Being There

This post is a part one of a five part series writ­ten for the News Pho­tog­ra­phers Asso­ci­a­tion of Canada and orig­i­nally posted on Sep­tem­ber 20th, 2010 at http://npac.ca as “Relo­ca­tion”.

Wait­ing in the lounge at the Toronto island air­port for my con­nect­ing flight, I have the feel­ing of being back in famil­iar ter­ri­tory. At cus­toms, the agent asks all the usual ques­tions. Where are you going? How long? Who are you stay­ing with? Finally, he sends me on my way with a “Have a good one.” Around the cor­ner, the secu­rity guards swab and inspect my gear. The younger of the two gen­tly unpacks the cam­era bag, feeds the lit­tle swatch of fab­ric into the bomb-detection machine, and hands the items back to me one by one. “Here,” he says, “I know how expen­sive these things are, and the last thing you need is me scratch­ing some­thing.” I’m not one to believe in nations, but today I am glad to be back with my compatriots.

I’m back in Ottawa for the first time since I moved to New York at the begin­ning of August to attend the Inter­na­tional Cen­ter of Pho­tog­ra­phy in the doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy pro­gram. Relo­ca­tion, my first solo exhi­bi­tion, opens on Wednes­day night at DAÏMÕN, in Gatineau Que­bec. Relo­ca­tion is part of the X Fes­ti­val of pho­tog­ra­phy in Ottawa.

I am a doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­pher, gen­er­ally con­cerned with the rela­tion­ship between peo­ple and their envi­ron­ment. Tomor­row I’ll explain more about Relo­ca­tion, give you an update from the gallery floor, and pro­vide a lit­tle bit of insight into the process of work­ing with a cura­tor to stage a show. In fol­low­ing posts I’ll show how Relo­ca­tion relates to my other projects, explore my meth­ods and approach, and give a peek into the series I am work­ing on now.

Thank you for allow­ing me to write this week. At cru­cial moments in my career I have received invalu­able encour­age­ment and advice from NPAC mem­bers. I am very happy to be pro­vided this plat­form to repay; in my own small way, that good turn by giv­ing the same encour­age­ment to younger pho­tog­ra­phers (although I hope any­one can gain some­thing from read­ing these posts). If you would like to con­tact me pri­vately for what­ever rea­son, please do. The dis­til­la­tion of my mes­sage this week is this:

Par­tic­i­pat­ing in your com­mu­nity, what­ever it is, is the most impor­tant thing you can do as a photographer.

It is harder than it sounds, but eas­ier than it seems. I will explore the idea that com­mu­nity is cen­tral to the prac­tice of pho­tog­ra­phy a lit­tle more in depth as the week progresses.

Social net­work­ing on Miami beach is not what I had imagined.

Alright. I’m run­ning on three hours sleep, so I’ll end it now. Meet back here same time tomorrow.

Head­ing home tomor­row, early. I’m going to Ottawa to set up and open my first solo exhi­bi­tion, Relo­ca­tion. The exhi­bi­tion opens at 6:30pm on Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 22nd 2010 at DAÏMÕN, in Gatineau (Hull) Québec. I’ll be back in Ottawa for three and a half days. I wish I had more.

If you’re in the Ottawa-Outaouais area, please come say hi, see my pho­tographs, ask me ques­tions about f-stops and aper­tures, pon­der exis­tence together, and have a cou­ple snacks. DAÏMÕN is just across the bridge. It will likely be my last trip to Canada (bar­ring seri­ous med­ical emer­gen­cies) for some time.

Here’s a teaser for Relo­ca­tion. This is 23rd St. (I said damn) is a 2 minute 1 sec­ond video I made here in New York the last time I was head­ing home to Ottawa. Come to the exhi­bi­tion to get the full effect!

This is 23rd St. (I said damn) from Jack­son Couse on Vimeo.

See you Wednesday!

Jack­son

Open­ing on Wednes­day Sep­tem­ber 22nd at 6:30 p.m.

