Jason Horowitz

Jason Horowitz
Interview by Ellen Tani
Photos by Veronika Lukasova

“None of these people are extraordinary looking.”

We are standing in the roomy
studio of photographer Jason
Horowitz. I am staring, entranced,
at a 42”x62” photograph of some-
one’s rump. Gently dimpled with
cellulite, spattered with pores,
stretched and crinkled, it is also a
fascinating view of the rhythm, tex-
tural flow and tonality of that sea of
cells and tissue comprising the vast
organ we know as skin. I am con-
fronted with a conceptual interstice
I’ve never seen before.
Canvassing the array of works
that comprise the “Corpus” se-
ries, Horowitz’s large-scale realist
photographs of the human body, I
agree that it’s true, none of them are
extraordinary—and for the same
reason, which will slowly unfold as
I become familiar with the work,
none of them are grotesque, either.
The artist’s decision to present
us with a wide range of forms in a
narrow range of focus—six inches
and closer—democratizes the body,
forcing us to accept the unsightly as
natural, inevitably neutralizing any
aesthetic hierarchy of physical beau-
ty as we know it (symmetry, taut-
ness, agelessness, flawless texture).
It is this subversion that Horowitz
is after. We are forced to focus on
a limited amount of information
that reveals things we’d prefer not to
confront or accept about ourselves:
bodily landscapes from which we
may want to turn our heads, but
by which we are equally entranced
because everyone can relate to the
natural imperfections in the land-
scape of the body.
The viewer experiences the work’s
tracing path along the edges of
comfort and discomfort, allure and
revulsion, realism and abstraction,
the self and self-representation,
idealism and reality. At the same
time, the surface tension between
the medium – photograph – and
the composition—largely abstract
fields of flesh or nearly unidentifi-
able forms—creates an intriguing
juxtaposition between the trans-
parency of real life and the filters of
commercial idealization.
Which is exactly what he wants,
say Horowitz: “One of the best
things that someone ever said to me
was ‘When I look at the pictures, I
don’t know if you —the artist— are
black, white, male or female.’” The
invisibility of the artist in the inter-
est of preserving the work’s abstrac-
tion—presenting bodies as what
they are: bodies—denies every pro-
jection of the artist
His subject matter—bodies —are
visceral premonitions of our immi-
nent decay. We realize that we are
only truly flawless in infancy —and
by honoring life’s weathering on
the body, rather than denying it, is
as close to reality as photography
can get.

Jason Horowitz

Jason Horowitz: Scott, Archival Pigment Prints ~42”x63” 2006,
Ellen Tani: How do you come
across your subjects?
Jason Horowitz: Well, there are
two ways: some people are friends
and family; but most are off of
Craigslist. I put an ad on Craigslist
asking for participants in an art
project- I don’t do it anonymously,
I put my name on there and a link
to my website. So people know
what they’re getting into to begin
with. Whoever I photograph must
come here and see me, see the work
before we set up the photo session.
It is as much about their looking at
themselves as me looking at them.
ET: What are their reactions to
the work?
JH: Most people are fascinated at
looking at themselves; a lot of the
people in the ad are open to and
interested in looking at themselves.
Some models will come back 2 or 3
times. For some models it becomes
an emotional release for them.
It’s a process of first of all get-
ting used to being photographed.
There’s 2 lights here, 2 lights here, 2
lights in the background so it’s like
a real photo set – with bright lights,
flashing and going off constantly,
and me moving around with the
camera. People have to confront
themselves and the idea of being
photographed. It’s an interesting
process for most people.
ET: Tell me about this juxtaposi-
tion between the people you know
through established relationships
and your random subjects from
Craigslist, with whom you end up
developing a certain kind of new
relationship.
JH: In order to make it success-
ful we kind of have to. In order for
the subjects to open themselves
up to this process, there has to be
that kind of emotional connection.
People become participatory in
the process – it becomes a photo
confessional: they are opening
themselves up to the camera and
you too, as you talk to them and
become friends with them.
ET: how did you come to this
point in your photographic process
in terms of how you’re looking at the
body and intimacy?
JH: I think what I’m doing in the
recent work is very natural because
I’ve always been fascinated by tex-
ture and detail; I frame things very
closely. When I’ve shot for com-
mercial clients I tend to frame clos-
er than they would like. And the
whole studio is a king of standard
‘glamour/fashion’ photography
setup with heavy lighting, which
helps you get closer to the subject.
In my previous work, I had a lot of
texture, detail and abstracted still
life subjects. And I think it was just
a perfectly natural way to see. I’ve
always kind of wanted to get closer
and closer and closer… I was fasci-
nated by scientific photography—
microphotography.
Something that plays into this,
that artists don’t always acknowl-
edge, is how their personal life and
personal state of being plays into
stuff. I’m hard of hearing and one
of the things that plays a factor in
my older work is this sort of still life
stuff, this ‘silent world,’ this under-
water world and, unbeknownst to
me I was probably sort of isolated
from the normal societal discourse
because of my hearing impair-
ment.
Another thing that has enabled
me to make a change in my work is
getting my hearing aids and being
able to communicate better – and
wanting to do that more.
I’m also extremely nearsighted.
My natural focus point is about 6
inches in front of my face. That’s the
way my eyes see naturally [waves
hand six inches in front of face],
which forms the way I make stuff.
So I gravitate naturally toward the
level of texture and detail that I can
see when things are in focus for me.
In reference to my earlier work,
I was concerned with the line be-
tween attraction and repulsion just
as I am in the recent work. I pho-
tographed still life compositions
of decaying food—frozen dinners
Veronika Lukasova, Portrait of Jason
Horowitz. 2008
for children—suspended in gelatin
—which are beautiful in their color
and their composition, but they’re
also kind of gross. The aim was to
capture the idea of things being
simultaneously attractive or invit-
ing and repellant at the same time,
which is kind of exactly how the hu-
man body is. And how people are.
Once you get to know them, they
are both attractive and repellent at
the same time. What’s consistent
is a conceptual rigorousness about
the process and about the decon-
struction of the meals.
ET: talk about your use of color
in the flesh in your photographs.
If you’ve ever manipulated or en-
hanced or controlled the color in the
still life compositions…
JH: I think of myself as a pretty
straight photographer in my art.
That’s the point to me that these
are sort of in line with the idea that
they are cleanly seen; they contain
authentic moments but also that
they’re not manipulated. This is a
representation rather than what’s
actually there.
ET: why in color and not black
and white?
JH: I photograph in color b/c it’s
more realistic. In black and white
they would be more abstract and
less real.
There’s a tension between what
I think of as photographic repre-
sentation of reality and painterly
abstraction. In an odd sort of way
I see myself in the tradition of the
Washington color school—because
of my use of color and my focus

