ARTIST STATEMENT

Portraits, landscapes, and light studies make up the images in Palindrome 91-19, the book I released in 2022.

In 2015, I took on the task of scanning more than 12,000 negatives I had in my archive, and though it was mostly overwhelming, I also found it incredibly validating and right-sizing. Being confronted with decades worth of work over a period of about six months reminded me that I actually knew what I was doing, and that there had to be at least one book in there! So I set my mind to it. After a few years I was able to narrow more than 12,000 images down to about a thousand which I kept in a file on my desktop, titled: Book? and thought “One of these days…”

Through a series of events I met Aaron Tilford, the editor and founder of the queer art and literary journal SPUNK, to which I was invited to be a contributor. At the beginning of the lockdown in early 2020, I asked Aaron if he had any interest in helping me get a book I had been kicking around across the line. He agreed. So I shared several images with him and trusted him to find a narrative, which he did with great success! After two years and a couple of drafts the final edit was delivered and the trigger to get it published was pulled. I could not have been more pleased! To this day when I look through Palindrome 91-19 I feel an immense sense of pride for the work on those pages and gratitude for the rewarding and seamless experience of creative collaboration.

Putting together a collection of images is no small event. It is a mixture of storytelling, sequencing, rhythm, and coherence supported by the illusive intangibility of taste and intuition. It takes someone with keen sensibility and a sharp eye. The thirty portraits, landscapes, and light studies that Louis Jacinto has distilled from the larger collection of ninety-six contained within the book, is an excellent abbreviation and representation of the work I am so lucky and humbled to have created.

-Alan Joseph Marx