Artist Statement
My work revolves around some central themes: images, disasters, America, and economics. I am interested in the relationship between these four things and how images are used to inform our perceptions of place, as well as how disasters are informed by economics. The long-term series I have worked on are of fires and the foreclosure crisis, both disasters that share much in common with the economics of decline Recent work has also utilized found images, and with these, I am interested in the language of images.
Process Statement
The fire series images are all taken with Fuji 35mm slide film and then scanned and digitally printed. The adherence to Fuji slide film is a result of the fact that this project began in the early 1990s, and I have been somewhat reluctant to alter the process of the project. The slides are then scanned and printed at approximately 30x40 inches and mounted to acrylic. For other work and series i do utilize digital formats. The Housing Bubble photographs are all taken with digital point and shoot cameras as a way to make the images for casual and less detached than medium and large formats convey.
Jean-Michel Reed received his MA in architecture at the University at Buffalo. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions: Jean-Michel Reed: Introspective (CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, 2012), Beyond/In Western New York (Burchfield-Penney Arts Center, Buffalo, 2010), Playlist (Postmasters, New York, 2010, organized by Patty Johnson and Steven Stern), and Ecologies of Decay (Artspace, Buffalo, 2009), among others. Reed's work has been reviewed in the Buffalo News, Art in America, and Frieze, as well as the juried Review Santa Fe (2011). Reed lives and works in Buffalo, New York. His work is primarily photo-based, and his series on fires in Buffalo is his most known work – to which Art in America referred to him as “the Weegee of arson.”
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