Tag: looking back

by jad

Photo Fest 2023

I’ve always found lighting intimidating, so I’m glad that both instructors at today’s sessions intimated that they’d felt the same way at the beginning too. Back in film school, talk of white balance and light metering would make my eyes roll right back into my skull while my heart did jumping jacks, but there would always be someone “more technical” on the crew that I could rely on to get a project done; just leave the writerly stuff to me. I think part of the angst for me has always been the fear of just not getting it? Like, just … Continue reading “Photo Fest 2023” →

by jad

Hope is a Funny Thing

This is my fourth time here. I didn’t expect this place to hold much meaning when I first visited, but that’s what happens with punctuation: a beat forms and meaningful things get shuffled into a song of sorts. The last time I was here, I had just been ordained into the order of American, and twice before then, I felt the looming reality of belonging press upon me like the pages of a dogeared book cracked straight down the spine. I’d been laid flat on the table. And now? I guess I’m in the juicy bits of whatever’s within these … Continue reading “Hope is a Funny Thing” →

by jad

Seattle: “It’s a City”

The other day was the second time in a row that I’ve heard a dig made at Seattle by a band on tour, and the first time was pretty direct: “if you’re born and raised in Seattle, that sucks for you.” That time, I laughed and waved my middle fingers in the air as the crowd cheered. This second time, the frontwoman was actually starting to say something nice, recalling how they’d recorded two albums and lived here for a month each time: “Seattle’s nice,” she offered, but voices in the back started to jeer and say “it’s alright…” Everyone … Continue reading “Seattle: “It’s a City”” →

by jad

Art Thoughts

Being around artists and in artmaking spaces makes me think about the impulses behind my desires to make, do, and express things in general. I have language to explain it and different vocabularies to define it with, like the stars and their imprint on the soul, or God, the Creator of co-creatives, or class distinction and its many corollary affordances. But all these are just words to make sense (♒︎) of a nagging feeling I don’t actually understand (♋︎). It’s the gnawing dissatisfaction I felt while flipping through craft books as a kid, desiring to make things without knowing why; … Continue reading “Art Thoughts” →

by jad

Cornish BFA 2023

I haven’t been to a Cornish BFA exhibit since “Expo 2019,” which wasn’t long after I first moved to Seattle. Back then, I took any opportunity to push myself to write, so I wrote about what I found there, and I still follow the artists whose art I wrote about. Now I write all the time, but I’m still here sharing what I’ve seen; except now I’m pushing myself to take photos any chance I get instead. x x x x

by jad

What is Artifice?

I’ve been thinking about “AI” and “art” and “photography” and the slippages people makes when discussing where these concepts coincide and where they do not. It frustrates me to see the conversation around the place of technology in art-making being swept up in outmoded generalizations around what “is” or “isn’t” art when the ethical anxieties that AI brings up are better addressed at a more granular level: what is or isn’t an artifice? At what point does the maker end and the mechanism begin? I took these photos in 2008 on what we’re now calling a “digicam” of some kind. … Continue reading “What is Artifice?” →

by jad

Mother’s Day

“Je ne te quitte pasJe ne reviendrai jamaisJe ne te quitte pasJe ne reviendrai jamaisJe ne te quitte pasJe ne reviendrai jamaisJe ne te quitte pas.” We’ve all seen the posts about words that can’t be translated into English that inevitably include “saudade” in the list – saudade, that Portuguese feeling of “profound nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent something or someone.” This longing is “often associated with a repressed understanding that one might never encounter the recipient of longing ever again.” But what’s a word for the melancholy that comes with irrepressible presence? Does anyone else ever feel … Continue reading “Mother’s Day” →

by jad

Green Lent, Red Pisces

It’s funny “haha” and funny “hmm” to me how often I’ve swung between dogged determination and complete surrender. I am the original member of @baumwerkj’s Order of the Dung Beetle before it had a name, back when @heure_bleue__ initiated me as such. I am also constantly broken open and made a vessel of things I did not choose but became available for. Pisces season seems to come around every year to mark some new striving after a vision; sometimes it turns out to be a mirage, other times it is transfigured into a brighter image of the truth. I used to be embarrassed … Continue reading “Green Lent, Red Pisces” →

by jad

#Route101: San Francisco / Jenin

The air feels heavy with many things today, so I thought I’d share this, from Clarion Alley, as a reminder of sorts, or maybe just a laugh, if you’re in that mood, instead. x San Francisco himself at the Mission Dolores Basilica, right next to the original Misión San Francisco de Asís. The Basilica and a nearby park get their name from the “Arroyo de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores,” or Our Lady of Sorrows Creek. x x x x I haven’t posted anything political in a very long time, and the awful thing is that I’m moved to post … Continue reading “#Route101: San Francisco / Jenin” →

by jad

#Route101: Another New Year

As we recover from the motion blur of our epic #Route101 road trip, much of the past year is coming into focus for me in the rearview mirror. I spent much of 2022 and a good chunk of 2021 thinking and writing about meaning—discerning it, making it, communicating it. I tried every personality test and even got into tarot. I turned inward, coiling up tighter and tighter until I got sick of that spiritual exhibitionism and the leering that comes with it. I wanted out and I found an unexpected exit in photography, an ecstatic eye to thread new lines through. But … Continue reading “#Route101: Another New Year” →