Jason
Tannen

Remnant

For many years I've photographed the urban environment, focusing on images without people or street action. I'm particularly interested in the landscape of signs, symbols, pictures-within-pictures, and curious or eccentric juxtapositions.

Prior to this series, I printed mainly in black and white. I started working in color to explore the visual changes and material erosion that come with time, the elements, or human intervention: posters that are bleached from the sun, with their colors reduced to blues and reds; surfaces that have cracked or are peeling; objects that have been vandalized. With this color work, I'm interested in presenting a self–contained world that exists within the four corners of the picture.

In 2020 and 2021, the COVID–19 pandemic limited my urban wanderings. Since I wasn't out shooting, I used the time to review my photographic archive, printing images I'd passed over the first time. Some of those rediscovered images are included here.

Although I'm fully engaged in digital modes of presentation and communication, for me the physical photographic print is essential in conveying an image's content, meaning and external properties.