Veronika Lukasova, Portrait of Jason
Horowitz. 2008
on the way color works—I think
of myself as a colorist, focus on the
handling of color and its handling
of emotion.
ET: how do race and gender work
themselves into these photos?
JH: I don’t pick body parts be-
cause of racial or gender traits, but
that actually comes out of the work
in the end with those issues appear-
ing up front. Every viewer brings
something different to this work;
for some people, the images are
about race—by which the viewer
associates the image—in this im-
age, for example: the way that Afri-
can American skin scars differently
and how their stretch marks look
different than Caucasians. For an
African American viewer, this im-
age become sracial.
In terms of gender, in some of the
newer work I’m shooting, these is-
sues are starting to creep in. The
new work involves couples photo-
graphed together; some of those
are very gender ambiguous—two
men, two women, man/woman;
once you start to look this close,
there are lots of areas of the body
that can be gender nonspecific.
ET: The face plays a critical role in
these works; it’s so much more rec-
ognizable as part of the body than a
patch of skin.
JH: I think that’s where we get so
many of our emotional clues and so
much of our information from the
face; we’re just so used to reading
faces.
That’s the interesting thing to
me about making art. Often you
think it’s about one thing, and then
you think about it, you take a look
at what you have, and you realize
that there are other things going
on in the background that you
weren’t necessarily aware of in the
foreground. So for me, that’s the
process of working through some-
thing, is that I look at what I’ve
been doing and it informs what I
do afterwards.
ET: Does your work ever push
YOUR own comfort level of what
you’re used to seeing, or does it be- have: texture and detail, and line, completely flat and contained flat this way can be representative of
come purely objective? and symmetry. Those are the ones surface. kind of a perfect storm between the
that embody both ends of that way I see things and available tech-
JH: The forms end up becom- spectrum spanning from abstrac- JH: Yes, especially the areas that nology – it would be impossible to
ing both abstract and matter of tion to reality. are in an out of focus; that’s why do this thirty years ago with the
fact. They transform from bodies these prints are so big. They’re re- resources available.
to forms. At times, the work ends ET: There’s an interesting dia- ally quite different when they’re And it also approaches my inter-
up going too far, raising issues of logue here between painting and small; they have a completely dif- est in landscape. I think a lot of
voyeurism and pornography and photography; you see the detailed ferent emotional impact when at my pictures tread the line between
I’ve had to pause, think about this rendering and an impressionis- this large scale. And I think in that portraiture and landscape. In kind
direction, and adjust my approach. tic treatment but presented on a way, my ability to shoot and print of a new way I think.
But really, when I’m looking at
the work and editing it, n some I see
a natural progression and in oth-
ers it seems more incidental; it’s a
process of narrowing focus. It’s less
body parts that I’m interested in, it’s
more a sort of relationship between
representation and abstraction, and
a certain balance that embodies the
ideas I have. When I look at an im-
age I kind of know and when I saw
this image (scott) I saw that this
had both the attractive elements I
was interested in and also the ele-
ment of repulsion of the flesh that I
was interested in too.
ET: As a viewer, I find it very dif-
ficult to sever the subjects’ identity
as bodies from their intended repre-
sentation as abstract compositions.
(between the view presented to me
and its purported abstraction)
JH: Well, it’s someone’s body but
it’s also a beautiful composition
made with lines, forms and details.
All of it comes together and bal-
ances out in the end.
It has all the other components
that a big abstract painting would Jason Horowitz: Michele, Archival Pigment Prints ~42”x63” 2006,

