Bend light, with Josh Jalbert

September 16, 2019by Rachel Jimenez

While many of the artists we’ve chosen to decorate Distillery of Modern Art bottles are painters and multi-media artists, Josh Jalbert’s photographic work will soon adorn our vodka bottle.

For photographer Joshua Jalbert, the camera offers exciting new ways to perceive the world. Art photography is a paradox: it misuses depiction in order to deal with things that are hard to visualize. Photography presses at the borders of the visual. It makes the visual explode, and unfolds access to perception and feeling.

“The marriage of distilled spirits and modern art struck me as a meaningful project, bringing to light the entwined relationship among the two” Jalbert says. “I was interested in making an artwork for the vodka label which referenced the naturally occurring image of light bending through water in a bottle. Taking inspiration from the etymology of the word vodka, meaning “little water,” the subject of the artwork is water, light and glass. The photograph is made in a darkroom on black and white silver paper, by repeated flashes of light through a glass water bottle.”

Jalbert is currently a Professor of Photography at Savannah College of Art and Design, with previous faculty appointments at the University of Oregon, Southern Oregon University, and the College of Wooster, Ohio. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon’s MFA program, and the European Graduate School in the Philosophy, Art & Critical Thought division. His exhibition include the Andrews Gallery at the College of William & Mary, VA; the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University, VA; Sarah Spurgeon Gallery at Central Washington University, WA; the Schneider Museum of Art, OR; and the Center for Fine Art Photography, CO.

For more of Josh Jalbert’s work, visit www.joshjalbert.com.