Jonathan Furlong - 1981
Jon is keen on memorializing people’s rawness, ready in passing or peripheral moments and angles off-kilter. He prefers capturing his subjects when their attention lies off of his lens when he can steal a glimpse of them living unrehearsed. Jon is sensitive to our rote and reactionary behaviors consequential to living in a digital age or from residual trauma and is drawn to reflections, a person unbeknownst, or a pair of offset pelican heads that strike discord with these less intentional ways of being. He too is interested in scenes that interact chaos with stillness. He hopes that through capturing these margins of difference and points of tension, he can reflect to both his audience and himself an added complexity true of each of us that invites a more complete appreciation of one another and fosters understanding, care, and connection. Jon grew up in Southern California’s skateboarding scene that fostered camaraderie within a culture easily cast aside. Here, he felt freedom from supervision and permission to play with a camera for the first time. Through photographing friends at the park as a kid, photo became Jon’s most effective way of expressing himself and engaging these unique relationships on society’s fringe. As he continues his personal growth of acknowledging better his feelings, he continues to rely on photo as a tangible means of gaining awareness of them. He too is curious about the poetry that plays through a string of photos, between himself and a single subject, and that is contained within a single shot. His camera is always chasing a story replete with space for interpretation and loose ends giving way to ongoing evolution, both personal and collective. “I’m a firm believer in taking things and adapting them to suit you personally because you change one little thing, and there’s beauty there in a whole lot of ways. This is how I gauge success.” He says the way he photographs is how he challenges himself to live his life – noticing more, competing less, letting a propensity for relationship lead, and being more fluid than rehearsed. He hopes his greater willingness to sit in his emotions that facilitate connection will make empathy his reflex instead of judgment of our pasts and others and that this augmented compassion will extend beyond the photo to those who choose to attend to a different vantage