Tag: art

by jad

Doing Photography

I never intended to actually start “doing” #photography when I first started posted those little excerpts from Sontag and Barthes all those months ago, but here we are, featured in @anna.s.snapshots‘s Issue 3 of Plastic Perspective. It’s a portrait of Christine that I took on my very first roll on my #Holga135 at just the right moment, in just the right light. It’s all kind of surreal. And here we are playing photographer and model. I’d be cringing if I weren’t so grateful for Christine’s steadfast support, encouragement, and patience as I turn her into guinea pig slash muse for this strange new hobby that’s … Continue reading “Doing Photography” →

by jad

A Fire is Lit: Concert Photography

This was my first time attempting to take anything more than smartphone snaps at a concert, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. Bar House wasn’t what I expected. It’s a great space but a little difficult to navigate with a chunky camera. I found it almost impossible to capture the frenetic energy from my cramped vantage point, so I’d assumed that most of my shots would have to be scrubbed off my SD card at the end of the night. But when I scrolled through them later, sitting by Fremont’s Lenin statue, I realized that much … Continue reading “A Fire is Lit: Concert Photography” →

by jad

September Estrangement Series

Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing an assortment of #analogphotography from recent happenings and wanderings. This set’s from a staff retreat I was on earlier this month, my third time on this former military base. The first slide’s taken with a #Holga135 on #fujifilm200; the second’s almost the same shot taken on my phone. I greatly enjoyed my pre-dawn and early morning walks and felt like I’d completed some kind of cycle by being here, having sat with hesitation at the threshold of belonging the last time I was in this place. I’ve walked across now. I’m there. x The last night of … Continue reading “September Estrangement Series” →

by jad

New Aura of Old

“Aura is a quality integral to an artwork that cannot be communicated through mechanical reproduction techniques – such as #photography. The term was used by Walter Benjamin in his influential 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin argued that ‘even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: Its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.’ He referred to this unique cultural context i.e. ‘its presence in time and space’ as its ‘aura’.” (TATE / ART TERMS) I’m not sure … Continue reading “New Aura of Old” →

by jad

Neither Art…Nor Nonart

“Artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult. One may assume that what mattered was their existence, not their being on view. … Certain statues of gods are accessible only to the priest in the cella; certain Madonnas remain covered nearly all year round; certain sculptures on medieval cathedrals are invisible to the spectator on ground level. … In #photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is no accident that the portrait was … Continue reading “Neither Art…Nor Nonart” →

by jad

Dog Days/Dead Media

Today has been the wildest day for technology, with copiers falling apart, messages not going through, PDFs mysteriously rendering darker, and emails landing in spam mid-thread; so if Mercury isn’t in retrograde, it really, really ought to be. I even posted this before I was ready. Sigh. Astrology’s connection to my “style” has come up a couple of times in the past few of days; one friend zeroed in on my Aquarian bent (“a bit cerebral in your aesthetics. edgy, understated and clean. futuristic”) while another noted the broadly #crabcore vibe (“Cancer Mercury explains your posts, your memory for so much like … Continue reading “Dog Days/Dead Media” →

by jad

Summer Estrangement Series

Hi, my name is Jad and I have a scarcity mindset. Okay, so that’s starting off a little glib, but seriously, when you think about it, the term has become a catch-all for all things uncouth; if not a stigma, then a case of adult cooties. No one wants a scarcity mindset. But scarcity seems like a natural default for me when budgets are limited and resources are stretched. Digital media trick us into endlessly producing because the costs are offset way down the line—our millions of JPEGs cost *something* somehow, but we’re not the ones immediately fitting the bill. … Continue reading “Summer Estrangement Series” →

by jad

LIGHT/SHADOW

The French word for a camera lens is “objectif photographique,” a factoid I learned in a piece from a series of articles & books called “Object Lessons,” which, surprisingly, has yet to publish any histories of cameras. They’ve published a book on the potato, so… But maybe the story’s too big to tell too quickly; that’s probably why the article only touches on how the 50 mm lens came to be the standard for “normal” vision. Anyway, the French word is perfect because, as the author points out, it encodes much of what we tend to think photography is for: “truth and … Continue reading “LIGHT/SHADOW” →

by jad

LOOK/SEE

There’s an ethics to looking that takes on sharp relief when one begins writing with light. Photography is the craft of capturing emanations from “out there,” and so, with a camera to look through, the predatory urge to survey and ensnare becomes a very real possibility. But to look is not necessarily to see, and there’s an ethics to that moment as well. Viktor Shklovsky writes: “this thing we call art exists in order to restore the sensation of life, in order to make us feel things, in order to make a stone stony. The goal of art is to … Continue reading “LOOK/SEE” →

by jad

Trip Like I Do—Snoqualmie Falls, June 27

So here we are, back to the start; these iconic falls “where Heaven and Earth meet” were the very first stop on our itinerary, making these some of my very first photographs on the journey. I’d read about this sacred place and wanted to capture a little bit of how indigenous peoples might perceive these waters, these “mists that roll up to Heaven” and “carry our prayers and our hopes and our dreams to the Creator of us all,” in the words of Ernie Barr, Jr. My photos weren’t successful in the way I’d imagined them when I looked through … Continue reading “Trip Like I Do—Snoqualmie Falls, June 27” →