J. Jason Lazarus
Collaborating with people from all walks of life has always been a highlight of working on this project. I get to explore the many facets of an individual's career and process, and with any luck, find some common ground that helps us all continue to learn from each other along the way. I've had the chance to speak with a few different photographers from Alaska over the years, but none that go to such great lengths to continually think and investigate photography while making some intensely prolific bodies of work. J. Jason Lazarus is this person, and after working on this interview, I found that common ground that I think a great many of you will gravitate to as well.
It's not just the conversations that come about with others like Lazarus, but it's the connections. The connections are not simply with a person, but in learning about their relationship to the process of making photographs on a deeper level - full of intent and beauty. For me as well, it is certainly a connection to the land and the act of setting out to hopefully make an image or two that satisfies the soul and keeps you coming back for more. That experience is so SO gratifying!
What's more, Lazarus is always curious and learning – taking on some of the most challenging and frustrating photographic processes known. And once again, he makes the connections profound by taking what he has recently learned and using them as an educator to up the game of his fervent students. Seriously, what could be better than that? It feels like that is the ultimate collaboration and has the potential to move through generations—inspiring and showing how the photograph can fulfill oneself as nothing else can. This is the guy that walks the walk, and I'm thrilled to have learned so much from him. I think you will be too.
Atomic, American Forces, 2015, 3.25’’x9’’ Chemigram Print on expired Kodabromide
Bio -
J. Jason Lazarus is an Alaska-based photographer and educator that creates narrative-driven photographic work utilizing a wide range of alternative and historical photographic processes. Lazarus has served as a photographic educator at the University of Alaska Fairbanks since 2005, teaching and developing a wide range of courses in digital, alternative and traditional darkroom photography. His alternative process work ranges from abstract Chemigram prints that discuss the complex historical legacy left behind by World War II to darkroom-printed Mordançage images that show a fragile Western American landscape 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 with his Fujifilm x100F digital camera, finding an uncanny beauty among its bleak northern latitudes, as seen in his series entitled Resilient.
Interview -
Michael Kirchoff: Every photographer experiences that spark that drives them into the direction of the visual arts. How did you get your start, and what were your early influences?
J. Jason Lazarus: My “start” in the visual arts may be best considered as a false start - or, perhaps, an ignored possibility. I found myself in my senior year of high school only needing 1.5 credits to graduate, so I stuffed my schedule full of electives, not really knowing what I’d go to college for. Darkroom photography happened to be one of those courses, and by the end of the year, I had exhausted all photographic offerings at my local high school, started work as the lab manager, and even helped out on the yearbook. Even so, I initially went to college at UAF for a degree in Computer Science. I found myself in a similar situation about four years into my undergrad, recognizing that my poor relationship with math meant that I was still years away from graduating with a CS degree, yet my electives had unknowingly taken me within a year of graduating with a BA in Photojournalism, the closest thing to a photography degree I could get.
Getting a staff job in the Journalism Department as their computer tech served as the veritable foot in the door, though. I wanted to help out more around the department, so I offered to run their darkrooms and studio space. Eventually, I asked to teach their lab sessions in darkroom photography. Within a year, I was teaching. Teaching was what made me really want to photograph more - having stories to bring back to my students and excite them in the darkroom.
My earliest photo influences were probably Arthur Drooker and Steve Fitch, both outstanding photographers of the abandoned space. Their work inspired me to start exploring the mining history of Interior Alaska, venturing out to mere blips on a topographical map, hoping to find remnants of Alaska’s mining history.
MK: In your opinion, what is it that makes for a successful photograph?
JJL: Narrative, attention to formal elements, and appreciation of lighting. Maybe that answer is too academic, but as a teacher, I truly think that formal elements and lighting are essential to any good photograph. Narrative, however, sometime gets looked over — I like connecting with work on a deeper level — to know not only what it means to the photographer, but to me. While it’s not always necessarily for a successful photograph, I really enjoy hearing that photographers get to know their scenes, that they spend hours roaming through the landscape poring over minute details, waiting hours for the light shift, eventually taking their camera out of their bag to calmly compose, and to take the shot as if it was a bodily exhale. Connecting the creation of your work with mental wellness and contemplative time — it might not always find its way into the work, but the artist in me loves having those common values with artists.
