J. Jason Lazarus
Artist Statement
Westward 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?
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.
J. Jason Lazarus | Fairbanks, AK
Purchase Available Work
Saguaro National Park, Tuscon, Arizona
Archival inkjet print
14” x 11”