The opposite of love

High school, 2008 - from the series "Opposite of Love"

June began with a sweltering shoot yesterday for Der Spiegel in Key West that was just plain brutal even if rewarding, and continued this morning with the exciting news that as of 12:57 a.m. the fiancée and I are aunt/uncle's to a very cute and plump baby boy (congrats Madzia & Mohammad!!).

As things usually slow down during the summer I've been refocusing myself on a few personal projects, the new website, and of course on getting the hell out of Miami for vacation, which I'm going to accomplish quite dramatically on Friday when I head to Japan for 2 weeks with my little brother and sister. It's going to be an amazing trip and wonderful to get some distance and perspective in a country I've always wanted to visit.

Before leaving I wanted to share the beginnings of one of the new projects that I've been trying to wrap my head around this last few weeks. The idea began as a portraiture record of all of the people that I know, and then expanded into the memory of my friend Tracey in college and her talk about how love & hate are not opposite emotions, sort of trading on the Elie Wiesel notion that "the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." Born out of my belief that apathy is sort of the quintessential modern emotion (we have so much, so efficiently at hand, that many of us Westerners are bored/overwhelmed by all of it), I've started making portraits for a series titled "Opposite of Love."

The project is interesting for me because its on top of being a pretty large departure from my background, the idea exists in a paradox. As soon as you ask someone what they care the least about, they immediately care a little more than they did before you asked in naming it, which means that in some sense I'm perhaps helping to change things (minutely) just by my process. I wanted the series to find the subjects in a sort of trance, akin to the excellent "gamers" series shot by a few smart portrait-eers, and for the style to be straightforward, but overlit and melodramatic.

These first two images explore the at-odds lighting with the simple premise of people not caring, hopefully in a similarly perverse way as how the most annoying (and loud) television commercials are always for shit you would never want/buy. "High school" and "Politics" will soon be joined by several more, including (no big surprise here, from a girl) "Baseball," once I return from the land of the Rising Sun. For those needing to reach me from June 6-19th, I'll be in limited touch via e-mail.

Politics, 2008 - from the series "Opposite of Love"

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Comments (3)

Both of these are revealing portraits; I love them, J. I'm remembering now our conversations about love, hate and indifference. I think it's what brought me to thinking back then that "Photography is a form of affection." (Or, at least, at it's best). A photographer shows his love just by giving his attention to his subject. You are worthy. I respect you. It's like Dave Rees used to say, too. Roughly: "Everyone deserves to have a good portrait made of them."

What will it say to have portraits of people being indifferent, while the photographer shows affection for them by simply making the photographs? Maybe I'm stretching this. I'm looking forward to seeing the series.

Really beautiful portraits, John. Looking forward to seeing more from this project in the future. Safe travels to Japan...
Kevin

very nice work - enjoy Japan

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