Today we’d like to introduce you to Jack X Proctor.
Hi Jack, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I have always loved taking/making images. Freezing moments around me or making moments to freeze, and capture. These moments are taken and their context is obscured or manipulated. The way that I experience the world hinges on images which often take the place of the actual memory. They begin to stand for the larger feeling of the time, people and place I am working in. Today I balance making time for making images with work that is largely irrelevant from my desire to create images. In a lot of ways, it preserves what I love to do by keeping it separate from earning a living. It allows me to not have to compromise and opens so many doors to collaborate with whoever is willing to spend the time to make something together. Photography for me is inherently collaborative working with people willing to perform for the camera whether they are performers or not. This relationship is my main form of connection with the people in my life.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I don’t know the best way to respond to this question. It feels disjointed or pandering to talk about my depression or the alienation I work out through my photography. Although they are a part of my story or “struggle” those emotional and mental barriers fed and were soothed by making. The struggle was in how to live as an “artist” (which feels gross and weird to say).
My dad who never graduated high school and my mom who never went to college were deeply concerned with my interest in the arts. They set me up in magnet schools and did everything in their power to ensure I had opportunities they didn’t. My majoring in photography was not exactly the stability they had in mind. I started Santa Monica College when I was 17 and wanted to show them that the path I was on could sustain me and that I would be ok. I worked in the darkroom as a lab tech, interned for photographers, assisted photographers any way I could (working for free or maybe $50) and struggled (as usual) through school.
Early on I manically needed to prove this world as a viable career path. As I spent 7ish years in college, I ended up not wanting photography to be a “career”. The stability that my parents wanted me to have I didn’t want to find through image making. I wanted more choice and autonomy in my making. I work in film production now still able to flex a creative muscle but the road to accepting my art practice as not the thing that would sustain me financially was hard to grapple with.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a fine arts photographer focused on installation and the viewer’s relationship with images. I believe I could be known for carrying around a 6.5″ box around different places in LA and having people interact with it. Or maybe freezing ice with totems of memories, filming them melt. Or maybe it is having 2 people lean on each other for up to 30 min at a time, supporting each others weight.
But more than anything I want to be known as someone who isn’t trying to touch on uniqueness but is deeply concerned with what common ground we have in our human experience, in our relationships with each other and ourselves.
I don’t want to be seen as special; I don’t know that I am or want to be. I am a person struggling to find new ways to talk about feelings that I hope we all share. Or maybe can relate to. I want to be known as someone who makes images that are felt in a way that makes me as a maker feel less alone or understood. I hope that people looking at my work feel the same.
In this moment I am most proud of and still grappling with freezing images, dirt, plants my grandma grew and sitting with them as they melt. Understanding how I layer the ice, how long I let it freeze and how that changes the way it undoes itself.
I am stuck in a place of wanting to witness, notice, and create images and situations that draw attention to something. I am proud of the unassuming video that is 30 minutes long and feels almost still with the gentle breathing of two people struggling to support each other. I am proud of the moments and connections that are created with the collaborators/performers/friends who allow me to create a situation for all of our self-reflection and growth.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
I would like to dance around the idea of success.
I don’t know the metric for success when creating. Maybe it is showing work which I am always trying to do more of, maybe it is sending books of images to friends, or maybe it is something else.
I think if I had to pretend like you weren’t asking me about success and rather what quality or characteristic is important to me as an artist, I would have to say it is the need to make images and the desire to share them outside of any aspiration for accolade or money. That I have a deep need to make images and the only thing I am needing from that process is for one, maybe two, people to see them and feel what I am looking to explain visually.
I would say the most important quality is to avoid being concerned with success; simply make for the sake of making and sharing.
Contact Info:
- Website: jackxproctor.com
- Instagram: jackxproctor
Image Credits
Photo of me: Lukas Korynta & Eliška Kubíková Photography by Jack X Proctor Models: Minkah Smith Jasmine Kayla Hall Fabian Rubio Rejeana V. Black Wynton Boger Tang Sam Sharman Huntrezz C. Geter