MK: What is it that you get out of creating photographs? Is there an overriding theme in your work that you feel best represents you as an artist?
JJL: An overabundance of joy, mental clarity, contemplative time and mental wellness. Often, I spend a good portion of my weekends in the winter in Alaska driving hundreds of miles across lonely stretches of highway in search of a shot or two, completely content if I come home with a roll of film half shot or my digital camera still with a full battery. Really, it’s that opportunity to focus solely on how I see the world — to rearrange all the messy things that daily life does to how we see the world and to organize it and make sense of it all. Were it not for that, I’d be a mess.
As for an overriding theme, most of my work bridges the gaps between history, narrative, and identity. While my work tends to ping all over the place from the tools I use and the processes I practice, at their core each series intends to reveal hidden truths.
MK: While staying current with modern photographic trends in the digital realm of photography, it’s the embrace of alternative and historical processes that seems to be where your head and creative spirit lies most of the time. What is it about these methods that draws you in?
JJL: The art behind creating a print with your hands has always been very important to me and my creative practice. When I first started exhibiting my work, digital was just starting to gain popularity and most folks just thought that my prints were digital black and white images. Of course, how my image was made didn’t inform the narrative or add anything to the experience for the viewer, but it really mattered to me. Because of that, during my graduate studies at the Academy of Art University, I took every course that I could on alternative and historical photographic process. These antiquarian processes allowed me to connect with a print tangibly, getting my hands dirty and leaving a bit of me in each image. I absolutely love being able to have that connection with my work. As well, because so many of these processes create prints most gallery goers haven’t experienced, I get the pleasure of sharing my passion for handmade, analog images with anyone brave enough to ask what it is. Even though whether my images were handmade initially didn’t matter, those bodies of work that I create with my hands now have definitely incorporated process into the narrative.
Saguaro National Park, Arizona, 2020, 11x14’’, Mordançage Print on Ilford MGFB
Soldiers’ Pass Sedona, Arizona, 2020, 11x14’’, Mordançage Print on Ilford MGFB
Craters of the Moon, Idaho, 2020, 11x14’’, Mordançage Print on Ilford MGFB
Pie Town, New Mexico, 2020, 11x14’’, Mordançage Print on Ilford MGFB
MK: Life as an Alaskan often takes precedence in your work in one form or another. After twenty years of living there and creating a less-than-typical picture of what it means to you, how important is it to you that others become educated on the whys and hows of such a different environment – certainly compared to the rest of the U.S.?
JJL: For years, I swore that I wouldn’t become a landscape photographer, believing that Alaska already had its fair share of outstanding ones. Ansel Adams’ work in the state is often regarded as the gold standard of what Alaska is capable of delivering, and so many photographers try to follow that path. No need for me to buy expensive gear and trek down the same path, right? Our local art galleries are already filled to the brim with these sort of images by dozens of photographers.
But no matter how much I knew what Alaska was capable of at its best, none of those images revealed the Alaska that I knew. Our spring, summer and fall are all painfully short here in the Interior — snow usually comes in October and it lingers all the way until May. By December, Fairbanks gets approximately 3 hours of “sunlight”, although the sun barely reaches beyond the mountains on our southern horizon. -20ºF is common for stretches of weeks at a time, but it also does tend to get down to -40ºF or colder by January for at least a week each year. At its harshest, Alaska is an absolute alien landscape hell-bent on killing you. Yet, in those winter months, there’s a rare quality of light - a glow - that’s seldom captured yet often appreciated by locals. Buried in months’ worth of snow, there’s a stillness - a calm - that hangs over every landscape. The crispness of the bitterly cold air feels so otherworldly - truly, the entire experience is hard to put in words.
Heading out into those environments, seeking mental clarity and contemplative space during those brutally long winter months, I managed to find common ground and solace in the landscape. This is the Alaska that you rarely see on display - the one that shows a resilience to the worst possible conditions, a resolve to persevere, possibly even a stubbornness to keep on our own unique path, and a resolute calm, hinting that all will be right. That’s the Alaska that I want to show everyone else.
