• blog
  • in the shadow of sun mountain
  • buy my books
  • photographs
  • paintings
  • bio
  • cv
  • contact
  • search
Menu

Studio Q Photography

Exploring Human Behavior and Death Anxiety Through Art
  • blog
  • in the shadow of sun mountain
  • buy my books
  • photographs
  • paintings
  • bio
  • cv
  • contact
  • search
×

“The Wounded and the Fallen"—Fremont County, Colorado-home of the Tabeguache-Ute people. Whole Plate Palladiotype from a calotype (paper negative).

The Wounded and The Fallen

Quinn Jacobson November 27, 2022

People wonder why terrible things happen in the world. I’ve had a preoccupation with this question for decades. It’s what made me pick up a camera all those years ago. Why do certain people or certain groups fall victim to horrible events? If you follow what's happening in Ukraine today and in many other parts of the world, you know what I mean. It’s heart-wrenching.

These events can be very personal, or they can be global. They usually deal with the same thing; genocide, ethnocide, loss, tragedy, and injustice. And most of the time, they are about "us" and "them." I would suggest that because we fear death, it is in our nature to always find "the other" to blame, use as a scapegoat, humiliate, demean, and ultimately kill.

And I would argue that “the other" challenges our psychological buffers against existential anxiety; we are left defenseless. This is why we can’t get along with people who are different from us. This is the definition of death anxiety. It’s our inability to psychologically deal with the instinct to stay alive and the knowledge that we’re going to die.

One of the biggest problems is a lack of self-awareness. For most people, death is a vague abstraction that doesn’t pertain to them. William James said, “There’s a panic rumbling beneath the surface of consciousness.” I can see that statement clearly when I look at the history of the world and even current events. I can see it in people and they don’t even recognize it.

Ernest Becker said in his book, Escape from Evil, "In this view, man is an energy-converting organism who must exert his manipulative powers, who must damage his world in some ways, who must make it uncomfortable for others, etc., by his own nature as an active being. He seeks self-expansion from a very uncertain power base. Even if man hurts others, it is because he is weak and afraid, not because he is confident and cruel. Rousseau summed up this point of view with the idea that only the strong person can be ethical, not the weak one."

My photographs are a way of communicating these ideas in more poetic and lyrical ways than words can. They are about ideas and emotions surrounding death anxiety and terror management theory—subtle visual cues that are difficult to describe in words.

This work is about the Tabeguache-Ute people and many other groups throughout history that have been victims of the paradoxical human condition. It’s about their land, their plants and animals, and some of the symbolism and objects they used here. At least, that’s what the images are about on the surface. In reality, they are about the "residue," or what’s left here, visually representing the psychology of the land and objects. Moreover, it's about why it happened. It attempts to answer the big questions surrounding human behavior and "the other." This work is as much about psychology as it is about photography.

The pictures are not a romanticized version of indigenous people. There are no images of people at all in this work. I’ve made a conscious decision not to photograph people. I’m not interested in promoting the white, Eurocentric view of Native Americans. I’m not interested in trying to show their "Indianness." I see this as another way of keeping them victims of the colonial gaze. It’s almost a form of continued ethnic cleansing. There is so much baggage there to unpack, and most people don’t have the skills or knowledge to do it. These kinds of images carry that weight, whether the creator or viewer are aware of it or not.

“When the angel of death sounds his trumpet, the pretenses of civilization are blown from men’s heads into the mud like hats in a gust of wind.” – George Bernard Shaw

In Art & Theory, Death Anxiety, Denial of Death, Ernest Becker, Escape From Evil, Othering, Palladiotype, Philosophy, Psychology, Shadow of Sun Mountain Tags In the Shadow of Sun Mountain, native american, indigenous, ernest becker, the other
← Psychology, Philosophy, History, Art, and Death AnxietyDeath Reminders & Mortality Salience →

Search Posts

Archive Block
This is example content. Double-click here and select a page to create an index of your own content. Learn more
Post Archive
  • Photography
 

Featured Posts

Featured
May 4, 2025
Ocotillo
May 4, 2025
May 4, 2025
Apr 25, 2025
Thinking About Doctoral Studies and V.2 Automatic Fantastic
Apr 25, 2025
Apr 25, 2025
Apr 24, 2025
Automatic Fantastic
Apr 24, 2025
Apr 24, 2025
Apr 20, 2025
You're Neurotic: How Neurotic Are You?
Apr 20, 2025
Apr 20, 2025
Apr 17, 2025
What a 19th-Century Photograph Reveals About Power, Privilege and Violence in the American West
Apr 17, 2025
Apr 17, 2025
Mar 22, 2025
Update on My Book and Preparing for My Doctoral Studies (PhD Program)
Mar 22, 2025
Mar 22, 2025
Mar 7, 2025
Arundel Camera Club (Maryland) Talk
Mar 7, 2025
Mar 7, 2025
Feb 27, 2025
We Lost Moshe Yesterday to Cancer
Feb 27, 2025
Feb 27, 2025
Feb 21, 2025
Proof Print of My New Book!
Feb 21, 2025
Feb 21, 2025
Feb 19, 2025
Photogenic Drawings
Feb 19, 2025
Feb 19, 2025