Category: Poiesis

by jad

Birthday Breakfast

We’re not quite moved out but we’ve started moving in; the liminal time in between. Empty rooms are beginning to take their form. Boundless time is beginning to clump up and congeal into rhythm and routine. This is our first morning waking up in a new act in this city. This is also the first light of yet another solar return. We’ve made it through. There is symbolism to this space. There’s a moral to our decisiveness and a lesson in our good fortune. It’s too early to find meaning in the day, but I’ll start making some anyway. This … Continue reading “Birthday Breakfast” →

by jad

Christine’s Project: Kent

Working with @christine.bingham.art on this photo-documentation project has been a thrill and an honor, and sometimes pretty nerve-wracking too, since I only picked up a camera two years ago. The learning curve’s steep, but I’ve always learned best in situ and in media res. My brain’s wired that way. This particular shoot, documenting Saint Kateri, was especially poignant. It took us over a year to make it happen, and in that time, we got to learn so much about Kateri and the people of Kanawake, which we even had the privilege of visiting (it’s just outside of Montreal). So, I’ve … Continue reading “Christine’s Project: Kent” →

by jad

The Art of Moving

I don’t know what the property people really thought of us, but one did say nothing fazes her anymore after I joked about our quick and dirty photoshoots in every apartment we viewed. “We turn everything into a project,” I laughed. But it’s no joke. Life would be a thousand times more stressful without these tricks I play on myself. Compete with every other lease ending this month? Sure, why not. And let’s be art-farts doing it.

by jad

U-Haul Season on LomoChrome ’92

It felt like spring had only just arrived, but now it’s time for another solstice; the wheel turns and stops for no one. The unrelenting march of time can mean many a thing to many a person, but in a city like ours, there is one certainty that it inevitably brings: U-Haul season is upon us. That’s right. After six years atop our brick tower, the time has come. I’ve walked these streets for about as long, occasionally catching myself playing “beyt byout” in my mind, wondering what it would be like to live behind that window or another, with … Continue reading “U-Haul Season on LomoChrome ’92” →

by jad

Folklife 2024

It’s difficult to be cynical about post-Expo spaces like the Seattle Center when they’re so successfully integrated in and activated by the urban fabric, especially when you compare them to the legacies of Expos like Montreal’s. And Folklife itself is an admittedly impressive enmeshment of the very best of Northwest granola culture with the most humanizing of atomic age modernism. I almost can’t stand admitting this. It’s hard to believe that this thing has been going on for 53 years. And this was my first time here. It was especially impressive to me how formally Folklife embraced the Palestinian cause. … Continue reading “Folklife 2024” →

by jad

Polaroid Poetics

The more Polaroids you take, the more trained your eye becomes at seeing scenes that would probably *pop* on this temperamental medium. That’s what first drew me to this shot of folklifers watching a presentation on vogue dancing—bright solids tightly packed into the center of an under-lit scene. But since taking the shot, all types of readings of defiance and resistance started floating off the surface for me, beyond the lived circumstances of that moment. All photographs are mysterious—or, at least, that’s what I read in a book on photography I found on the street last night. How that mystery … Continue reading “Polaroid Poetics” →

by jad

Humans of the March for Palestine

I’m thinking about this today. “Seeking Visions for a Better World is a call for images and aspirational sentiments that invoke constructive visions of the future to counterbalance the preponderance of dystopic visions presented in pop-culture, literature, and media.” // at @su_hedreengallery, by @ryanfeddersen. The @marchforpalestine.seattle was one of the most thoughtful and intentionally organized political actions I’d ever had the pleasure of taking part in, however small my role ended up being; I’ve certainly never seen more beautiful spreadsheets in my life either. Something felt different from the moment I watched the coordination Zooms. I’d become familiar with the … Continue reading “Humans of the March for Palestine” →

by jad

Christine’s Project: Cascade

There’s a sense of many things coming full circle. Cycles coming to completion, stories tied up in a bow… This shoot is part of one Christine’s stories. Saint Triduana of Restalrig was the first piece in her series, based on another painting she’d made and given away to a roommate in Edinburgh. And here we are, taking pictures with it in the apartment she lived in just before she moved to Scotland. It looked very different back then. This project and this place are deeply meaningful to Christine in ways that are only right for her to tell. What I … Continue reading “Christine’s Project: Cascade” →

by jad

Basic Filmmaking

This is the very first project I made in a “Basic Filmmaking” summer intensive I did at NYU back in 2006. It’s shot on Kodak 16mm film using an old Arriflex and was hand spliced and screened silently for a class led by Katherine Lindberg, who seems to be still teaching there. I don’t remember what the project prompt was, but I loved how she intuitively got what I was about. She would later tell me (approvingly) that I “like to poke sticks.” She didn’t let me quit on myself when Israel’s shelling of Beirut started to mess with my … Continue reading “Basic Filmmaking” →

by jad

At the Kraken

It’s been so long since I’ve felt motivated to go to a concert, let alone, do “concert photography” i.e. take a camera with me and hope for the best. This was Friday night at the “new” Kraken (which was the “old” Café Racer), and it was just the right level of low-key for me. The band was Bitch Slap, who are a lot of fun (and the drummer is my type of clown). The crowd was thin and mostly seated in a large crescent, so it felt awkward to stand in the middle and block people’s view. Plus, I haven’t … Continue reading “At the Kraken” →