Beauty Erased

• Photographer
  > Joson
• Agency / Studio
  Joson Studio- Sf
• Photo Date
  3/2020
• Website
  https://josonstudio.com

To demonstrate the vast scale of human impact on our environment, already threatening up to one million species with mass extinction, I deconstruct the classic beauty of botanical images by manually developing the film — allowing the chemicals to develop only portions of each negative. As a result, only a fragment of each flower is revealed. These images were created using a large-format camera and 4X5 sheet film. (gelatin silver print, 24x36, edition of 6 and 2 artist proof)

• Biography
  Award-winning photographer joSon was born in the Philippines to a Filipino mother and an African American father. Sent to live with his mother’s family in Vietnam at age ten, he was educated in a Buddhist temple in preparation for becoming a monk. “I thought that was my calling long before I saw life through the viewfinder,” joSon recollects. “But the truth is, I have never left the monk-hood. I just left the temple.” Today joSon is a professional photographer based in San Francisco whose work is collected by an international list of clients.
• Awards
  His work has appeared in magazines including Scientific American, Outside, Conde Nast Traveler and Vogue. He as won awards from Photo District News (PDN), Communication Arts, and American Illustration and American Photography (AI-AP). As Sunset Magazine described joSon’s first monograph, joSon: Intimate Portraits of Nature, from Graphis Press in 2013: "Had Richard Avedon taken up gardening, he might have ended up with photos like this.”