Jason rojek
I got my first camera when I was sixteen years old. It was a Nikon FG20 that my mother had bought for me while she was visiting China. There it was, in its shiny new box, lens cap, strap, and everything. I spent most of the summer looking through it, focusing on things, seeing how the light meter worked while playing with the f-stops and messing around with all the shutter speeds. I started shooting just about everything I could imagine, learning photography through trial and error.
Through the early years, I shot just about everything. Color, black & white, flash, low light, and long exposures. I used cameras like Kodak Brownies, and Polaroids and even made a pinhole camera out of a Nestle chocolate quick box. I bought a couple more Nikons, including an expensive autofocus (that I dropped in the San Francisco Bay not long after buying it), but I would always go back to my first film camera and used it for many years.
One night, while trying to sleep, I kept seeing this image in my mind of a toaster on fire. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I soon realized it was not going to be an easy task trying to put together the shot that I had envisioned. How would I shoot such a picture? How would I set it on fire? To start, I had to find just the right toaster. The next day I set out to capture that burning toaster. After countless garage sales and buying half a dozen broken toasters, I finally found the one I wanted. Its chrome body sparkled like the front end of a classic hot rod under the hot California sun, and I knew my search was over. I remember the vendor warning me not to plug it in. I told him not to worry, I was just going to catch it on fire.
Several years back I discovered Holga cameras, a very simple and inexpensive no-frills plastic 120mm film camera. It is a very basic camera, and not really knowing if your subject is in the frame or even in focus, has raised the bar for me. It’s very raw and organic, which is where I started in the first place.
The multiple images in some of my photographs are from multiple film exposures. All of my photographs are full-framed and unaltered. I also like shooting with my iPhone 7 that’s almost always in my back pocket. I recently started using Canon EOS mirrorless digital cameras for a lot of my current work, but I still like to shoot with my plastic Holga film cameras as well.
Living in Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area has enabled me to photograph many interesting subjects from everyday life. These subjects have given me so much inspiration, whether they are people I have known for quite some time to those who are complete strangers. Some are quite destitute, yet still have hope. This harsh reality has propelled me to photograph without judgment, with sincere dignity and respect. I am very humbled by all the beautiful people who have trusted me to photograph them in a very candid and intimate manner. It is this moment frozen in time that compels me to achieve excellence in my craft.
