Friends of the studio,
Midday on a Tuesday in August, Kath and Camille assigned my homework for the week: Start selecting photographs for a book. It’s something I’ve talked about for years—a photo book depicting my life in South Bend. So that afternoon, I got to work. Some may remember from that month’s studio news:
I started a new project this month that requires sorting through my photo archive beginning in January 2016, when I bought my first camera, which comes out to about ~100,000 photos for consideration. It feels fun and emotional and tedious and worthwhile. A body of work is gradually emerging that I hope to introduce to you by the end of the year.
Slowly, steadily I sorted, until one Tuesday evening in November at Madison Oyster Bar, Jason urged: “If you’re going to finish the photo book, do it in time to sell for Christmas.” At that point, I had winnowed the archive to 398 photographs for consideration—but 398 jpegs on a hard drive is decidedly not a book. A rough title had formed in my mind, but no introduction, captions, or InDesign file—and truthfully, still no belief that I could finish such a project.
We would fly to Israel/Palestine for ten days that coming Saturday, so I paused and replied: “If Kath is in to help, then it’s possible.”
Fortunately, the following morning, Kath answered: “I’m in.”
So, we spent the next three days, countless texts with John, shared iCloud notes during my travels, and another three days after turning those jpegs into Life In South Bend, and somehow started selling preorders in December.
Those were special days. I'm overwhelmed by the blessing of stumbling my way to this place, this work, and friendship.
These months in new client work, I produced a video with Neighbor to Neighbor featuring an Afghan family who recently moved to South Bend as refugees—it cannot be publicly shown yet, but I’ll share it here when that day comes. And Chuck, Ryan, and I released two videos with the St. Joseph County Department of Health: Our Community Health Workers and Our Mission.
And I enjoyed several flights! Kristen, Dustin, and I traveled to Las Vegas and the surrounding desert for vacation, and I traveled to Israel/Palestine with The Telos Group and a small crew from South Bend City Church, bringing home new ink from the 700-year-old Razzouk Tattoo. Here are some photos from Vegas—expect a blog post about our time in Israel/Palestine on West.SB in the new year.
After Christmas, Kath and I spent a couple of slow days reflecting on a year of surprising change and hard-won growth for our respective studios and looking forward to a coming year with fresh rhythms and intention.
Good times at Tutt Street. Until January,
Jacob