Exhi­bi­tion from Sep­tem­ber 22nd to Octo­ber 10th, 2010, at DAÏMÕN’s Studiõ, 80 Han­son St, Gatineau.

Open Wednes­day to Sun­day from 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Relo­ca­tion is a pho­to­graphic explo­ration of human geog­ra­phy and the desire to con­struct mean­ing in a seem­ingly chaotic uni­verse. Relo­ca­tion is my first solo exhi­bi­tion, and my first exhi­bi­tion to include video.

On the same night, also part of Fes­ti­val X, Andrée Préfontaine’s exhi­bi­tion enti­tled Les exis­tences asyn­chrones by will be held in the same build­ing, at AXENÉO7.

More info

1. Relo­ca­tion photo gallery and state­ment: http://jacksoncouse.com/photos/relocation/
2. Full press release from DAÏMÕN: http://www.daimon.qc.ca/communiques/jackson2/
3. Face­book event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=135200759858226

I have the good for­tune of liv­ing 2 blocks from  MoMA PS.1, the Queens out­post of the Museum of Mod­ern Art. Look­ing for inspi­ra­tion last week, I took myself on an art date to see their Sum­mer show, Greater New York.

Some crit­ics have panned the exhi­bi­tion, but I think there were a enough gems to make it worth while. It seems  prac­ti­cally impos­si­ble to sum up five years of art in New York, and kind of fool­ish to try, so the cura­tors can be afforded a lit­tle understanding.

Tucked in a back cor­ner on the third floor is Deana Law­son’s giant photo-mural. Lawson’s piece presents a nar­ra­tive made of appro­pri­ated images, a sort of imag­ined fam­ily album, but spread out edge to edge on a gallery wall. I enjoyed div­ing into indi­vid­ual pho­tos, and look­ing for the con­trasts and con­nec­tions between the peo­ple pictured.

New York City. I made it here. Well, almost. I made it to Queens.

On my fifth night I had a fever dream. I dreamt that I was at Lib­erty Island, at night, to see the Statue of Lib­erty. I climbed up on a chair to get a bet­ter pho­to­graph, the chair tipped, and I was plunged into the cold, dark water. I wasn’t scared. It more mat­ter of fact, “oh,” I though, “I am sink­ing.” Even­tu­ally, I kicked my feet free from where they were stuck in the chair and swam toward the sur­face. It seemed an eter­nity. When I finally breached the sur­face my father and two men in wet­suits were in the water, look­ing for me. I remem­ber think­ing “next time you fall into the water, make sure to put your cam­era bag down first.”

On Sat­ur­day I took some amaz­ing cold-and-flu med­ica­tion and went on a bike ride. First I went down from Queens to Williams­burg, crossed over the bridge and met my friends down­town (I have two, yay). Then we went up Park Avenue, which was closed from more-or-less the tip of Man­hat­tan to 72nd St. At 72nd we did a loop of Cen­tral park, and reversed the cir­cuit to go home. It was a great trip. Six lanes wide, silent of cars. It was one of the most joy­ous bike rides I’ve ever had.

On the radio they’ve been talk­ing about a pro­posed mosque near the site of the World Trade Cen­ter. It’s a big con­tro­versy, with play­ers from city, state, and fed­eral pol­i­tics pitch­ing their weight around. Objec­tions to this mosque, like objec­tions to other mosques, has been about park­ing, or traf­fic flow, or “sen­si­bil­i­ties” and other thinly veiled excuses for xenophobia.

On the topic, New York’s mayor, Micheal Bloomberg, gave a speech. It is a fan­tas­tic speech, one that makes me proud to be a tem­po­rary New Yorker. He said:

“Our doors are open to every­one. Every­one with a dream and a will­ing­ness to work hard and play by the rules. New York City was built by immi­grants, and it’s sus­tained by immi­grants — by peo­ple from more than 100 dif­fer­ent coun­tries speak­ing more than 200 dif­fer­ent lan­guages and pro­fess­ing every faith. And whether your par­ents were born here or you came here yes­ter­day, you are a New Yorker.”

