I first met Jason Langer in 1999. We were both living in San Francisco. I walked a couple blocks away from my house to Jason’s flat to pick up a few press prints he had made of some of Ruth Bernhard’s images. The Shapiro Gallery was getting ready to launch a show of Ruth’s famous nudes from the 1930s.
The first thing I noticed when I walked into his flat was that it was almost entirely devoted to photography. There were boxes of negatives and prints neatly lining all the shelves and stacked in piles on the floor. There was a makeshift ledge “gallery” lining the walls with framed black and white prints on display. I picked up the press prints but found that Jason was in the middle of working on some other intriguing black and white photographs. They were images of dark, shadowy figures - men and women - in urban settings. Although their faces were obscured the figures in this undefined city were obviously involved in some kind of private drama.
The sweet sounds of vintage jazz were playing from Jason’s stereo but the images of the solitary figures roaming city streets and dimly lit rooms were both enticing and disconcerting. They fascinated me. I asked Jason what he was working on and he simply said he was working on his own work. I knew he was a good printer but didn’t know Jason was also a skilled photographer. Jason himself was and is still earnest, self-effacing, diligent, smart and edgy.
It might have been the music in combination with the vintage Kertesz images I was recently viewing but Jason’s work seemed as if it was created at around the same time. In fact, that whole first introduction to Jason’s world was a bit unusual. One simply didn’t expect to find a well-dressed young man of 31 listening to vintage jazz immersed in obviously introspective traditional black and white photographs. I have known Jason for 15 years and he is definitely a man who lives in a different time.
I began collecting in 1972 and became particularly interested in photography created between the world wars. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andre Kertesz, Paul Strand and Edward Weston are only a handful of the significant Modernist photographers that dazzled me. What attracts me to the photographs of this period is the firmness of the “straight” aesthetic- finding complex and intriguing images in the physical world of the everyday - while having no limitation to imagination. Each of these photographers exhibited a unique perspective and approach to black and white photography. Some were more interested in the documentary, some more interested in the personal or poetic, but all of these artists were committed to black and white photography and hand held film cameras as being their method of exploring the city, urban life and the extraordinary found in the everyday. Jason’s tools, subject matter and approach is exactly the same. In the 1990s it was - and still is- unusual to find a photographic artist immersed in the same search for beauty and meaning.
The reason I collect, show and sell photographs from this time period is that the concerns addressed so effectively by these artists - Langer included - are still pertinent. Our relationships to each other, to the city, to ourselves and the beauty found in the exploration of those relationships hasn’t changed. I have never been interested in color photography. Digital imaging so far holds no interest for me. Life in the 1920s and 1930s was just as complex as it is now - and as Langer sees the world, so do I; poetic, romantic, dangerous, filled with light and possibility. The world reduced to black and white reveals life’s main themes without the distraction of color. The world as it is - without the intrusion of Photoshop - is enough to tell me all I need to know to better know myself, those around me and the urban experience. I have a feeling Jason feels the same way.
Langer is an investigator of those things that obsess him. It is not New York City, it is not the “Decisive Moment”, it is not the beauty of the everyday and the poetry of people and things. For Langer it is all of these things and more. Langer has created his own mysterious world of romance and portent and every year that passes, he becomes more and more invested in exploring and exhibiting that world.
When I show Langer’s photographs alongside those of the early classic modernists, the themes, approach and feelings are the same. The only difference between the two is time. In viewing Langer’s classic work, it’s easy to forget that his images are contemporary photographs created in the “post” modern era. Langer is not interested in deconstructing photography or the usefulness of image making in today’s world. He is not interested in criticizing our culture with the blunt tools of cynicism and Photoshop cloning. Instead he implores the viewer to ask questions about the nature of reality and empowers the viewer to imagine their own story - beginning, middle and end - on their own terms. Langer understands photography’s gift to show the viewer the world via a mechanical lens, and the connections between the stories found on the “inside” and the “outside” worlds.
I encourage all readers of this book to find the opportunity to view Jason’s work in person. Seek out one of Jason’s prints and hold it in your hand. Langer’s images are not intended to be seen on screen or even in book form. Langer’s images are meant to be seen on a daily basis, while walking down the hall or relaxing in a chair. They are especially appreciated while listening to Billie Holiday or Duke Ellington and nursing a whiskey and water.
Photography is a gift, one of discovery and revelation frozen in time. I have found that only a handful of contemporary photographers possess the opportunity and dedication to illuminate the world with clarity, humor, grace, sensuality and restraint. Let your eyes and spirit enjoy his photographs or even Jason himself before the last of the analog photographers are gone forever.
Michael Shapiro, 2013