Jason Horowitz: Heidi, Archival Pigment Prints ~42”x63” 2006,
ET: I’m fascinated by how this
work deconstructs our optical sen-
sibility—we so often create meaning
from things that we parse together as
a whole, and when you’re confronted
with snippets of a larger form you
start to think about the body in a
whole new way, as a set of fissures
and rivulets and textures instead of
an identifiable object, which is quite
stunning.
JH: That’s interesting; I started out
having women not wear makeup
because I wanted everything to be
natural; but then one woman came
all made up I had her leave every-
thing on—which was fascinating. It
added something else to the images
about how people make themselves
up and what happens to make up
and mascara and lipstick when
you look at it so closely. It brings
up self-representation and the dis-
sonance between how we present
ourselves and reality. So that was
another sort of happy accident that
led me in a new direction.
ET: What do you see as your role
in this? Are you just a set of eyes?
Are you another voyeur?
JH: Well I am a voyeur but it’s
not… some of them have like an
element of sexuality but I’m really
thinking about color, form, shape,
lighting, most about making it look
the way I want it to look. My role
is a collaborator with the person,
kind of an enabler; and it is my
interpretation but it’s an interpre-
tation that’s base don things other
than my being a man and look-
ing at a woman, for example. I’m
interested in other things. I think
it’s about interpreting something
broader about people, more mean-
ingful about people.
This work is kind of in counter-
point to that perfect portraiture
(which objectifies and idealizes).
I actually think that my work
realistically humanizes people
instead of idealistically dehuman-
izing people.
Looking at things the way they
really are IS humanizing.
One viewer said that work was
like exaggerated displaced pain, like
looking at a car wreck he couldn’t
turn away from. He said “I really find
it difficult because it takes me out
of my comfort zone for looking at
stuff.” And my response to that was,
“that’s what art is supposed to do. If
you really wanted to look at images
and stay within your comfort zone
you could just look at a magazine.”
Otherwise what’s the point?
[We flip through some large prints
from the “corpus” series.]
They are done in the same mode
as slick, commercial things in a
way; they look a little like that, but
they subvert that and the tension
between that and what they’re re-
ally photographs of. The tension
lies between commercial pho-
tography and my work (which is
more hyperrealistic and gritty) and
also between representation and
abstraction. I want it to look like
glamour photography but to then
turn around and subvert that.
ET: But that commercial “style” or
aspect almost serves as one’s mode of
access, it’s how we recognize and get
into these photos.
JH: And in a way, it’s an idealized
subject: it’s a photo of someone’s
ass. So that’s a kind of way to draw
you in. I want to draw you in, and
I don’t want you to be completely
grossed out but I want you to be
confronted by it and have to stop
and think about it and recognized
what it is for what it is.
For the most part, the images are
photographed so close that you
can’t recognize much very quickly.
There are other photographers that
photograph the body much closer.
And while that may be visually
pleasing and very abstract, it gets
reduced to “what is that” and you
get people in the gallery playing the
‘what’s that body part’ game. And
then they don’t really ever get be-
Veronika Lukasova, Portrait of Jason
Horowitz. 2008
yond that; because if you cant’ see
fairly quickly what it is, and there’s
no tension between what you’re see-
ing and what reality is, it becomes
reduced down to meaninglessness
for me. Nothing ever happens be-
yond that.
ET: Can we think about your
work in terms of abstraction—in
painting, for example—many
people won’t understand what it
means and what it is because we
aren’t all familiar with the process
of painting. But because one knows
the visual language of the body
so well, anyone can ascertain the
techniques that you use in compos-
ing these images and translating
them from documentation to art.
That approach to image-making—
through the body, the landscape
of the body—makes art incred-
ibly accessible because we all life in
that landscape. It helps educate an
audience about how to look at an
image—on the brink of painterly
abstraction and recognizable reality
(photographic representation)
JH: Exactly, that’s the line I’m
talking about—if the eye doesn’t
relate to an abstract and realistic
image at the same time, the whole
thing doesn’t work.
ET: Does your work have anything
to do with mortality?
JH: It’s the same way that fashion
and glamour provide a subtext; it’s
definitely in there. There is that is-
sue of when you look at your flesh
this way, you notice its inevitable
decay, no matter how young you
are.