It’s worth read­ing the full text of Bloomberg’s speech. The incred­i­ble diver­sity of voices, sto­ries, expe­ri­ences, and oppor­tu­ni­ties in New York is a big part of why I came here. It made me really happy to watch this, and on my first day too.

Wel­come to New York. Now, I need to find a swim­ming pool around here.

This pro­file of Lana Šlezić is the sec­ond in a series of artist mini-biographies in the lead up to Bod­ies in Trou­ble, the sum­mer 2010 pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion at Galerie SAW Gallery.

It is a pow­er­ful image, the pho­to­graph of Lt.-Col. Malali Kakar, then the high­est rank­ing woman in the Afghan police force, res­olutely point­ing a hand­gun. Surely it is the con­trast the burqa and the gun, power-objects often seen together but rarely com­bined, that makes this pho­to­graph so strong. If only it  were merely that. In 2008, a few years after this pho­to­graph was taken, Kakar was assas­si­nated. The image of a woman, not only wield­ing a weapon but lead­ing men, is a pow­er­ful sym­bol. Too pow­er­ful for some.

Cana­dian pho­tog­ra­pher Lana Šlezić went to Afghanistan in 2004 on a six-week assign­ment and stayed for two years. Her work doc­u­ment­ing the lives of Afghan women is col­lected in the highly aclaimed book For­saken, pub­lished in 2007. Šlezić explains more about her work in an inter­view on PRI’s The World:

PRI the World inter­view with Lana Slezic

Inter­view avail­able from the PRI archive here.

Bod­ies in Trou­ble includes the por­trait of Malali Kakar by Lana Šlezić. Although there are many strong pho­tographs in the exhi­bi­tion, this is one of my per­sonal favorites. Bodies in Trou­ble opens Thurs­day July 22nd, 2010 at SAW Gallery in Ottawa.

This pro­file of Maya Deren is the first of a series of artist mini-biographies in the lead up to Bod­ies in Trou­ble, the sum­mer 2010 pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion at Galerie SAW Gallery.

Maya Deren was an Amer­i­can avant-garde film maker. The Museum of Mod­ern Art describes Deren’s Meshes of the After­noon (1943) as “one of the most influ­en­tial works in Amer­i­can exper­i­men­tal cin­ema. Indeed, rip­ples of Deren’s influ­ence can be seen through­out West­ern visual cul­ture, such as the mirror-face specters in Janelle Monae’s Tightrope (which I wrote about here). I watched Deren’s films in first year cin­ema stud­ies, as I am sure many have. It’s worth revisiting.

“A non-narrative work, it has been iden­ti­fied as a key exam­ple of the “trance film,” in which a pro­tag­o­nist appears in a dream­like state, and where the cam­era con­veys his or her sub­jec­tive focus. The cen­tral fig­ure in Meshes of the After­noon, played by Deren, is attuned to her uncon­scious mind and caught in a web of dream events that spill over into real­ity. Sym­bolic objects, such as a key and a knife, recur through­out the film; events are open-ended and inter­rupted. Deren explained that she wanted “to put on film the feel­ing which a human being expe­ri­ences about an inci­dent, rather than to record the inci­dent accurately.”

from the MoMA entry for Meshes of the After­noon.

I was sit­ting in my back­yard, answer­ing email and enjoy­ing the sun, when a female robin swooped onto the lit­tle patch of grass in front of me. Every time she ate an ant she hopped closer. I sat com­pletely motion­less, fixed by her gaze. She hopped closer still and I had the dis­tinct feel­ing of being watched, of some for­eign intel­lect siz­ing me up. Then as sim­ply as she came she flew away. Off to eat bugs some­where else, I sup­pose. Maybe she is meet­ing the male robin I have seen perched on my fence.

It is the sum­mer, and it is beautiful.

