#lazy jane

[douglasfur365]

Amelia, 2022 Lazy Jane No. 13

I’ve been shooting the Lazy Jane series for five years now. I’m honestly not sure how much longer I will continue to go on with it or if I will continue to go on with it. Maybe it’s fitting to stop at Lucky number 13, then again you know… the whole never say never thing. What I will say is that this shoot with Amelia is everything I’ve come to want Lazy Jane to be. These images feel intimate, drippy, and personal. Regardless of what I do in the future with this project I’m coming to realize that if I cannot shoot in the subject’s personal space than I don’t think I want to do it. Amelia’s room is full of intensely personal items that paint a portrait of a person, from the pictures on the wall to the knick-knacks on her dresser, I was immensely grateful that she allowed me to photograph her there. As I myself have become more and more steeped in minimalism I’ve found that the objects you do choose to surround yourself with have a greater sense of meaning. Hanging around for a few hours and photographing someone intimately in their space and having the opportunity for someone to tell you what so many of the objects around you are or their meaning is amazing. That after five years of working on this project I look at everything Amelia and I shot here and I find myself saying “I’m not sure I’ll top this,” is greatest testament I can give to what it was like to work together on this.

[douglasfur365]

Emily, “It never goes away”

For the Disparate: works in progress exhibition

There’s about 12 days left of the Disparate gallery, and while I have lots of personal feelings about the gallery and how that has gone what I do know is that I’m really proud to have put this whole project together. From the day I started I knew I wasn’t making art to put in a drawer or to let languish deep down the feed of my instagram profile. Every shoot, every project has a purpose and seeing everything for a time end up together in the same (virtual) space has been immensely gratifying. About six years ago I tried this really ambitious music project, I spent all my creative juices for about two years on it, and in the end I gave the whole project a month to flourish or wither. It pretty much withered and while it was a big disappointment for me, it was an incredible learning experience. As Disparate draws to a close, I am still full of admiration but I’ve also learned a lot of lessons. This picture of Emily which I titled “It never goes away” -a lyric from Jenny O’s Lazy Jane, is one of my favorite images from the exhibition because it is a perfect encapsulation of what it so often feels like to put your work out there in the world and then sit around and wait for something to happen. At the same time you might look at this image and see something totally different, this image is full of ambiguity. I loved Emily’s pose, I wanted to capture that green couch, those wood paneled walls, that wild gutted TV, but I find myself more drawn to the coat hanging on the wall and that mug just popping into frame. I keep thinking if I was going to buy a print for myself from this exhibition what would it be... I think this one, visually I love it but also, I want to talk about it with people. I think this shot is a conversation starter. This image feels real. Is it real? 

[douglasfur365]

Morrigan, 2019 for Lazy Jane

It’s not Polaroid week any longer. Not really sure what happened but my grand plans for last week kinda crumbled before I ever really got going... but I enjoy Polaroids whenever and have actually never shot a Polaroid during the celebratory week anyway. I hand’t posted this one of Morrigan because I thought I already had, but looking back I didn’t see it. If you’ve been paying attention you’ve definitely seen this image before as I took two slight variations on my Hasselblad and another on 35mm. I really loved everything at play here, the vertical lines on the wall, the grid of the comforter, the lighting (I went sans flash which I rarely do on my SX-70). What I loved most was the mystery of Morrigan here, just those eyes peeking out, at times I’ve let the Lazy Jane series venture too far into boudoir and this shoot exemplified everything I wanted/want it to be... I think mysterious can certainly be an element to Lazy Jane. 

[douglasfur365]

No. 6 Mari for “Lazy Jane No. 10″

2019 has been one of the toughest years of my life and though the period surrounding my shoot with Mari was relatively peaceful when compared to the many external forces that would affect me later on, this time was very trying emotionally and artistically. I’d had this shoot planed out for months at the beginning of May, and against my better judgement I laid on my artistic eggs in that basket, then in the wee hours of the morning the day of that shoot I got an email canceling on me. I spent the day on the verge of tears, then spent much of the week in a low-level rage. I don’t know how the remainder of 2019 would have played out photographically had I not worked with Mari at the end of that same month. I shot more film than I’ve ever shot and took Lazy Jane farther than I ever had before. In Mari I met this amazing artist who brought just as much to the concept as I did, who had great ideas and who gave herself over to the work. I also met a great friend, who has listened to me at some of 2019′s other crisis filled days, and who is someone I can share my artistic ideas and feelings with in confidence. What I find funny about this shoot is how I view it now, these pictures are extremely personal, some of the most personal I’ve taken and they were all taken within the first two hours of meeting. Looking at them now they appear very earnest, our shoots since then have been more “fun” and a part of me feels like that is a result of getting to know Mari and wanting to capture her energy photographically. 2019 fucking sucked but I met some amazing people along they way that I am endlessly grateful to have met. 

