BY DAWN ROE
Jason Reed holds a BA in Geography from the University of Texas-Austin and an MFA in Photography from Illinois State University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography at Texas State University and founding co-director of Borderland Collective, a participatory art program that has worked with more than 100 youth across the American Southwest over the last four years. Culling from the archives of Borderland Collective he has created gallery and public space exhibitions of collaborative work in Texas, Illinois, Brooklyn, Washington, D.C. and Mexico City. He has received grants from Texas State University, the Texas Commission on the Arts, Labotonica, and the Sappi Ideas that Matter program. Outside of his collaborative role, his individual work has been exhibited at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, St. Edwards University in Austin, UTSA Satellite Space in San Antonio, Box 13 in Houston, NYU 7th Floor Gallery, in the 2011 Texas Biennial, and this summer at Co-Lab Gallery in Austin and Anika Handelt Galerie in Vienna, Austria.
![]()
The Border, Rio Grande River from Three Palms Inn series
1. I’ve been thinking recently about the plurality in contemporary photography and have been reminded that many practitioners have extensive backgrounds in disciplines peripheral to the visual arts. I feel as though this aspect has advanced the dialogue around the medium within recent decades and contributed to rich and complex discussions. I know that your undergraduate degree was in geography, but that you also were actively engaged with photography prior to graduate school. Can you talk a bit about what led you to pursue an MFA in photography, and whether coming into the program with a limited art background, but an extensive knowledge of geography had any impact on your experience?
«I started making photographs during my youth, alongside my dad (a serious photo enthusiast) on our annual family road trips across the American West. But I was not really attuned to photography as anything except a tool to explore, understand, and remember the landscape we were driving through and engaging with. It was about making pictures of landscapes I thought were interesting, I suppose so I could look at them longer. Now that I say that, it seems my practice really hasn’t changed much.
When I went to college I ended up in the geography department because my interest at the time was really history and landscape, not photography. I realized quickly though, that photography was intrinsically linked to geography, and during my senior year my professors encouraged that I use my interest in photography as a means of geographic research. My decision to pursue an MFA came from a feeling that I had not yet resolved how I was supposed to approach being a geographer that wanted to make pictures instead of write papers. In many ways my non-art background helped me in graduate school, because I knew how to write, research, and discuss theory. But the rigor of constantly making and sharing pictures in such a critical space definitely took some adjustment».
![]()
Looking South to Mexico from Three Palms Inn series
2. The Texan landscape features prominently in your work. Can you comment on the impact growing up in Texas has had on your work, and whether your temporary move out of the state to the prairies of Illinois during graduate school led to any kind of rethinking about your relationship to the space and culture of Texas?
«Growing up I thought of Texas, especially its history, in a pretty mythical way. My grandpa always had westerns playing on the TV, my family would go on what to me seemed like epic trips across West Texas and the larger Southwest, and I lived in an insulated ranching and farming town that was good at perpetuating its frontier story. My move to Austin for college and then my move to Illinois for graduate school were both instrumental in helping me look at my homeland with a new, and in many ways much more critical perspective. Without leaving I don’t think I would have the balance of both loving and hating Texas that is significant to the work I make».
3. After graduate school, you did some work for AmeriCorps in New Mexico. If I remember correctly, this led to the formation of the Borderland Collective that you founded and currently run out of Texas State University. Can you describe the mission of that collective, and discuss its development?
«
Borderland Collective is a social art practice that facilitates projects geared around the idea of collaborative creation. We work with teachers, youth, families, and other artists to explore the American cultural landscape, with the goal of creating an archive of imagery that provides an inclusive representation of our time and place. This idea partly grew out of my work as an AmericCorps outreach teacher in Albuquerque, where I worked with public school teachers to develop a photo project with youth at the Native American Charter Academy. Though it also developed in collaboration with Ryan Sprott, a life long friend who was looking for a way to creatively engage his high school students in West Texas. Together we developed a way to bridge art and education creating both a catalyst for student success and a meaningful project about the cultural identity of the places we were working. It is important to note, that we were greatly influenced by the work Wendy Ewald had been doing since the 1970s with young people across the country and wanted to find a way to mimic that effort in our homeland».
![]()
Three Palms Inn and Oasis Restaurant from Three Palms Inn series
4. You’ve had a lot of success with the Borderland Collective in terms of getting the work out into the world through numerous exhibitions, one of which I was fortunate to be able to see recently at The University Galleries at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. These exhibitions are often supplemented by publications in the form of books or fold-out cards, which allows the work to live on beyond the imposed timeframe of the gallery space. What kind of response to the work have you had from the communities where it’s been shown, or from those who have experienced it in publication or website form? And, how do the participants respond to this public display of their work, and the impact their photographs have on others?
«When we were developing Borderland Collective we knew it had to contain a means of reaching beyond the classroom, beyond another school assignment or project. This was a significant component because we figured it would place more value on the students and families we worked with and because the project was not just about student success but also about building a public archive that share a new perspective of place. We first made small on-demand books so each participant could receive a copy, the school and local community could put the books in the library, and we could easily disseminate them around the country. Then we started exhibiting the work, often making large archival exhibition prints that gave great significance to the photographs made by these youth and families. And then at some point we also realized that the exhibition began to serve a really valuable purpose of creating a space for exchange and dialogue between groups that might only meet because of the project. That was an exciting realization and has spurred a further push to share the work.
Most often the response from both the community where the exhibition is shown or where the books/cards are sent is overwhelmingly positive. The student and family participants have also been enthusiastic and I think quite proud to have their work seen by so many people outside of their normal community circle. And whether or not people respond positively, negatively, or have a critical viewpoint, the project has opened up a whole set of important questions for Ryan and I, the participants, and the audience about what art is, who an artist might be, and even larger questions about how we construct identity and represent ourselves».
