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Born in 1975 in Kansas City (USA).
Lives and works in Chicago.
www.jasonlazarus.com
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Jason Lazarus has had an unusual career. Initially trained in marketing, he worked in this industry for the Court Theatre in Chicago where, as he says himself, it was by observing the company’s work process that he started thinking about creation. With no art experience at all, he began a Master’s of Fine Arts in Photography at Columbia College, Chicago in 2003. Since then, Jason Lazarus has exhibited in numerous museums and galleries, both in the U.S. and abroad, and his images are found in several collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Milwaukee Museum of Art Bank of America LaSalle Collection Photography. He also teaches photography at Columbia College and the School of Art Institute of Chicago.
Nowadays however he rarely takes pictures, no longer knowing what he should shoot ...
Among other projects (he recently led an artistic campaign with the American “indignant generation”), he is working on a business begun in 2010 and entitled Too Hard to Keep. Jason Lazarus's suggestion is simple and yet great: to collect photographs that are "too difficult to keep", that their owners cannot bring themselves to keep nor throw away.
The project is simple because Jason Lazarus has limited himself to being a trustee of consignments that he keeps strictly anonymous. He represents the final destination of those now orphaned images, each with an intense meaning for those who have decided to be rid of them. They collect stories - he does not always know them, people are in no way required to disclose anything - he sorts, organizes and presents them according to strict rules as each person may choose whether or not to accept that their photo be shown. If the answer is no, the photo will be turned facing the wall and the visitor to this affective archive will see only the paper back of the photo.
The project is huge as it demands massive responsibility and ethics for the one who initiates it and it raises a whole series of questions on photography itself as a sentimental reservoir, the trace of a past too unbearable for it to continue to co-exist with the present life of its owner. Each photograph sent contains a traumatic power that remains inaccessible to the viewer, one can but speculate, imagine, and refer to one’s own history to create a story around these pictures. The form of the installation also takes this inaccessible cloud into account, these dramatic whispers, ghosts surrounding the viewer like a visual swish, a dull murmur, the complaints of a thousand silent voices.
To date, more than 1500 images have been collected. In the centre of the facility will be an urn into which you may deposit your photographs that are "too hard to keep".
AFL/JPH
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