MK: I wanted to touch upon a couple of bodies of work from you. The first, Emblem and Artifice, is where I first encountered your work. The idea and theme behind this, using such a finite amount of materials, has always impressed me. Can you give us a synopsis of what brought on this work, and do you secretly wish that you could have continued it further if you had had more materials at your disposal?
JJL: About seven years ago, I had the pleasure of taking a workshop from Christina Z. Anderson in Mordançage, Chromoskedastic Sabattier, and Chemigram processes. After I returned home, I was eager to start working with any one of these new processes, initially opting to try out the Chemigram process with some expired photographic paper that I had recently acquired. I went into my darkroom initially with a spirograph set, hoping that playing with one on some photographic paper would inspire me, and basic geometric shapes are always a good starting point. At random, I grabbed a box of Kodabromide paper and just happened to glance at the expiration date: August 1, 1945.
I knew that month had to be historically significant, so I started looking into World War II history and found out that this paper expired five days prior to the Hiroshima bombing. I had recently read some article that discussed how all photographic paper was irreparably altered after the first atomic bomb — and, finding myself connecting the dots, I chose to initially try out a basic geometric atomic design.
While working on these initial prints, I started thinking about my childhood experiences when I lived in Germany and how much WWII history I was able to absorb while I lived there. At nine, I visited Dachau Concentration Camps and I clearly remember still seeing ash and bone in the crematorium ovens. I remember seeing my grandfather, who was part of an American tank battalion, tear up and mask his crying as laughter while we toured towns in the Rheinland Pfalz that he had taken his tank through. I remembered the solemn experience of standing among the graves at Luxembourg American Cemetery, seeing endless rows of fallen soldiers. I remember the shame that I saw on elder’s faces when I, as a naive child, was overjoyed to find WWII memorabilia at a trinket shop.
As I grew up, I never connected well with my peers on these experiences. The injustices and effects of WWII were much more real to me, where most of my peers ignored the conflict as just another part of a boring history class. Since then, those sentiments have only grown more prevalent with us now disconnected from those events by 75 years. We’ve forgotten many of the painful lessons learned by this conflict not just because we’ve relegated it to dusty textbooks rarely opened, but because we so often fail to look into the past to understand the present. Even so, our records rarely discuss the complexities of war, and it was this that I eventually settled on as the intent behind the project. Symbols are perhaps the most powerful relics of WWII, as we see them often misused now, ignoring context and painful memories. Yet, history being one-side, perhaps the reason why we allow the lessons to fade is because we don’t understand the reason why these symbols inspired those that set the world toward this conflict in the first place. Perhaps there’s something there to reveal by exploring the other side.
Each symbol is captured as a mirrored Chemigram on two pieces of Kodabromide paper - mirrored both in shape and in chemical processing. This choice to create an image that encouraged the viewer to reflect on the meaning behind each symbol meant that I immediately started burning through this paper resource that was inextricably linked to the conflict. I had less than 80 sheets or so — less than 40 attempts to create pairs for a series. I eventually created 24 image sets for the series over the course of three years — and I still have just a few pieces of paper left. This series required exhaustive research because I included an extensive write-up with each displayed pair to explain the complexities behind each symbol — I wanted to get it right and didn’t want to offend anyone. Many of the symbols were difficult to feel right about creating art with them and I had a lot of discussions with friends and family about them.
Eventually, I think the toll of all the research, the limited paper, and the fact that other projects started taking off was why I settled on the 24 images even though a few sheets remain. The one story I feel obligated to tell that I haven’t been able to with this series is that of the forced relocation of Indigenous Alaskans from Attu and Kiska Islands during the conflict in the Pacific. I have yet to find a symbol to use for this that would appropriately honor that history.
