Josh Booth

Artist Statement

In a world that is so fractured, my work reminds us that each of us is unique AND we are all deeply connected. We do not have to sacrifice the integrity of the part for the sake of the whole, nor do we need to forget the cycles and interconnectedness of life in the name of individualism. The sum of our one shared life is greater than all of the individual parts, and my work calls us to remember that reality.

This piece is part of my Unique + Connected series, where the process of making these pieces stands out as much as the images themselves. To make these pieces, I first meticulously build the photo's frame - often milling from slabs of wood made from forrest-free urban trees that have fallen in the Atlanta area - and collect some of the sawdust as I go. The choice of wood is never arbitrary - sometimes the grain of the wood helps me choose what photo I will print later, and other times it's the photo that inspires my wood selection.

After building the frame, I hand-make my own paper using recycled materials, and infuse some of that very same sawdust into the paper. When you print a photo on the sawdust paper the result is an image that is soft and textured that plays back and forth with the randomized pattern of the sawdust, as opposed to the crisp and clear lines one might associate with photo paper. At times, this means that there might be slightly less clarity in the image than if it had been printed on traditional paper. But this lack of clarity serves to enhance the beauty of the overall piece. And so, a quality that might otherwise be thought of as an imperfection becomes part of the appeal, bringing a third dimension of gentle texture to what would have otherwise just been a two-dimensional image.

Lastly I print on the sawdust paper with professional archival ink. The result is a piece that highlights the uniqueness each of the individual components - the frame, the paper, and the image, while also acknowledging they are completely connected at the same time. Each piece in my Unique + Connected series is one-of-a-kind, as the wood grain and sawdust paper are never the same way twice!