Jim Tucker and Frank Young

About

Frank D. Young Frank D. Young is an American fine art photographer whose portraits treat their subjects as living documents of their existence. Though he has always had a camera in his hands, he began his journey as an artist in 2008, building a practice rooted in analog processes and equipment while moving fluidly between film and digital capture. Since 2012, he has documented the Black residents of Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine, a neighborhood reshaped by economic revitalization and gentrification, creating a portrait record of a community in the midst of change. His clients include the Cincinnati Regional Chamber, the World Affairs Council of America, 1001 Colors, Duke Energy, Mortar, 3CDC, and The City Flea. Drawing on influences from Gordon Parks and Richard Avedon to Carrie Mae Weems, Jamel Shabazz, and Spike Lee, his work bridges documentary tradition and fine art portraiture, framing everyday people with the dignity and permanence of the historical record. Jim Tucker Jim Tucker is a British-born artist and educator whose passion is to use art to build community through collaboration and education. Since leaving England in 2007, he traveled extensively before settling in Cincinnati in 2021, carrying with him a belief in "eating what the locals eat," a phrase that signifies reverence and respect for the culture of every new place. He interprets his surroundings through site-specific automatic painting, generating imagery and characters that he contrasts with work inspired by historical and contemporary photography of the area. Since moving to Cincinnati, he has produced and painted over twenty murals, many in partnership with 1001 Colors and now recognized as city landmarks, and collaborated with institutions including the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Marketer Collaborative, and several Big Tech companies. Across a combined career of more than twenty years, his work bridges fine art, murals, and community building. The Collaboration Jim and Frank have been working together for several years, with Jim licensing Frank's photographs as references in his paintings and installations. BLINK 2026 marks the first time the two are coming together for a unique hybrid mural, combining a wheat paste of Frank's photography against Jim's painted interpretation of the mural's location.