[douglasfur365]

Mari, 2019 for Lazy Jane

I met Mari last May when she took part in my Lazy Jane series. I don’t know if it’s because that shoot was so personal or if we just got along really well but I felt like we hit it off. Almost a year later she’s become one of my closest friends, and I’m very grateful to have her in my life not just as a constant collaborator who always brings something unique and amazing to our work together but also just as a friend. Today is this amazing person’s birthday and while this is such a crazy time, I sincerely hope that today is a good one! If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times, and I’ll say it a thousand times more, I love portrait photography because for some reason this shy, socially awkward, introvert, likes working with actual people. When we work together it’s an excuse to hang out, it’s an excuse to create, it’s an opportunity to make some beautiful art that I never would have made with anyone else. 

[douglasfur365]

Jpace, 2019 for “Lazy Jane No. 11″

When Jpace and I shot together I was right in the middle of doing my first round of shoots for Transgressive, that project is really aggressive and contrasty, literally black and white and very in your face. Yet here I was shooting these images which I absolutely love for reasons that diametrically oppose Transgressive. In the three years I’ve been shooting “Lazy Jane” it’s had many different forms, sometimes the images come off very raw and realistic, sometimes they’re more playful and fun, some are very soft and gentle, it all depends on who I’m working with and what vibe I’m getting from them. With Lazy Jane I like to let the subject drive the tone more, be themself, so if things are feeling a little more playful I’m not going to force something more moody. The JPace studio certainly had a soft and fluffy feel with all the furs and fluffy blankets, but her poses fit with the environment and had this lovely softness to them. I went between properly exposing the scene and exposing for just the highlights, the latter being my favorite because it gives you these beautiful soft lines that at least to me feel very tactile.

[douglasfur365]

fNo. 2 Emily for Lazy Jane 8

I struggle when I think back on this period as to what my mind set was exactly. I went into the year thinking I would be filling it with shoots, but two months in I’d done just two. Throughout the year I felt frustrated with how little I was working, at the same time when I look at what I did in 2019 I worked on projects that were deeply important to me with people I really wanted to work with. Most of my ongoing projects are ongoing because I want them to evolve over time with the different people I work with. Up to this point I’d mostly used my home for Lazy Jane but wanted to push toward making it more personal to the specific subject and so when I put that out there Emily was immediately excited about using her space. The photos we took are so uniquely her in this environment, from the little greenhouse, to that green couch with the wood paneled walls, or that killer gutted tv set. I experimented with some different film stocks for this shoot, primarily Portra 800, and Kodak’s P3200, but as it turns out I shot the 800 at 400 and the P3200 at 800 on accident. Though the colors of Emily’s place were really important to this shoot, the emotion was so distinct I could have shot this with expired film that sat in a hot car for three years and I’m confident I’d still love the results.

[douglasfur365]

Emily, 2019

“Lazy Jane No. 8″

Shooting in Emily’s green house and in her living room produced some really incredible images but I’ve always been a little partial to these shots in her bathroom, partly because I just really love the way the colors came out with that lighting. I was thinking about something Emily said to me right before shooting, “I’ve never had anyone take my picture not wearing all my clothes before.” That situation had never come up before, most models I’ve worked with at least in the context of that working environment have little in the way of modesty again (IN THE CONTEXT OF THAT ENVIRONMENT). So I felt this added pressure, though not bad pressure, but it was a signal to me of trust, that I was being trusted to do something no one else had done. I’m trying to be grateful as of recent, I’m working on reworking my website and in doing so I’m looking at all the amazing people I’ve met and worked with, but similarly I’m just feeling really down as of late. I haven’t shot, I’ve had cancelations, I’ve had to turn down opportunities, and I’m just sitting here with creativity bursting out of me. I have this incredible Olympus Pen FT I’m looking to shoot some nudes with, I’d like to reach the tenth in the Lazy Jane series, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love has been one of 2019′s most rewarding experiences and I desperately want to continue that. Then there’s When I Am Real which is just this mystery shoot that always pays off. I’m missing working with people, and even as I sit here a moan about the state of external forces I must admit that I’m also my own obstruction.