Jayce Salloum
COURTESY SCOTIABANK CONTACT FESTIVAL
Marefat school assembly, 2008
Jayce Salloum is now based in Vancouver, but before settling there, he lived in San Francisco, Banff, Toronto, San Diego, Beirut and New York. His work, which, along with photography, includes curating exhibitions, conducting workshops and facilitating cultural projects, has taken him to Austria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel, China, Aotearoa in New Zealand, Australia, the former Yugoslavia, Galápagos Islands and other places throughout the Americas. His work is rooted in connections with place and the people who inhabit that place. Mr. Salloum received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2014.
Do you remember when you decided to pursue photography as a career?
It was something that evolved early on. I started making art when I was a teenager in high school; I had a little studio in the back of the garage. I would do mostly drawing, painting and installations. I didn’t know they were installations at that time; I would just collect things and work on arranging them. Photography was something I did as a way of documenting life.
animate, 2012
Do you travel just for work or for leisure as well?
I used to travel just for work until I got married. Now when I travel with my wife, I’m still working but not as fixated on just that – there is more down time hanging out and being together. Consequently, she appears in a lot of my pictures, as a figure in the landscape, relating to the position of the subject, the cultures and the history of landscape photography. For me, this type of photography is a quotidian art, it’s a daily routine. I carry my camera with me wherever I go. It’s a diaristic form of note taking and finding my place in the world
What do you think is the most challenging thing about photography today?
Photography today has become thoroughly democratized in the way people might have imagined when portable cameras were invented back in the 1900s and heavily marketed after World War II. Now with digital devices in everyone’s hands and screens glued to their faces, a plethora of images is being made – for the most part, “selfies.” It’s become so pervasive, everyone’s engaged with photography within this culture of narcissism – it’s a reflection of gleaming surfaces capturing the instance but missing the moment.
Furniture store, 1983
How do you see photography changing in the next five to 10 years?
Technical innovations will continue with digital photography. I think 3-D imaging will become popularized, maybe even 4-D, and the virtual will become even closer to the real yet remain an artificial distraction, keeping us feeling secure in a techno-bubble. People’s understanding of how images make meaning won’t get any deeper, but we will become more deeply secure (for better or worse) in the comfort of images that surround and suppress us.
The 2016 Scotiabank Photography Award winner will be announced on May 3, 2016, at the Ryerson Image Centre. Watch live on the @Scotiabank Facebook Page at 7PM EST.