Hi, I’m Jon Kälev.

I’m a photographer and landscape architect living in Alabama. My work looks at the hidden narratives of place — cultural landscapes, overlooked stores, and layered histories of the Black Belt.

Photography has been my primary way of seeing since 1980, when my father gave me a Nikon FE. What began as documentation of buildings and streets became a deeper inquiry into how land shapes people and how memory lives in landscape's form.

I’m currently working on Signs and Wonders, a book of photographs and drawings examining patterns of settlement by emancipated slaves across Alabama’s Black Belt.

You can follow me on X or email me [here].