I am happy to announce the inclu­sion of four pho­tographs from Play­ing House in the upcom­ing inter­na­tional group show Bod­ies in Trou­ble at SAW Gallery in Ottawa, Ontario. Here is a descrip­tion of the exhi­bi­tion by SAW Gallery, details follow:

An exhi­bi­tion fea­tur­ing pho­to­jour­nal­is­tic works and doc­u­men­ta­tion of per­for­mance art span­ning over 50 years, Bod­ies in Trou­ble takes an inspir­ing look at the human plight to sur­vive and to fight for free­dom. Shar­ing many aes­thetic and con­cep­tual con­cerns, pho­to­jour­nal­is­tic work and per­for­mance doc­u­men­ta­tion are often labeled as rem­nants of past events; in this exhi­bi­tion, they are unabashedly pre­sented as visual art. With sub­jec­tive, poetic and at times sub­ver­sive prac­tices, the ten pho­tog­ra­phers and per­form­ers invited from Canada, Spain, France, the United States and the UK bring hope and light in a world that can be extremely dark. Bod­ies in Trou­ble includes such his­tor­i­cal works as Leap into the Void (1960) by Yves Klein, the Pulitzer-Prize– win­ning The Kiss of Life (1968) by Rocco Mora­bito and a never-before-seen restored pho­to­graphic panel (circa 1954) by acclaimed film­maker Maya Deren. Many of the pho­tographs pre­sented in the exhi­bi­tion will be shown in Canada for the first time.

The cura­tor, Ste­fan St-Laurent, has put together a provoca­tive and haunt­ing exhi­bi­tion. I am thrilled to exhibit with this group of pho­tog­ra­phers, including:

Maya Deren (New York, USA)
Cristina Gar­cía Rodero (Madrid, Spain)
Yves Klein (Paris, France)
Rocco Mora­bito (Miami, USA)
Greta Pratt (Nor­folk, VA, USA)
Lana Šlezić (Toronto)
Paul M. Smith (Lon­don, UK)
Jana Ster­bak (Mon­tréal)
and Alex Webb (New York, USA)

Over the next two weeks I will high­light the work of some of the artists in the show and take a closer look at my own pho­tos. In the mean­time, here are the details for the opening:

Bod­ies in Trou­ble Exhi­bi­tion Opening

Thurs­day, July 22, 8PM — 2AM

Galerie SAW Galery
67, rue Nicholas Street, Ottawa ON, Canada K1N 7B9
galeriesawgallery.com

Music with  DJ BEAR wit­ness (Ottawa)

Cash bar

Updates and dis­cus­sion at the Face­book page: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/event.php?eid=134897893198482&ref=ts

There will also be a talk in Sep­tem­ber dur­ing Fes­ti­val X. I will post more infor­ma­tion at that time.

Inclu­sion of pho­tographs from Play­ing House in Bod­ies in Trou­ble at Galerie SAW Gallery was made pos­si­ble by an exhi­bi­tion assis­tance grant from the Ontario Arts Council.

Things I have learned from going to Miami:

Miami is great. It is the most super­fi­cial, do-nothing city in the US, at least parts that I have vis­ited. It’s awe­some. There is absolutely noth­ing to care about in the least. All there is to do is sit on the sand and drink insanely large rum-based drinks. The city lives up to its Sodom rep­u­ta­tion, how­ever, watch­ing peo­ple have sex on the beach is way more bor­ing than you’d assume.

My sus­pi­cion is that Miami isn’t really an Amer­i­can city at all. It’s actu­ally a caribean city dressed up in fab­u­lous Art Deco. I have this vaguely famil­iar feel­ing, the tempo is a dis­tant reminder of the fre­netic energy of Peru. It’s a hot city, except the sex­i­ness is com­mod­i­fied and con­cen­trated into shop­ping dis­tricts in a typ­i­cally Amer­i­can way. Maybe it is an Amer­i­can city after all.

Every­thing that Will Smith said is true: