Jason Matias

Photography – Honolulu

I haven’t been everywhere yet, but it’s on my to-do list. I’ve visited a fair bit of the world, though, witnessing it with the slight disposition of a New Yorker. The New Yorker in me was pummeled and reshaped during my first years in the military. A fast-talking, ‘arrogant’ (my accent made people automatically assume this), overachiever, was not received well in a group mostly comprised of less urban people. I was young, and I learned, and I traveled, and I relearned, and now all of the above is a habit. When the habit fades I know it is time to move again. Along the way, I learned first the camera, and later the pen. Today I carry both and they war with each other for my attention. Photography began as a means of solving the “no picture, no proof” argument when I used to do solo backcountry hiking in Alaska. I was stationed at Eielson AFB at the time. Since then it’s bloomed, wintered, and bloomed again. I now define my photography within two distinct veins: Comfortable Isolation and the Personification of Nature. I have been slowly massaging the craft of being a cameraman into a vision that is wholly my own. Comfortable Isolation in photographs is a product of growing up as an outsider and growing into being a loner. But it is also a perception/representation of an important component of growth that society is allowing to slip away. Our character grows as the conversations we have with ourselves develops. The inner dialog where we battle our demons and mold our beliefs occurs in our moments of solitude. We have fewer and fewer moments of solitude as the outside world both crashes through the barriers of our attention and is invited into our minds as a deliberate distraction from our inner monolog. I’ve been creating these solitary places/spaces in my photographs to represent this story. Pieces like Survivor, Solitude (and the rest of the Lonely Boat Series), Adrift below, and others. Personification Finding Nature in my photographs is largely a component of luck. Luck and an opportunity made possible by being out there and ready for it. I am looking for signs of life in my photographs. In Dance, the trees are curving and appear to be dancing and crowded while still maintaining that clear pathway for your thoughts. Like a labyrinth, it’s a moving meditation but in a forest that is alive. It took me quite a while to find a forest that was booth moving and clear. There are also images like Guardian with its multitude of faces (15) and it’s story of protection on the North Shore of Hawaii and Her, pictured below with its woman below red the waves as if they were bed sheets. Pacing the Sun, with its bird in the waves. Wild Horses, with the stallion before the stars.