“On the Road Again...Part 2” by Iza El Nems Julian Jackson

Text and Photos by Izzy El Nems Julian Jackson

"when we started taking photos, we weren’t searching for style. there was no method, only an inability to do it differently. if we had a goal at all, i guess, it was to seize a fragment of truth in an age that seems to have abandoned it

—carve out something raw in a world that no longer tolerates it, thrown to the wolves of delusions, where ideals of beauty have no ground past the glass panes of the post-digital age. where nothing matters and everything is sooooo important. the algorithmic age.

art is as close as you can get to perfection without being caught up in the word of it.

Another European tour: this time from Stockholm to Antwerp train to Paris to end up on an island in Sweden. Film fried through multiple x ray machines never enough time for a hand check. Laughs and tears mostly laughs the water was cold but everything else was so hot. Stockholm had greet beer and decent wine maybe the best duck ragu I ever had. 24 hours in Antwerp bed breakfast but missed the breakfast toured the Dries office and had some more decent wine. Train into Paris on the hottest day of their year. Still got escargot. Love you Emma. Little plane back to Sweden turbulence was with us. Ferry through the archipelago docked on Angsö. Island with no roads no cars just some more decent wine.

we stood there and smoked for hours as if we were all that mattered and in a sense we were, we were all that mattered to ourselves and the stench of dries and opium perfume and sweat filled the air with the arrogance of becoming. we didn’t know who we were or wanted to be, but in that natural-silly-right unspoken bravado we were the people of our time.

the idea of a moment has always been tied to photography—take a picture, it’ll last longer. we treat photos as records of time, and also as the liminal in-between. when you take an image there is nothing else to wait for. it’s already there, and already passed. a fragment of time, place that only returns in past tense. a depiction of reality, or an impression of what a dream is. who really cares.

Full Dries Van Noten, embellished beaded skirt, top and open-toe red leather mules.

Missoni tank top, silk pants. Vibram 5 finger shoes.

the moment itself exists only in imagination, in that single instant when the shutter releases. its meaning shifts between photographer, subject, viewer—the good shepherd, the sorrowed virgin, the joyful mary—we all see differently. but the truth of the moment exists within, and belongs to, the image itself.

to capture and leave the scene (only to substantiate later) is to chase a dream—thought bound to dialogue, image bound to thought. i wonder how to give the viewer a particular experience, one of reading a man’s mind. each individual is a subject, living in a world of its own, of which it is the center.

Vintage Givenchy white printed embellished tank mini dress on top of big baggy jeans tied with shoelace, Bode jacket. Barefoot.

in art, events are created by representation. plato through socrates mentions the couch: god creates its true form, the carpenter builds it, the painter imitates the carpenter. each step drifts further from truth. and with fashion, when style is only imitation, divorced from the self, what does it become? a depiction of reality, or a trace of a dream. who really cares.

to me, the worst fashion faux pas might be exactly that—to look in the mirror and not see yourself.

i hope these images make you feel the opposite of that.

— to my new-age engineers."

“Our work is made by us in entirety—just the two of us. It s a journey, a chance to see and feel the raw beauty of daily life through the lens of two artists. The chemistry between director and photographer infuses every image with a sense of narrative and place.” Iza El Nems, Julian Jackson