My goal is to photograph horizons.  Not the sunsets and sunrises of our day to day life, but the veiled border between the observable and the unknown.  I want to be an explorer, a scientific archivist, and a collector of images by my own hand that I can share with and hopefully inspire others.  This takes me to the smallest details, the immaculate symmetrical perfection of plants and animal life, or on a broader scope, analyzing the landscape for patterns and abstract reality.

My most common medium is digital photography, though I’m continually pushing myself to explore the physical benefits and techniques offered by film.  I also utilize scenography to better capture small details.  I enjoy blending the physical film media with digital scanograpy as well.

As a contemporary photography student, every project is a new challenge for me as well as a learning experience.  I have a strong distaste for repeating work; why delve into the familiar when there’s so much unexplored in one’s personal world as well as the bigger environment?  That doesn’t mean I don’t learn from previous mistakes, or deny the opportunity to extrapolate off earlier works.  I just actively avoid repeating them without change or progress.

My goals are to open up new worlds for the viewer.  In my last gallery showing, ‘Botany’, I displayed a series of large scenography prints of plants from my own collection.  Audiences pulled a variety of meanings from this, varying from a scientific analysis of plants to noting the balance within the plants structure.  But the underlying goal was achieved, to take these normally miniscule, unnoticed specimens and bring them under the light of the enlarger. 

As a environmental studies major, my purpose will always have an air of education to it.  In this time of crisis, as anthropological climate change throws the ecological foundation of our planet into chaos, it is vastly important to recognize what’s being lost, in a desperate attempt to preserve what’s left.  Sex sells car ads but it’s cute pandas that sell environment protections.  The subjects, the landscapes, that I take, will hopefully bring to attention one more plight, hopefully capture the eye of one more person. 

I want to share my photography, the techniques, the subject, the meaning, with everyone I come in contact with.  But over all, I want to share in the appreciation and realized stewardship that we have of this, our only world.

Photo Proposal

Jordan Land

Photo Seminar

                Through my wanderings around many towns and cities, it’s become apparent that one of the most common words appearing on signs and notices, banners and readings, is the word NO.  More ‘No’s’ than ‘Yes’s’, More ‘No’s’ than ‘Open’ or ‘Closed’.  And we read these without a second thought.  But what are the values that this readily apparent word imposes?  And how do they effect us? I want to explore how the physical word NO becomes a part of its local environment, and how as a signifier it communicates a certain thought process.  The chosen word in the photography should not and will not be the subject, but will still be legible in the photograph and an easily identifiable factor of the depicted environment.

                I strongly believe that displaying work is just as important if not more so to facilitating an artist’s desired expression.  I don’t believe that this work could be fully experienced through simple large prints (I will print large forever!), beautifully framed and isolated from one another.  Ideally, I would occupy an entire space with very large prints, overlapping in a very erratic juxtaposition.  A vibrant disconcerting array of images that sharply run into one another, not smoothly blend.  However, I lack the space and funds to approach such a project.  So instead, I will opt for a digital projection that enables a similar kind of layout.  The photos will be arranged, irregularly, within a ‘photo sphere’ that enables the user to digitally look around.  I can further expand this by displaying it on the largest screen I can find on campus, within the Meese Auditorium.