J. B. Kalf

Artist Statement

“I write poems and short fiction, but my photography embraces the literal. Through the distance the photograph creates, I am able to get a clearer perspective to a subject than I can writing about it. That's not to say that photography cannot be artistic expression or that writing cannot be documentation. I entered photography through a documentation perspective though, influenced by the yellowed National Geographics and town paper reporting I grew up with. Nowadays I look towards the techniques of Lewis Baltz and Michael Jang for mixing documentation and humor that I hope to achieve throughout my artistic practice. Keeping it simple, I like photos as an act of faulty memory, but an attempt at remembering nonetheless.

As I've grown older, my relationship with the San Antonio missions where I was raised is changing. The peace-loving teachings of St. Francis, as depicted by Rossellini in his film, Flowers of St. Francis, starkly contrast to the violence friars enacted on the natives at the local Mission Concepcion. Today, Catholics are the staple to the community, and the church is one stop along the Missions Trail, linking five San Antonio colonial missions. The peace of the past that was rooted in violence has transformed into a vicious and less overt violence. It is dogma without choice. As I get older, I don't know how the world should be, but I realize it wasn't always this way. I lean into my photography towards understanding.”