Executive Order 9066, United States, 2016, 3.25’’x9’’ Chemigram Print on expired Kodabromide
“Shikata Ga Nai” - Japanese / Japanese-Americans, 2016, 3.25’’x9’’ Chemigram Print on expired Kodabromide
Judenstern, Third Reich, 2016, 3.25’’x9’’ Chemigram Print on expired Kodabromide
Zyklon B, Third Reich, 2016, 3.25’’x9’’ Chemigram Print on expired Kodabromide
“Arbeit Macht Frei” - Work Makes You Free - Third Reich, 2016, 3.25’’x9’’ Chemigram Print on expired Kodabromide
Paperclips - Norwegian Resistance, 2016, 3.25’’x9’’ Chemigram Print on expired Kodabromide
Camp Triangles, Third Reich, 2015, 3.25’’x9’’ Chemigram Print on expired Kodabromide
MK: The other collection of yours is your most recent, and ongoing, work in Western Consumption. This work created with the Mordançage process has been quite the learning experience I’m sure. I’ve had the opportunity to see it grow a bit over the last year or so and am always excited to see something new emerge. You’ve been very open about working everything out as you continue to investigate the work and intention behind it. Can you tell us how that has been for you, and if you see it being finalized and presented as a whole any time soon?
JJL: I almost see Western Consumption as a logical continuation of my work in Emblem & Artifice, even though the two series are vastly dissimilar. Emblem is a huge departure from my control freak mindset - there’s only so much that you can control in the Chemigram process, no matter how many variables you lock down. Similarly, no matter how good you get at the Mordançage process, there’s always an errant drop of water that’s threatening to rip every veil you’ve meticulously created and conserved.
Creating prints for Western Consumption has encouraged me to embrace happenstance, chaos, and unpredictability and it is often a humbling reminder that I am not merely creating these prints — Mordançage prints are created within a conversation that you have with the process itself. There is certainly a well-defined give and take relationship. Each print easily takes 4-5 hours to create as I bleach and redevelop prints, encourage veils to blister out of the blackened, infrared skies, meticulously bleed the silver out of the blooms, and gently encourage each burst veil back into a balanced composition. Much like what I get out of venturing out into those splendid, lonely winter landscapes, I recenter, find mental clarity and contemplative space spending hours in the darkroom making these prints.
It’s far from done — in fact, as I write this, I’m hours away from getting on a plane for yet another adventure in the Lower 48 to capture more material for this process. That said, I think I will start exhibiting the series by next summer, if I’m given the chance.
Very Large Array, Socorro, New Mexico, 2020, 11x14’’, Mordançage Print on Ilford MGFB
MK: Is there a long term goal for Western Consumption?
JJL: An interesting question, although I’d have to say I don’t know if there is one yet. I still feel like this project is still very new to me. Right now, though, I’m still focused on shooting more infrared landscapes throughout the West for the project while also learning how to control the Mordançage process. I wouldn’t mind getting a chance to learn the process from yet another Mordançage printer, because after doing workshops with both Christina Z. Anderson and Alex Krajkowski, I still feel like there’s so many mysteries to the process.
MK: You are somewhat remote in your location, yet a desire to work with others has brought you to learn and work with other artists. How has collaboration become such an integral part of your practice?
JJL: I think the relative isolation that I have by living in Alaska, coupled with the long, cold and dark winter months, can encourage artists to become islands, isolated from all. It’s not only unhealthy from a mental health perspective, but it is also detrimental to your practice due to the lack of input, critique, various perspectives, etc. Alaska’s isolating environment almost encourages your work to not evolve, become stagnant, and move at a snail’s pace. I look forward to any opportunity to connect with a fellow artists while I’m outside traveling. Whether it’s grabbing a beer with a fellow photographer, connecting with an artist to photograph together for an evening, or to attend a workshop in a new process, I never ignore an opportunity to grow as an artist and gain new perspectives. While this goes against my nature as an introvert, I’ve never regretted stepping out of my comfort zone. I get to understand how other artists work and see differently by shooting with them, or talking to them about their current passion projects. I find new ways to create whenever I learn a new process. This sort of learning and basic collaboration reenergizes me every time and sends me home excited to share my practice with more people and to create even more uniquely than before.
MK: An openness to collaborate and a desire to experiment are certainly great hallmarks of a great teacher in any form. These traits in your toolbox are something I see as an immense benefit to your students. In reciprocating this, how do you feel their own process has helped shape you as an artist and an educator at the University of Alaska Fairbanks?
