WHat Is Found There

Photographs and mixed media on wood panels

Over the last few years I’ve been reviewing the full history of my work, ultimately challenging the foundations of my career as an international photojournalist. We have been asking hard questions about privilege and purpose, systemic supremacies, agency, authorship, representation, and art. And—if my photography can inform these concerns—how it might be deconstructed and reimagined to vitalize new understandings of an infinitely diverse yet inextricably connected world.

                                                                                                      —Jason Houston

WHAT IS FOUND THERE recontextualizes images from 20 years of Jason’s photojournalism assignments and NGO commissions, challenging the foundations of his role as a full-time international photojournalist. Since the pause caused by the Pandemic, he has been asking hard questions about privilege and purpose, systemic supremacies, agency, authorship, representation, and art. And— if his photography can inform these concerns— how it might be deconstructed, evolved, and reimagined to vitalize new possibilities in how we get to know an infinitely diverse yet inextricably connected world.

This process-based project (Jason and Dewi working closely with others in their creative community) dynamically reveals new interpretations of his professional photography by considering it outside of an issue-driven, journalistic framework, and combining it with images from a private “photo journal” reflecting personal experiences and daily observations over the same 20 years. The collages intuitively combine images made at different times, in different places, and with different intentions, each temporary polyptych extracting unintended insights and individual truths independent of the expectations of why an image was made or what it should mean. While many of the assignment images document familiar social and environmental issues—and so may still evoke more globally focused considerations on ways we live on the planet and with each other—the manipulations of the surfaces and deliberate creation of physical objects (hand-mounting prints on wood blocks and painting and drawing on the images) prioritize the symbolic language and subjective nature of photography over objective reproduction and literal facts. There is no place, date, or caption information provided, nor are the personal photographs annotated in any way. These works are not meant to be evidence, explanatory, juxtaposition, or to provide specific answers. They are glimpses into an active effort to restore creative balance in Jason’s process and invite the viewer to make sense of it for themselves by considering their observations in the context of their own experiences and biases— to understand their story in the stories of others as they surface truths about themselves, their place in the world beyond themselves, and the interconnectedness of human experience.