"Bryce Canyon"
Wall Street, Bryce Canyon, Utah
J Jason Lazarus
Media: Mordançage Silver Gelatin Print
Frame Size: 16"x20"
Price: $1500 for 1/1 originals, $300 for digital prints from scans
Artist Statement:
Western Consumption
“Progress”, as so many of us like to call it, has left the American West a dump site for yesterday’s best intentions. Fragile skeletons of our collective hopes and dreams no longer merely litter the landscape, but have begun to form infected, incurable lesions. With resources outstretched, urban sprawl devours what is left of pristine wilderness as irreparable climate change burns, floods and decimates the last records of a land once full of infinite splendor. When we think of the West, how should we define it, and where should we place value for it? Should we yearn for the “simpler times” that were anything but, or mourn the misguided hopes and dreams that left it in such squalor… or should we act immediately to drastically change this destructive course that threatens to erase everything it is?
Artist Bio:
J. Jason Lazarus is an Alaska-based photographic educator who has taught at the University of Alaska Fairbanks since 2005. His narrative-driven work discusses and critiques elements of our society’s collective memory, identity, and history through a mix of handmade, analog, and digital processes. His alternative process work ranges from abstract Chemigram prints that discuss the complex historical legacy left behind by World War II, to darkroom-printed Mordançages that question our stewardship in the American West, where the landscape is decaying under the pressures of resource development, economic failures and climate change. Lazarus also spends the lengthy, dimly-lit winter months in Alaska creating unique portraits of its fragile tundra, finding an uncanny beauty among its bleak northern latitudes, as seen in his series Resilient.
Lazarus has exhibited his work at the Museum of the North (Fairbanks, Ak.), Portland’s Blue Sky Gallery, New York’s SoHo Photo, the Bathhouse Cultural Center (Dallas, Tx), Vermont’s Photoplace Gallery, and the Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, Co.), among many others. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at institutions of higher learning including Millikin University, University of La Verne, Oregon State University, University of Wyoming, and Black Hills State University. His work was selected for participation in the 2021 Pingyao International Photography Exhibition in China and the 2017 PhotoLA Art Fair in Los Angeles. Lazarus’ work has been recently published in Analog Forever Magazine, Seities, and the Hand Magazine, along with being featured and interviewed by Petapixel and Catalyst Interviews.
Process:
These photographs are shot on Rollei IR400, Ilford SFX200, and JCH400 Street Pan Film in a Mamiya 7 6×7 camera with an R72 filter, printed on Ilford MGFB Warmtone Paper, and reprocessed in the Mordançage process. The Mordançage process is a bleaching process that lifts the emulsion of the photographic paper in the darkest areas of the image when placed in a warm water bath. These lifted areas create thin, fragile veils that can be moved and manipulated by the artist.
