
Q&A with Lucas Blalock
21.6.20
PHOTO 2021 artist Lucas Blalock explores falseness and evident mechanics in photography. To coincide with his Spaced Apart talk, we asked Lucas a few questions about his practice and inspirations.
I started taking pictures in college. I was really into movies and photography gave me a way to realize a cinematic idea without a large production.
My motivations are very personal. The work has changed a lot over the years but I am still dealing with the same basic problems.

Lucas Blalock, Tessa sitting, 2016

Lucas Blalock, switchboard, 2015-2016
Werner Herzog once said, “There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”
I imagine a viewer that has all the complications of the contemporary moment.
I work my way into them.

Lucas Blalock, Woman I, 2000
It is really all I have to go on.
So many things.
I am in the middle of Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School. Before that I read Jen George’s The Babysitter at Rest for a second time.

The Babysitter at Rest by Jen George
Lil Wayne, 21 Savage, Jens Lekman, Jay Electronica, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, Jennifer Lopez
“In Spite of Ourselves” by John Prine with Iris Dement
I hope we can see how vulnerable our political systems make people and can reimagine the road ahead.
I can’t say I do.
I would like to make a film one day.

Buy Apple stock with your lunch money.