In the realm of Digital Voyeurism:
Justin Jernigan on photography
by Jesse
On a late night subway ride through Brooklyn, Justin Jernigan reaches into his pocket. He sees a grimy weirdo across from him. With the flip of his cell phone he nonchalantly takes a picture, capturing a moment that normally would have gone unnoticed, never mind undocumented.
“One of the reasons I enjoy taking photos so much is the voyeuristic aspect of the medium. I love the ability to capture people’s private moments discretely - taking their angst, joy or indifference and blowing it up - exposing their fragile emotions and surroundings. In this way I think of graffiti, another passion of mine, which is raw, disposable, in your face and around every corner,” Jernigan says.
The 23-year-old self-proclaimed freelance photographer and fulltime troublemaker lives in an inconspicuous warehouse in Newark New Jersey-A.K.A. “Brick City,” across the Hudson River from New York. Riding bicycles and frequenting underground electronic music parties consumes his life, with a camera always in reach. What began nine years ago while tinkering around with his parent’s two-mega pixel point-and-shoot Canon has developed into a daily expression that merges art with the exponentially growing digital age.
“For me digital photography is the ultimate disposable medium; light converted to numbers saved to magnetic media- the miracle of transubstantiation ready to be washed/electro-shocked/censured away in the blink of an eye. Film is so expensive, so physical, so spacious- I like that digital is cheap and dirty and easily disseminated to the masses at the click of a button,” he explains.
His current weapon of choice is a Nikon D90 that he totes around in a bright red canvas lunch bag.
“I can’t put it down and it takes HD video. The new live view on it is nice when trying to capture hard angles in precarious spots and the stock 88-105mm lens is pretty solid, especially with its built in vibration reduction mechanism. When I was commuting to work in Manhattan I liked to take photos with the camera on my cell phone as I rarely had my DSLR and the lighting on the subway is usually very bright,” Jernigan says.
Recently Jernigan worked on the Obama campaign in Reading, Pennsylvania, snapping photos whenever he could.
“I didn’t have a lot of time to shoot because we worked so hard for so long, but I got a few quality shots, including some with me and Howard Dean. Probably the worst experience I had there was carrying trays of catered food from a car into an office with my camera around my neck and having soup leak out onto my lens,” he say.
Though he assured it would, “pale in comparison to my time trying to shoot Bike Kill VI in Brooklyn a few weeks later when my camera faced a constant onslaught of rain, beer, fireworks, CO2 dust from a fire extinguisher, glitter, food fight food, blood, spit, flying bike parts, mud and grime to name a few.”
While backpacking across Puerto Rico over the holidays he constantly found himself having anxiety over his camera being exposed to the elements, including booming surf and unpredictable gusts of sand on the beach.
Editing from his lofty studio, Jernigan has experimented with a variety of programs in both the PC and Mac world, using Adobe Bridge for its RAW support, Creative Suite, Adobe Photoshop and had some time to explore iLovephotos along with Bacon Lettuce Photo.
“Both Windows and Mac OS X have horrible built in photo organization software and after using iLovePhotos on a friend’s laptop it seems like a steep improvement compared to using iPhoto/Finder to find and organize your photos. Bacon Lettuce Photo is a good blog, useful information and nice shots. Could do without the meat-centric title though,” Jernigan says.
With the exponential growth of digital photography, he believes it has irreversibly changed the photo world forever.
“On the one hand it’s great that more people are taking more pictures - but at what cost? My concern is that instead of entrusting a young child with a disposable Kodak point and shoot - which can weather the woods, beach and other adventures without fear of too much wear and tear - we are tying a whole generation of photographers to a new form of a technology that is entirely dependent on a fragile and expensive digital backbone,” he explains, adding, “A child in Africa or Latin America cant take pictures anymore because their family cant afford a computer and the camera shop in town doesn’t sell film for his old hand me down camera.”
Recently he was inspired by a photo essay on a man who fitted his cat with a camera and sent it marauding around the neighborhood, as the camera remotely took photos every minute. This endeavor is something Jernigan believes could have not been possible on a consumer budget 10 years ago.
Thirsting for a Mac and eager to travel again, Jernigan will continue to shoot openly-and secretly for as long as he can get away with it.
“I hear they’re trying to pass legislation mandating all camera phones make a ’shutter click’ sound - no fun.”
Justin Jernigan’s work can be seen at http://fakedomainname.org
