Artist Statement - This is not a traditional statement. It’s more like a narrative, or an oral history. I do get to descriptive language about my art practice, but I can’t fully do this until I finish scanning my old work; I’m doing this now.
Jayme McLellan, June 2025
I have been archiving my life through photography for over thirty-two years. Since picking up my first camera, a Pentax K1000, bought by my mom after I was ecstatically inspired to action by the photography of Lucian Perkins during the Balkan War. His work was published above the fold in The Washington Post countless times and I was specifically draw to it in the mid-90s during this war that would launch the trajectory of my life.
I soon enrolled in my first photography class. It was led by Hilton Braithwaite. I later learned he had been married to Angela Davis at the time he was married to Deborah Wilis. At St. Mary’s College of Maryland I was a English major, studying poetry with Lucille Clifton and Michael Glaser, my mentors and saviors. (They truly saved me.) This and photography changed everything. I learned about film and became obsessed with the darkroom; and for the last year of college, I lived there. After school I moved to New Orleans to continue writing and shooting; I made a darkroom anywhere with a bathroom. In 1996, I moved to DC—land of my birth—where I began to explore color slides and film before reluctantly moving into the digital realm. Right now I primarily shoot with an old broken Iphone. The cracked lens gives my images a unique busted look. But I need a new camera one that I love.
I have photographed, like many, where I feel the moment. I know where to stand, as Frank DiPerna said, and I take the picture. The moment is the mystery. I cannot define it. I’m drawn to earth, air, water, light, fire, the sea, basically all of the natural world; and also now to my family’s old photos and my place in them. I’m working on images depicting the heroic beauty, as I find it, of our increasingly warming planet. The ecstasy of creative acts including music and my life on earth are the central threads, I guess. The moment I capture an image is the moment I am most present. The moment I share it is when I am the most vulnerable. I have to get more comfortable with the latter.
Right now, I am archiving my work which means: sorting, scanning, documenting, digitally saving, and finally sharing these images taken over 32 years. It’s not a terribly huge archive, but I have put off this work for a long, long time. So, it is time. I am moving into a place where I am (action words) refining my practice, spending more time in the studio, spending more time writing, and working to more carefully share my stories. It’s a work in progress and process.
I am doing this because the world is on fire and I am an artist. I have things to share that might help.