JJL: Last night, I joked with my students that the current level of their work in my Basic Darkroom course was going to force me to seek out a Doctorate, in an effort to outpace their creativity and abilities. I was only half joking, as a lot of the reason that I initially sought out an MFA was the realization that my students were starting to create work that easily surpassed mine. Certainly, I know it’s not a competition, and I don’t see it as such — but I do like keeping them on their toes by being able to take the instruction in the classroom to yet another higher level whenever they surpass my greatest expectations. That’s why I keep seeking out educational opportunities through workshops, conferences, and classes (when I can take them!). Recently, I took a local course in Elementary Scanning Electron Microscopy to further my knowledge in alternative photographic technologies - and I’ve encouraged several of my students interested in macro photography to take this course. With every workshop I take, I start thinking of ways to incorporate it into the classes I teach. Of course, some can’t fit into a standard semester course, so I’ve seen a recent uptick in students that want to do independent studies with me just so that they can learn these specialized processes. And, of course, it all encourages me to keep on doing more and more. Learning never should stop for an artist.
“X”, Santa Rosa, New Mexico, 2019, 11x14’’, Mordançage Print on Ilford MGFB
Drive Inn, Tucumcari, New Mexico, 2020, 11x14’’, Mordançage Print on Ilford MGFB
Whiting Bros., Tucumcari, New Mexico, 2021, 11x14’’, Mordançage Print on Ilford MGFB
MK: From my perspective, one of the most interesting aspects of your practice lies in the Journal section on your website (linked here). Not only have you spent a considerable amount of time outlining the timeline of learning the many processes you are becoming proficient in, but failure is often found within many of the entries. This is an honesty that provides the incredible and important truth behind what it takes to master the creative possibilities you take part in. How has documenting the steps you’ve taken informed and shaped your projects and goals?
JJL: When you’re in the middle of a project and you start falling into a rut, it’s very easy to reframe your small successes as massive failures. These journals, when I find the time to write them, encourages me to have a much more positive outlook on my progress. That progress might be miniscule, but having years of journal entries behind me, I see that it’s always been like this — and it always will. There’s a lot of comfort in reminding yourself of that, and it often allows me to give myself a little more slack.
MK: Do you have any other creative pursuits, or has photography become the one obsession that always takes precedence?
JJL: One of these years, I will find enough time to start seriously homebrewing. I’ve dabbled in it over the past 15 years or so, only making a handful of meads, beers, ciders and cysers, but I would truly enjoy investing more time in learning the art of brewing. Mixing classic / vintage cocktails has become a bit of a collaborative creative pursuit between my vintage-loving wife and I — she microblogs about the experiences of researching, mixing and tasting various cocktails from the Savoy cookbook and others, and we collaboratively come up with staged and themed still life shots for each of them.
Covid realities, however, have certainly encouraged my interest in cooking at home — that, coupled with the fact that there’s only a couple dozen restaurants in Fairbanks and I’m getting pretty picky about the quality of my meals as I get older. I’m pretty proud of my homecooked Chorizo Enchiladas, Chicken Chipotle, Orange Chicken, Chicken Chili, Black Bean Soup and Jajangmyeon.
MK: In speaking to future generations of photographers, do you have any words of wisdom to those setting out to make their mark in the photographic world?
JJL: I feel like so much of my advice to students comes directly from Art and Fear. I encourage all of my students to invest the time in listening to the audio book and then re-listening to it routinely. There’s so many lessons in there that are vital to success.
MK: I’d like to thank you for the time and patience in answering my many questions here. As a final query, I’m wondering how you see your work progressing into the future? Do you have anything new you are currently working on that we should be on the lookout for?
JJL: Right now, I’ve got two week-long trips worth of negatives to start making prints with and eventually make Mordançage prints from - so I’ll be pretty busy this winter! At this point, though, I can’t see very far beyond that.
But thank you, so much, Michael, for this opportunity.
You can find more of Jason's work on his website here.
All photographs, ©J. Jason Lazarus
