Artist’s Statement
It is presumptuous to think that a singular photographic image can describe something as complex as another culture. A single subject, seen out of context, and revealed at some relatively arbitrary point in time, leads to a kind of exoticism, or at least to a preconceived notion about the distant thing being represented. In addition, the filters of my own culture, language and perceptual biases conspire to reveal as much about me (the observer) as about the wonder of what is observed.
I have always been interested in the sense of space one can convey in a photograph. Representing the fore-, middle- and background spaces opens up the possibility of creating relationships. Those relationships speak to the layers of understanding and meaning - personal, cultural and social.
Space and time are intimately related in ways that are immediate and personal. Memory (the past) always informs experience (in the present space/time). My montage works are a formal way of representing the half-seen images and chance juxtapositions that characterize memory.
For over twenty years, I have sustained an interest in combining pictures into one matrix as a photomontage. In cinematic terms, montage developed as a way of combining different aspects of a scene, to give the viewer a more holistic sense of what is transpiring. For example, an actor, first seen in one situation and later in another that has a very different emotional charge, is seen to be conveying a poignant transformation, even if her expression and manner are unchanged.
And so it is with a photograph, where meaning or narrative can seem so simple in the singular image. When that same photo is juxtaposed with another image, however, the two now reflect off each other and impressions expand in new more complex ways.
In 2006, I found myself riding on a nearly empty passenger train, pulled by a steam engine, heading southbound toward Denver. I have a lifelong interest in trains, which includes hopping freights across the Rockies in the 70’s and paying homage to my maternal grandfather’s labors for the Union Pacific that led him from California to the switching yards near North Platte, Nebraska.
My grandfathers were both immigrants to the United States. With the immigration issue presenting hundreds of thousands of people in the street, I have also been photographing the protests as I march in solidarity.
In both cases, the individual photographs I make have a strong sense of space and intended to be parts of my montage works. These images are then synthesized, combining these ephemeral instances of light and insight into a montage. My photomontages are fleeting moments in which machines have not failed in their promise to liberate. For an instant (ingeniously saved to disk) there is a new vision of life and landscape.
Artist Bio
I am sansei, which in Japanese American culture, means that my grandparents all immigrated to the United States from Japan. One of the great discoveries of my childhood was a box filled with photographs and medals from my father’s time, during the Second World War. He served in the U. S. Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was the much decorated, all-Japanese American combat unit. Although I did not realize it at the time, that box was the seed of my interest in the relationship between photography and memory.
In 1978, I earned a bachelor of fine art degree from the University of Colorado and, in 1985, a MFA degree in photography from Arizona State University. After a brief move to New York City, I returned to the Valley of the Sun where I have taught photography and digital imaging as full-time faculty in the art department at Glendale Community College since 1986.
I am an original member of a downtown Phoenix arts collective called “the kitchenette” where, every thirteen months or so, I have a one-person show. My third solo exhibit in this space is scheduled for October 2007. Other one-person exhibitions include shows at Arizona State University’s Northlight Gallery, the Print Center in Philadelphia, a downtown Phoenix alternative space called Modified Arts and Phoenix College’s art department gallery among others. Among the group shows I have exhibited in are the Mesa Arts Center, the Society of Contemporary Photography in Kansas City and at Old Dominion University. A major review of my work appeared in Artspace magazine.
I live in Phoenix with my wife, Teri, two kids, a dog and two cats.
Jamie Runnells is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Mississippi State University. Her artists books have been shown in National and International juried exhibitions. Her freelance design work has been honored with numerous ADDY awards and most recently been seen in PRINT magazine’s Regional Design Annual.
