New York Times Feature
Read the recent NYT profile on Julie and the way her environment has influenced her work.
Julie Blackmon grew up in Springfield, Mo., a city of 165,000 people in the southern part of the state, and went to college there. She got married in Springfield and raised three children there. For much of that time, her home city struck her as “this generic town with a generic name, in the middle of the country, in the middle of nowhere,” she said. And then, about 20 years ago, she picked up a camera.
“All of a sudden I’m driving by Starbucks, and the guy that served me coffee every day is outside smoking a cigarette,” said Ms. Blackmon, whose third book of photographs, “Midwest Materials,” was published this month. “I remember thinking, ‘He’s got the most beautiful cheekbones when he inhales.’ He looked right out of a Balthus painting.”
NPR Interview
NPR’s Steve Kraske did a wonderful interview with Julie on October 5 about her career, and her expansive, immersive exhibition at Haw Contemporary (10/7/22 - 12/31/22). Read a summary of the interview, or listen to the full stream at the link below.
At first blush, many of Blackmon’s pieces appear candid and effortless, as if she’s firing off shots while her family and friends go about their normal routines. Closer inspection, though, reveals expertly curated scenes of chaos, tranquility and joy. “I kind of learned from one of my professors — it just stuck with me. He said that he loved to read fiction, and he loved it because sometimes fiction could tell the truth better than the truth itself,” Blackmon said. “So I started borrowing details from my real life, and then exaggerating or stylizing them for the sake of the story.”
Guardian Feature
Read a feature in Julie and her new book, Midwest Materials, in The Guardian. To pick up a copy of the book, stop by the gallery, or if you’re out of town, order from our friends at Radius Books.
When she was in her 30s, Julie Blackmon moved into an old house in Springfield, Missouri, which had a darkroom in its basement. She began taking photographs seriously – but never quite in earnest – choreographing the lives and objects around her. Her pictures are full of painterly references; one model was 17th-century Dutch scenes of domestic life, those curious curated freeze frames that prefigured Instagram. Another was storytelling, as Blackmon’s husband wrote fiction – and if he could “borrow details and ideas from real life, and then exaggerate or stylise them for the sake of the story”, why couldn’t she?
In the 20 years since, Blackmon has created a body of work that looks carefully, with a raised eyebrow, at the way suburban America lives now. The best of the images in her new book, Midwest Materials, seem to be cast somewhere between old master geometries and Charlie Brown. She has often focused on children – now that her own three are grown up, those of family and neighbours – making curious playgrounds out of adult worlds.
CNN Feature
Read CNN’s feature on Julie during her solo exhibition at New York’s Fotografiska Museum.
In her work, the photographer takes cues from Dutch genre paintings of the 17th century, where the home could become a setting for both quiet everyday moments and raucous behavior, carefully staged with symbolic details and elegant light. "The chaos and humor seem contemporary in some ways," she said in a phone interview from her home. The artist has also been inspired by the work of American photographer Sally Mann, whose landmark book "Immediate Family" from 1992 similarly toyed with truth and fantasy in evocative -- and often controversial -- scenes of her children. Mann framed her work through Emily Dickinson's poem "Tell all the truth but tell it slant," noting in her foreword to "Immediate Family" that "When the good pictures come, we hope they tell truths, but truths 'told slant'...We are spinning a story of what it is to grow up." It's an idea that stayed with Blackmon when she was first introduced to Mann as an art major in college -- though Blackmon did not pursue photography in earnest until over a decade later, when she, her husband and three children moved into a home with a basement darkroom.
KC Studio Feature
Read Elizabeth Kirsch’s review in KC Studio magazine on Julie’s 2020 exhibition with Haw Contemporary, entitled Improvising.
Julie Blackmon’s photographs, typically replete with the antics of a motley crew of kids, take place in familiar-looking living rooms, back yards, and neighborhood play areas. Her photographs are gorgeous, and at first glance seem deceptively simple. But multiple viewings reveal that Blackmon’s pictures are, on a profound level, subtly organized orchestrations of the psychological, the art historical, the cinematic and the metaphysical.
Blackmon’s storylines run a fine line between “Lord of the Flies” and a Hallmark greeting card. Free range kids populate her pictures, and in all her works, the threat of deviant childhood behavior and/or impending harm, due to the absence of caretaking adults, is a constant footnote. Sharp objects, such as the knife in “Spray Paint,” where three babies are by themselves, often appear as props in Blackmon’s art.