News
Ambient Reaction
jon michael anzalone
Jan 11, 2017
In 2016, creating new personal work, I wanted to shoot a meaningful reaction to the year, and I wanted to shoot in America. I've seen a lot of good work about Rust Belt "Trump Towns" or the independent spirit of Bernie Sanders rallies, but I don't shoot that way, and I don't have any grand contribution to the pool of work that could stand out beyond what was being created.
So then, I consider my new photoessay, NO LAWS, to be an "ambient reaction" to the year. In a few scattered moments that correspond to significant political moments in the year (March, October, New Year's Eve), and two journeys (Montana, and Costa Rica), I shot work that expressed what I was feeling and seeing without ever addressing the subject matter directly. Montana, I considered to be part of an American soul--the freedom, libertarianism, of the West. Costa Rica is a personal locale, where my parents now live. Or, together, even though the locations bear little tangible relation, the connection of an American's soul to America's soul, versus expatriation and untethering from country. My home, where the family I grew up with no longer lives, and not my home, which in my parents' domicile in an unfamiliar place is filled with the iconography and memory of my youth.
I think, as a whole, it creates a message in the negative space of what it chooses to express directly, and what it chooses to not express. It is produced by an ambient reaction, or a way of looking closely at something without looking directly at it.
http://jma.photography/no-laws
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