Born in Bandung. Trained as a field biologist. Apprenticed to a bookbinder. Now making pictures between two studios — Sukabumi and Santa Fe — about light, distance, and the patience of looking.
I began with a pair of binoculars, in a forest south of Bogor, counting hornbills for a thesis I would never finish.
My first training was in field biology at Universitas Indonesia. Two years in the rainforest of Mount Halimun-Salak, measuring tree cover, mapping bird populations, learning to sit still for hours while the forest decided whether to admit me. I did not know it then, but this was where the photographs would later come from — not from the camera, but from the habit of waiting.
In 2009 I left the biology program for an apprenticeship with Pak Sugianto, a bookbinder in Yogyakarta who had been binding books by hand for forty-one years. I stayed three years. I learned to fold signatures, to sew raised-cord bindings, to back a spine with hide glue warmed in a copper pot. What I learned, more than anything, was the patience of materials that do not hurry. A book, like a photograph, cannot be rushed without ruin.
The first camera came in 2012. A Hasselblad 500C/M, bought second-hand from a departing journalist in Jakarta. I did not photograph seriously for another year. I carried it on walks the way one carries a notebook — to look more carefully, not to capture. Eventually, the looking began to insist on being kept.
In 2017 I completed an MFA in Photography at the Rhode Island School of Design. The studio I keep today — half in Sukabumi, half in Santa Fe — was set up in 2019. The work has not changed much since. I photograph landscapes and portraits, sometimes within the same frame, on film and digital. I print by hand. I refuse what asks to be refused.
— Jonathan, 2025
"Photography, for me, is less an act of taking than an act of receiving. The frame offers itself when it is ready. The photograph is what you accept — and only after you have stopped asking for it."— Jonathan Kniss, in conversation with Aperture, 2025
A short list of the years that shaped the work. Not a CV — closer to a list of rooms one has lived in.
"A photographer's tools are not only cameras. They are the room, the light, the paper, the press, and the morning."
A short, honest list of what is in the studio and what is in the bag. Hover any entry to see it. None of it is rare. All of it is used.
The first camera, bought second-hand in 2012. 6×6 medium format. Zeiss Planar 80mm f/2.8. Used for all commissioned portraits and most landscape work. One body, one lens, since the beginning.
Carried on walks and travels. 35mm film, mostly Kodak Tri-X 400 and Portra 400. Used when the Hasselblad would be too slow or too present. The camera that lets a street forget you are photographing it.
A wooden field camera built in 1978. Used for landscape work where time and weight are not problems — the high valleys of the Sangre de Cristo, the Sunda Strait coastline. Six sheets of film per morning, no more.
The darkroom enlarger. Bought in pieces from a closing commercial lab in Bandung, 2019. Used for all silver-gelatin printing up to 16×20 inch. Dichroic head. Single Schneider Componon-S 80mm lens.
The pigment printer. Used for all colour work and any print larger than 16×20 inch. Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta and FineArt Baryta Satin. Calibrated weekly. Eight-cartridge set, all genuine. The print is the work.
A converted warehouse in the hills south of Sukabumi. North-facing windows, 3.6m ceilings, darkroom in the back, print room upstairs. Cedar workbench, salvaged from a closing bindery. Shared with one assistant, one cat.
A small adobe outbuilding on Canyon Road. Used for printing sessions, meetings with American clients, and the winter months when the Sangre de Cristo is too deep to photograph. No darkroom — pigment only.
The studio takes on no more than twelve commissions per year. For project enquiries, prints, exhibitions, or just to write a letter — the studio replies within two working days.
Write to the studio