Jeff Alu

Jeff Alu is a photographer and AI filmmaker based in San Pedro, California. Before photography he spent a number of years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory hunting for asteroids and comets, working with the 18 inch Schmidt Telescope at Palomar Observatory, processing its film in the darkroom and scanning the pairs by eye under a stereomicroscope.

He bought his first digital camera to photograph what he found hiking in the California deserts, and describes the work that came out of it as part documentary, part scientific, part illusionary and dreamlike. He plays with scale and gives attention to otherwise unnoticed subjects. His photographs have been published in Black and White Magazine, Lenswork Extended, Adori Noir and Shots, and collected in a book, Jeff Alu: Surrealities, from Zero+ Publishing.

He was exhibitions director at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Ana, where he curated five photographic exhibitions, two of them devoted to cell phone photography, and he has been a guest speaker for the Apple Store in Santa Monica, the Walt Disney Imagineering Photography Group and the Marks Art Center in Palm Desert.

He now works in AI film. The collection on his site runs from short films to a music video, spec ads and tool tests, alongside an AI image series, Traffic Signals of Rebellion.