Jason Salavon, a Chicago-based artist, expands traditional conceptions of portraiture with his use of digital manipulation. Building on the legacy of Nancy Burson, who pioneered the use of manipulated digital photographs in a fine arts context, Salavon creates programs that layer photographic or video images to produce blurred composites that resist immediate identification. In challenging the impulse to accept photographic representation as real, Salavon forces us to acknowledge the formulas that define the way we present ourselves to the world, and that we use to recognize others. Salavon's Late Night Triad (2003) captures American late-night television's three most popular hosts: Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, and David Letterman. A combination of sixty-four nights of continually taped programs, Salavon's animated portrait, which runs approximately three-and-a-half minutes, accentuates the typical features of each television personality's routine. Unlike conventional portraiture, we do not recognize these performers from their faces, which cannot be readily deciphered, but rather from the combination of movement and vocal intonations that we have come to expect from each.

Salavon graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1993, and received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997. He has exhibited throughout the United States. as well as in England and Singapore. Recent group exhibitions include "Only Skin Deep," organized by the International Center of Photography, New York (2004), and "On the Scene," a three-person show at the Art Institute of Chicago (2005). He has also been featured in numerous solo shows, including "everyday coma" (The Project, Los Angeles, 2004), and "Jason Salavon" (Rockford Art Museum, Illinois, 2005).


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