Jesse Lenz

About Episode 75

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer and founder of Charcoal Books and Chico Review, Jesse Lenz, discuss his monographs, The Locusts and The Seraphim, published by Charcoal Press. Jesse talks about borrowing from the language of cinema as way to approach making and editing photography. Sasha and Jesse also talk about the Chico Review, how it came to be and the experience of spending 8 days with colleagues and attendees in a remote location in Montana.

About Jesse Lenz

Jesse Lenz (1988, Montana) is a self-taught photographer and multidisciplinary artist. He is the author of The Locusts (Charcoal Press, 2020), and he is the founder and director of Charcoal Book Club and the Chico Review. As an illustrator he has created images for publications including TIME, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many others. From 2011-2018 he also co-founded and published The Collective Quarterly and The Coyote Journal. He lives on a farm in rural Ohio.

What advice do you have for emerging photographers?

“Become an interesting person. Surround yourself with beauty. Cultivate obsessions. Do what you love with those you love…and photograph along the way. Photographs are evidence of life, not the purpose of it.”

Is there an image of yours that stands out or is a favorite?

“Photographs are like children, you have different favorites at different times of day…and you never acknowledge it out loud, but this is something I find interesting. The subject matter is equally matched by the aesthetic mystery.”

“This image is currently one of my favorites because it demonstrates how we are all part of artistic lineages, whether we are aware of it or not. Two years after I made this photo I came upon this William Blake etching that quickly became one of my favorite images due to the combining a child with a giant worm and a head coming up out of a grave (or maybe its severed?). Cosmic horror elements reminiscent of some of my favorite writers like Laird Barron, Lisa Tuttle, combined with the biblical apocrypha of Blake. Only after having a replication of this etching on my wall for the past year did I realize the uncanny connection to the photograph I made. Everything down to the face coming out of the ground / laying on the ground. And the polaroid-esc frame of the Blake etching. The universe is a truly mysterious place.”

Is there an image by another photographer who has influenced you in your career?

“I tell young photographers that after they learn the craft of photography to: read fiction, watch films, listen to music, and walk in the woods more than look at photography. Pull visual inspiration from parallel arts. In that spirit here are some screenshots of films that are currently very important to me to illustrate this.”