Bill Jacobson: 1989-1997

Bill Jacobson: 1989-1997 by Bill Jacobson. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780944092484.

I started taking photographs as a teenager, nearly twenty-five years ago. Since then my work has been an meditation around desire, loss, and the role of photography as a vehicle for remembrance. My pictures often function as metaphors for the way the mind works: simultaneously collecting images while letting others go, fading in the way that memories fade, and alluding to the fact that, historically, photographs have faded as well. Decades I lose more and more friends to AIDS, the world is still a blur too. I am still struggling, though in different ways, to make sense of it all. While my photography is not specifically about AIDS it refers to what I have learned from being part of a community ravaged by the epidemic. By losing a steady stream of friends past fourteen years I to understand the transient nature of existence. For me these photographs have been a way of recording these feelings in an ongoing attempt forever. My work myself. Most photographs are meant as documents of moments we wish to hold onto forever. My work suggests that these moments, like life itself, are constantly fading into the past.