2020

To be honest, I've exhausted most of what I wanted to say about this year in the past few updates. Looking back at my catalogue, I still consider 2019 to be my best year in terms of quality. I had reached the peak of my editing skills and I was much more selective in terms of curating. But even before quarantine, I had a lot of time to reflect on where I was going as an artist. I had been surrounded by an art community that considered my genre derivative, a sentiment that I bitterly resented. I had believed that my work was personal and transformative enough to transcend the landscape genre.

However, examining the history of art culture made me aware of the ways in which we perpetuate art trends not because we find them inherently interesting or meaningful but because we feel compelled to follow a standard in the hopes of appearing legitimate. In truth, a part of me was following a standard of romantic landscape art because that's what I considered the height of good photography. I also just enjoyed it.

I realized more recently as I diverged into abstract noise photography that I had an opportunity to merge what I consider the creative frontier of digital art with my traditional inclinations. I suspect that going forward, I'll look at noise less as a statement and more as a supplementary aesthetic to the broader idea of creating photography that explores memory and sentimentality. I've enjoyed my last couple of collections because they bring back my interest in natural work, and it seems I've come full circle from dismissing landscape earlier this year.

I tried creating a collage that summarized some of the themes and topics of my work. Quarantine was an obvious overarching motif, but I also included the massive forest fires we suffered in the early fall as well as my experiments in noise and manipulation. I also included my commercial work, which will likely become a larger portion of my website once I get more clients (and better equipment).

As of now, I am entirely updated with my photography. This is a pretty big milestone for me because the last time I was up to date must have been at least three or four years ago. I tend to pile up projects that delay publishing. I have a few experimental albums with a floppy disk camera that I may post at some point in the future, but for now, I'll be updating my Instagram page and reorganizing my website.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for supporting me as always,

- J.