Jason Lazarus
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2004-present
For the last six years, Jason Lazarus
has investigated individual and cultural obsessions by weaving together
personal and public moments of significance; his work humanizes public moments
while making the universal personal. These moments range from the splat of
bright red blood from a dead bug on his windshield, to a picture of Spencer
Elden as a high school senior (Elden was the naked baby floating on the cover
of Nirvana’s Nevermind 1991 album),
to the aura of light in the night sky above Barack Obama’s election night rally
in Chicago’s Grant Park. In lieu of using the camera to address a traditional
single topic, Lazarus makes photographs that embrace his long-term commitment
to documenting moments of shared public relevance, whether overt or covert,
moments that speak to the tensions, conflicts, and ideologies that reveal our
personal experience.
BIOGRAPHY
Since receiving his M.F.A. in photography (2003), Jason Lazarus
has actively exhibited around the country and abroad while teaching
photography part-time in Chicago at Columbia College and the
School of the Art Institute. Selected exhibition highlights include
Black Is, Black Ain’t at the Renaissance Society in Chicago (2008),
Image Search at PPOW Gallery in New York (2008), On the Scene
at the Art Institute of Chicago (2009). His work has also been
shown in solo exhibitions at Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago; the
Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Kaune, Sudendorf in
Cologne, Germany;and D3 Projects in Los Angeles. Notable honors
include an Illinois Arts Council “Fellowship Award”, 2009; the
Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award, “Emerging Artist”, 2008;
and the “Emerging Artist” Artadia Grant in 2006. Lazarus’s work
is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Milwaukee
Museum of Art, and the Bank of America LaSalle Photography
collection among many others.