Dern, Tony Hawk, Matt Damon and Will Ferrell have all appeared on the show.
Most recently, Jones directed the feature length Showtime Documentary "Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued", a film that reexamines Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes and documents new recordings of lost Dylan lyrics by Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford and others in Capitol Records Studios.
The film features Bob Dylan as narrator, and documents the exciting collaboration between some of the most successful current artists in music and a 26-year-old Bob Dylan. The film premiered on Showtime Networks.
His candid, intimate style and innate ability to capture the essence of his subjects made the documentary a natural medium for Jones. In 2002, Jones started his feature-length documentary career with I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, which chronicles beloved indie-rock band Wilco’s tumultuous recording of their acclaimed fourth album, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”.
The film was hailed as “beautifully photographed”, and “engrossing” for its compelling look at the struggle between art and commerce; and Jones’ ability to create intimacy with his subjects was compared to that of Jean Luc Goddard’s work with The Rolling Stones in Sympathy for the Devil.
Variety called Jones “one of the few intelligent filmmakers destined for serious artistic success,” and Rolling Stone named I Am Trying To Break Your Heart the fifth best rock film of all time.
Jones lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three daughters.