Jay Wolke interviewed by Bad at Sports
Jay Wolke. Yellow Kayak, 1981. MoCP collection. (mentioned in the podcast!)
Collection artist Jay Wolke is the featured guest on the latest Bad at Sports podcast. Introduced on the show as a “great stalwart Chicagoan documentary photographer,” Wolke discusses his years studying in Chicago, his process, his relationship with the photographic medium, and details of his project Along the Divide: Photographs of the Dan Ryan Expressway (select images now on view at David Weinberg Gallery).
Wolke describes his relationship with photography as a “means for [him] to record what [he] felt were performative constructions in the real world,” that he would have been incapable of creating otherwise. His ideas of performance resonate in the advice he constantly gives to other photographers, and to which he prescribes himself – “Shoot verbs, not nouns.”
Jay Wolke. View fr. Canal Port Exit, 1982. MoCP Collection.
The discussion of the Dan Ryan project reveals Wolke’s misgivings about resurrecting the project (for the publication of the book and the Weinberg show) after more than two decades and his challenges in capturing certain images – including hanging off the roof of a friend’s VW beetle and riding along in emergency vehicles. Below are a few images from the MoCP collection in which Wolke has represented the urban ecosystems surrounding the expressway.
Jay Wolke. Distressed Motorist/Tire, 1984, printed 2005. MoCP collection.
Listen on the Bad at Sports site.
Read Wolke’s project statement.
See more of Wolke’s images in the MoCP collection and read a bio.