Jess LeClair Photography Blog

Yikes! Two weeks in a row where I’m a day late posting this! Shame on me!!

Well, the theme for this week was “Red”. How did I do?

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The theme for this next week is open for one very special reason: we are going on a family vacation to the Dominican Republic!! I’m so excited! Goodbye snow, hello sunny and 80 degrees! So sadly I won’t be able to post for about a week and a half. Don’t worry - I promise to keep up with the project. I just won’t have an internet connection there. I’ll be sitting on a beach sipping floofy drinks with umbrellas in them. Try not to hate me too much.

Sorry this update is a day late! Flickr has been having the hiccups and was slow and temperamental yesterday! But it seems to be working fine now!

So my first theme was Ice and Snow. It was a good week for it, as we got almost 2 feet of snow just before the new year. But near the end of the week, I decided to stretch a bit and see what would happen.

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The theme for next week is Red. Check back and see how I do or keep up with my daily work on my flickr site!

Happy New Year Everyone! I can’t believe it is 2008! This is going to be a big year for me. There is so much going on, so many fun things to do, so many new adventures to have! I can’t wait! And one of the things I’ve decided to take on is to commit myself to a “One-a-Day” project. Each day I will post at least one new photograph. Now there will be several weeks where I won’t have access to a computer so I’ll have to update a few days or even a week all at once. But that doesn’t mean I won’t still be taking new pictures!

So here is my photo for today:

We have just been slammed with snow this month. So much so that we had to cancel our New Year’s Eve plans because the roads were too bad! This morning the icicles coming off the roof were a bit more than just scary! They were downright terrifying! We are already totally sick of this winter. I want it to be spring!!! I hope everyone is snuggled up some place warm and safe today (yes, it is snowing here AGAIN) and that you are enjoying the last days of vacation!

AMENDMENT - Upon reflection, I’ve decided I’ll just update this site once a week with my One-a-Day photos.  I’ll still post them on my flickr page everyday, but I don’t want to overload this blog.  So Tuesdays are now One-A-Day Weekly Updates.  And the theme for this week is snow (seeing as we got another foot of it last night…)

Yes, folks, you read it right! My work has been published in the very first issue of a brand spanking new magazine called Catharsis. You can buy a copy of it at their Lulu storefront. You can also download a pdf of the magazine (it’s less, but you still have to pay) just to see it. There is also a free sample of the magazine, but its only 19 of the 55 pages and alas, my image isn’t included in those 19 pages. Bummer.

However. Because I am so nice (and because the image is already up on flickr!) here is the image that was published:

I made this photocollage (AKA a Hockney, a joiner, a photomontage) while I was living out in L.A. (2001-2002). Creating it was about a lot of things for me, but mostly the way that women tend to feel they have multiple-personality disorder about their bodies and the extremes we go with eating or purging. Also the deeply mixed messages we are handed by society and the media, especially in advertising.

I did this with film and prints so no digital manipulation at all. I just photographed it again to get it into the computer. Making this kind of image is one of my favorite things to do. So here are a few more:

I did this one while I was living in Ireland. This is a lovely little street corner in Galway. This was also done with film and put together by just stacking the prints and taping them down. Its really much better to see it big, so if you click on the pictrue and go to my flickr site, you can see it bigger. Also, if anyone is interested in buying a print of any of these, they are all for sale. Email me for more information.

This one is one of my favorites and one of the first entirely digital ones I did. In March of 2006, I flew to Seattle to help my brother move out of his apartment and pack up his little bitty Honda Civic with all his worldly possessions (and a few otherworldly possessions) so he could move back to the east coast (he’s in Cambridge now). On the way, instead of going straight back home, the two of us drove all the way down the west coast and into the desert to Las Vegas so he and my friend James could throw me a little bachelorette party. This image is a record of that drive from Seattle to Las Vegas. Each photo is from a different point in during the two and a half days it took us to get to there. We went from snow and sleet in Seattle through rain and wind and vivid bright green fields to finally arid desert and neon lights. Its hard to see all those pieces when it is this tiny on the screen. Its best viewed at its largest size, so click on the photo and see it on my flickr site!

This is another digital one. Its an abandoned school bus in Belfast that someone is using as a storage bin. Its just jam packed with stuff. So I let it really distort in the middle there. Again, its best seen big.

I’ve also done these types of collage as portraits.  I have lots more to say about that, but this post is getting very long, so I think it will have to wait for another post!

To Be Continued…

I have always loved cemeteries and graveyards.  Some people may find that strange or morbid (or a slightly pathetic attempt to be goth).  A friend told me recently that she finds it disrespectful to be in a cemetery when you don’t know anyone there who has passed.  She felt that cemeteries are for the grieving and as such, should be left well enough along.  I disagree.  Cemeteries are for the grieving certainly, and must be approached with respect, but they are also a place where people go to remember the people they love.  Cemeteries for some act as a place they can go to be near the ones they have lost.  People put up beautiful monuments to honor the love they have that lives past death.  And people can do some pretty cool things when they love.  So grieve, yes, but remember and love, too.

There is also a slightly sentimental part of me that feels sorry for the stones of people who died so long ago that no one living remembers them.  So I visit them to make them feel less lonely.  Silly, maybe, but I find it leaves me feeling very peaceful to walk among the monuments to the dead.

Anywho.

I’ve mentioned before that I lived in Ireland for the first half of 1999, while attending the Burren College of Art (see the post about my friend Alahna). One of the projects I worked on while I was there was a photographic study of the local cemeteries and graveyards. More specifically, the things people would leave on graves to remember their loved ones.

The things I found most often were these little globes. Filled with a small plastic religious icon (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were the most common followed by any number of saints and holy people), water and fake flowers, they were simply every where.

Each slightly different, each beautiful and eerie in its own way.

The graves themselves were often covered with gravel and/or small colored stones (the kind you’d find in a fish bowl, only slightly larger) instead of grass.

Some had been there so long they’d broken or simply just rotted away.

This was one of the last photos I took while photographing the series. I’d seen other graves with a small stone platform, low to the ground, with an elegant engraving encouraging the visitor to “Kneel and Pray”. This family must have simply run out of money for the professional engraving, but wanted the sentiment nonetheless. The idea that their love and faith was stronger than their lack of money was moving to me. In fact, I found the image so powerful that it became representative of the whole group of images and I eventually used it at the title for and main image of my senior show at Brown.

The red couch, originally uploaded by jess_leclair.

This photo was taken of my brother Dan and me at our step-cousin Jackie’s wedding, September 9, 2006. Though I wasn’t the official photographer on this particular wedding, I did take a fair number of photos (you can head on over to my flickr site to see more). I have to give props to the women who were officially responsible for the photography that night for one very specific thing. This red couch. It was a small touch of brilliance. They set up this very inviting couch with a camera facing it. On the couch was the remote for the camera. Anyone could just come up, sit down and take their own photo! It was better than a photo booth! Though I must say, they should have made more people aware of it. We just sort of stumbled drunkenly over and started fiddling with things. At which point the photographer’s assistant came over and told us what it was. We got to see some of the images later and they were a total riot. By the end of the evening people were getting REALLY stupid.

Good times, good times.