What’s Personal and What’s Public ~ July, 2023
Friends of the studio,
Two weeks ago, I ended the drought on West.SB with Camera-Friend—a collection of twenty-nine photographs from the first half of this year. In the March edition of studio news, I wrote about my lack of publishing as “failing to rise” to my goals for creative output, but, in the wake of putting that story into the world, I’m thinking about it less as goal-accomplishment and more as keeping a proper balance between what’s personal and what’s public.
My photography practice is personal and typically done on long walks alone, yet from the beginning, it’s been paired with some form of sharing in public. It’s hard to imagine one without the other. But I’m constantly moving back and forth across this “personal to public” spectrum—at times, compulsively sharing from a shallow well of work, and other times, producing a wealth of photographs and drafts and keeping them to myself.
I’m not at my best on either end of that spectrum. I know the anxiety of feeling overexposed and the frustration of feeling hidden.
I began the story telling of “difficult days” this first half of the year. This isn’t the time or place to share further, except to say that when life is most difficult, I want to retreat inward—to hide. So, Camera-Friend is a collection of photographs I loved making alone, offered in service of keeping proper balance. And if you feel inclined to share a response to it, I will enjoy hearing it.
These months in new client work, I started a naming, branding, and messaging project with the South Bend Community School Corporation, a video project with Commuters Trust—and continued collaborating with Kath on her studio’s design projects with Misfit Society Coffee Club and Crooked Ewe. And in newly released client work, I finished photography for Mariah Keener’s single “Jesus-Loving Queer Kid,” Sarah Bloom Studio, and Symphonic Capital, and produced a video series for the South Bend-Elkhart Regional Partnership with Chuck and Ryan.
One of the pleasures of studio life this season is collaborating with Jason Adam Miller on the release of his first book When The World Breaks. With a lot of help from Kath, we built a new jasonadammiller.com and designed tour graphics, templates for quote posts, a study guide, and a pocket booklet for release party attendees.
The book is out next week, so I’m spending most of August on the road for J’s tour—we’re starting here in South Bend with a release party tonight, then journeying through Nashville, Raleigh, Denver, Belfast, and Los Angeles.
On the radio waves, The New Spring Style Vol. 2 started playing in May, and a summer playlist is coming soon.
Good times at Tutt Street. Until next time,
Jacob