![]()
New Border Patrol Government Housing from Three Palms Inn series
5. The Borderland Collective is a perfect example of a successful collaboration, both in terms of the participatory elements as well as the colleagues who work alongside you on the project. You’re also a part of an artist’s collective called Lakes Were Rivers, comprised of artists from your local community. Do you have any thoughts you’d like to share on the role of collaboration and how it has impacted your practice?
«In the end I think one of the most valuable things art can provide is space and opportunity for exchange, dialogue, and critical analysis. Working collaboratively provides that not only in the final outcome of a show or book, but also in the process of making work. Also working in such a way, I am forced to be accountable to the other people of the group, so I am naturally more thoughtful and aware of every small thing I do, which ends up benefiting, even if subconsciously, my individual work».
![]()
Border Patrol on Ridge from Three Palms Inn series
6. What about your role as an educator? What do you feel are the most essential aspects that art and photography students should be concerning themselves with these days?
«I strongly believe teaching is about facilitating opportunity for students to discover how to be artists on their own. Certainly providing specific instruction on the tools of photography is important, but to a large degree any motivated person can learn the skills on their own these days through all of the great online resources. What they can’t get online is personal attention and interaction—someone to listen, be there when they have questions, challenge their assumptions, be critical, and guide them to learn how to learn—and opportunity for real and informed discourse with peers. So in many ways I try to construct my classrooms as you would a communal studio, where learning happens on multiple levels at once led not just by myself but also the students. I also think as significant as teaching in the classroom, is demonstrating to the students my role as an artist outside of the classroom, which can inspire and engage them in ways a text or instruction never will.
![]()
Bobby Scheidemann
In terms of what students should be aware of and exposed to, definitely a historical understanding of the medium but only in the context of the contemporary not in spite of it, which kind of ties in with the plurality that you referred to earlier. I think students should embrace the diversity of the medium as opposed to placing boundaries around certain ways of making work or thinking about pictures being better than others. So really they should see the plurality as a wonderful problem to have, especially in terms of inclusivity and diversity of perspective. The art and photography worlds are wide open, anybody can make anything, and that should be a freeing notion to students».
![]()
Ashton Leon
7. Can you describe the photography program at Texas State? Do students work with both analog and digital processes? And, do they have the opportunity to work with video or web/graphic applications?
«We are a big state school and therefore have a really large program of about 200 photography majors, headed up my colleague Assistant Professor Barry Stone. The goal of our curriculum is to provide a wide array of photographic possibilities to students so we offer traditional silver, historical alternative, and digital processes. It gives students an opportunity to experience many ways of making work. But I think it is important to stress, even though we offer a range of technical processes, our classes are really about ideas and making interesting work. That is to say, the technical opportunities in our various courses are designed to function as a means to an end.
![]()
Maureen Munley
A number of our students do investigate video or web-based media in their work, photography at Texas State has kind of become the place many interdisciplinary students end up because there is an opportunity for media use in their work. Because of this we have a full range of what students are doing, from gum bichromates to video documentation of sculpturally-based performance pieces. The school is in the process of hiring an Integrated Media professor, so there will be another outlet and a place to gain even more skill in those areas for interested students. After 7 different photography classes our students conclude with a two-semester thesis course and exhibition that serves as a capstone, allowing them to really develop into an independent artist».
![]()
Max Marshall
8. Getting back to your own work, I’ve always been fond of how acutely your photographs capture the crisp and arid feel of the earth and sky in the spaces you portray. Your images are appropriately straightforward and dry, while also managing to hint at the subtle beauty underneath, within or around the periphery of the frame. Can you comment on your aesthetic concerns and how those choices relate to the content of your work?
«My aesthetic concerns relate directly to my desire to simply point at the things I find intriguing but want more time to think about. Maybe this partly comes from my non-art background but I am not interested in making my decisions as a photographer apparent (obviously with knowledge that it is impossible), rather I want viewers thinking about the decisions that led to what I am showing them in the photograph (land use, neglect or attention, cultural influence, political policy, etc).
Over the years I have certainly learned to be more subtle and complex within this straight ‘documentary style’ and I have become more adept at the visual grammar of photography as a means of eliciting the reflection I seek. But the core of why I take pictures, to think further about a space, as well as the landscape I am most often photographing, an unpopulated horizontal desert, generally rules the aesthetic decisions I make leading to the dry and quiet pictures you referred to».
![]()
Resort Golf Course on the Border from Three Palms Inn series
9. Finally, are there any influences in terms of artists, authors, texts, films, etc. that you’d like to cite as having had a particular impact on how you think about your work or your practice?
«Like my background and practice, my influences are pretty interdisciplinary. Foremost, I am influenced by cultural geographers like Yi-Fu Tuan and D.W. Meinig who both have written about the significance of vernacular landscapes in parsing our cultural identity. Westerns of all kinds are also very important, even though many of them serve as critical reminders of what I don’t want to do or be as a photographer (and in many cases what we are working against with Borderland Collective). In terms of art, I pull much inspiration from the long-term investigations of people like William Christenberry, Robert Adams, Henry Wessel, Wendy Ewald, and An-My Lê – each investing themselves deeply in a subject that is layered and complex, and personally driven to some extent. I think the most interesting work being done today is by Trevor Paglen and Richard Mosse, both finding absolutely new ways to talk about the complicated world we live in».
![]()
River Road along the Border from Three Palms Inn series
© All copyright remains with photographer Jason Reed
