Jordan Weitzman – Participation

19 Aug – 15 Sep 2022

Jordan Weitzman’s first monograph Participation is a riot of off-kilter perspective and weird synchronicities, a book of photography where people, places, and things casually tangle up into beautifully baffling configurations. Through the power of close observation, Weitzman captures the world at a slant where naked bodies form sultry architecture and everyday clutter assembles into fine art. Complimented by a Louis Fratino dust jacket of half-etched figures and mysterious symbols, the book’s sequence is intimate and playful while never spelling itself out. Participation is the product of the photographer fully embedding in his circumstances and locating with an exacting compositional eye where the goofiness and boredom of everyday life drift into formal complexity and undefinable emotional states. The title is an invitation as much as it is a challenge, not only descriptive of Weitzman’s willingness to get in and meet his subjects head, waist, or side-on but for the viewer to crane their neck and pick apart his gorgeously twisted poetry of the strange ways people come together.

“I was obsessed with the idea of transformation. In the sense of how a very simple, everyday thing, by way of gesture, combination or layering, could create a new and mysterious meaning. Like when someone turns a certain way, and their limbs form a figure-eight, or the way two rocks gently hold a hard shadow.”

On the occasion of the book launch, Ensemble is pleased to present an exhibition of selected prints from the series in an installation designed by the artist.