Jason Fulford Interview

Interview by Ross Evertson

MR: What do you feel is the relationship between travel and image making, for you personally?

JF: Traveling is really important for me. Whenever I’m in one spot for too long, I start thinking about nesting. When I’m traveling I guess my brain is a little looser and more abstract.

I have two distinct processes when I work – shooting and editing. I usually hold on to images for a few years before using them. This gives me enough time to become detached from them. Shooting is like collecting a vocabulary (of images), and then editing is using that vocabulary to “write” something.

The collecting part is very intuitive and abstract… making vague associations between ideas and the visual world. I think that’s basically what art is in any form -- a human attaching meaning to something.

The editing part is half-emotional and half-academic. No good editing happens unless you’re feeling sensitive that day. Sometimes music helps. When I edited Crushed I listened to a lot of Pixies and Led Zeppelin. Eisenstein said, “Art begins the moment the creaking of a boot on the sound-track occurs against a different visual shot and thus gives rise to corresponding associations.” Editing pictures is all about the associations between images. It’s this structure that creates a specific language that helps the viewer read the pictures.

On the subject of Gerhard Richter, Adorno said, “Every artwork is a picture puzzle, a puzzle to be solved, but this puzzle is constituted in such a fashion that it remains a vexation, the pre-established routing of its observer.” If this puzzle cannot be definitively solved, then the aesthetic experience has the potential to be never-ending.

MR: How do you think national/regional identity influences your work?

JF: I used to think that my pictures of North America had more layers of meaning than my pictures of other continents. Ex-pat’s are hardly ever fully integrated into the foreign culture. But recently I’ve been shooting really strong work in other countries. It’s best for me when the location is irrelevant and the ideas are abstract.

In Crushed I decided to include dates and locations of all the images. This information seemed relevant in order to say that this book is not about any one region or country. These pictures were edited together from all over the world. It’s not a book about location. For me this book is about the simultaneous feeling of sad and funny.

You talk about your images forming a vocabulary. To what extent do you think the language you are building is universal? It is presented with a very American voice. This idea brings to mind watching a foreign movie sans subtitles, yet still completely understanding what is going on.

JF: This is really a hard question. Although I’ve been seriously influenced by western philosophy, I don’t think of my voice as being linked with any one country. And these days especially I don’t feel like I belong in the US. I try to soak in as much as I can from all over the world and then speak with an original voice. I also try to give clues through editing as to how to read my pictures. For example, maybe one diptych will have an obvious connection between the two pictures – something graphic or something narrative – and then the next diptych will be more vague. Hopefully you’ll look at the second one longer and think about it. The next single image might at first seem totally out of place – but on second look will start to feel related to the earlier images. It’s sort of a learn-as-you-go kind of language.

I have seen you talk about your work as funny/sad before (in addition to this conversation, I mean). In the past I read into that only on a superficial level; what I initially perceived Crushed to be, which was a critique on the Midwest aesthetic. It seems now, to a large degree, that my assumptions may have misled me. Can you clarify what it is that you personally are seeing as funny and sad in your work?

JF: Sometimes if you see something so completely unremarkable, it’s heartbreaking. I don’t know why. Sometimes if you see something so totally ridiculous and straightforward, it’s also heartbreaking. It gives you this weird feeling where your eyes swell up and you can’t decide whether to laugh or cry.

Crushed isn’t about the Midwest at all. It’s more about emotions than aesthetics. A couple of years ago I was feeling really detached and sort of confused about the world. I found that beauty and humor served as antidotes to this sadness. The pictures in Crushed collectively represent that experience.

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Jason Fulford is a photographer based in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His work has been published in numerous magazines, on book jackets, posters, and in two books published by J&L Books which he co-founded with illustrator Leanne Shapton. For more information, check http://www.jasonfulford.com