Interview by Melanie McWhorter

The photos featured here are outtakes from a shoot in NM in 1998 for an article for Life Magazine which you loosely state was about trash in the desert? What specifically were you told to document? What was this experience in NM like? Where in NM did you photograph? How did you scout locations and did you venture far in the desert? Did you do this alone or with a guide/assistant?

The story was about the trash in the desert, and about a local policeman who people called the “Dump Detective.” His job was to figure out who dumped the stuff, and then go make them clean it up. Sometimes he would find letters in the garbage with people’s addresses. Sometimes he would track them down from a serial number on an appliance. He had a lot of tricks. So the magazine asked me to photograph him in action, and then to make beautiful landscape pictures with trash in the frame somewhere. The dump detective pointed me in some directions – it was all within an hour of Santa Fe – and then I wandered into the desert in my rental car, alone.

Although this work looks like some of your other imagery, you state in the 2003 interview with Media Bistro that you try to separate your work into three different categories: editorial, personal, and advertising, and try to envision yourself as a tool for a job. As you have become more well-known in the last few years, do you find that most assignments are because of your personal work or your professional portfolio? Is there still a difference in the way you shoot for one or the other? Do you find that magazine photo editors search you out for your “look”?

Every assignment has its own set of influences. For example I went to Dubai for Harper’s magazine, and photographed everything I found interesting. When I got back, the art director and I worked out the edit together. But then I went to Texas recently for Popular Mechanics to shoot a story on clean energy, and I was given a specific shot list. In addition, they asked me to shoot anything else I found that was interesting, so there was a balance. I turned in all my film, marking my suggestions, and the magazine made the edit without me. But generally when you’re on assignment, it’s someone else’s story that you’re brought into.

What was your most challenging assignment yet? Why?

Last year my wife Tamara and I made all the photographs, and designed a cookbook for her family’s restaurant. It’s called Eat Me, and was published by Knopf. There were over a hundred recipes in the book, and we made a picture for each one. Each image was like a complete book jacket – concept, food, prop, light, shoot. It took us three months.

How and by whom was J&L founded?

Leanne Shapton and I started it in 2000.

What is the story of the first book?

The first book was called Sunbird. It’s a book of my own photographs, with fiction by Adam Gilders. I made the book because I had to. I mean I was really compelled to make it. I wasn’t thinking of starting a publishing company at that point. I just wanted to make a book. Adam and I came up with the name “Bird Publishing” as the publisher. Later I made “Bird Publishing” an imprint of J&L.

In the aforementoned interview, you state that you “receive so many submissions these days”. How has this changed in the past 6 years and, as a matter of course, does J&L take submissions?

We still receive about one submission a day – mostly through our website. In fact, one of the books we’re publishing for Spring 2010 was a submission through an email.

Do you find that being a not-for-profit allows you more freedoms or creates limitations?

That’s a complicated question. It does both. I’m not sure I can do it justice here.

Why did you publish Raising Frogs for $$$ with The Ice Plant and how did publishing with The Ice Plant differ from self-publishing?

The Ice Plant is a company that was started by some friends, and they asked if I’d like to make a book with them. We talked a lot about the book as it took shape, and they helped guide and edit. And now, they handle the stock and the distribution for the book.

I always wanted to ask what your interpretation of the “chapters” in Raising Frogs for $$$ mean to you. Will you give a hint?

I wanted this book to be about the potential of editing. What is it that carries over from one image to the next in a sequence? How does one image affect the way you see all the others? Each chapter is laid out in a specific and different way. The first one has small images on each spread with lots of white space, asking your eye to ricochet around and find associations. Another chapter has twelve images on a spread that you can soak in all at once, or go in for detail. There’s a chapter of diptychs, etc. The book is a collection of different layout devices basically – each one makes you read the pictures in a different way.

I know that you are from Georgia and have lived in Brooklyn and now reside in Scranton, PA. Why did you choose Scranton, PA as your current residence? What have you found are the photographic qualities of this location and are you photographing there? If so, what are you photographing there?

I passed through Scranton, randomly in 1997, and really liked it. Most of the other towns within two hours of New York City feel influenced by the city, but Scranton stands alone. It’s on the western side of the Poconos, so maybe that’s why – like they form a wall or something. I don’t know. The town sits in a valley of the Lackawanna River, and the light comes into the valley in a beautiful way in the afternoon. I’ve made a lot of pictures over the years here. I don’t have a specific photographic mission, but I keep my camera in the car.

What are some of your current or upcoming projects or assignments in personal work and publishing?

I’m putting together a new book with an Italian publisher. It starts with some found photographs, and then evolves into three new bodies of work. More on that later this year… At J&L, we’re finishing the design on two new books that will be released in the spring. One is about a prison break love story. The other is about high school basketball. And traveling-wise, if all goes as planned, I’ll be spending time in Atlanta, Istanbul, Seoul, and Mumbai over the next three months.

Do you read any blogs or magazines? If so, which ones?

Lately I read Harper’s, The New York Times, and Russian novels.

Who is your favorite or most inspiring photographer?

This changes all the time. Recent contenders are Hans-Peter Feldmann and Annette Kelm.

What is your favorite book?

Either/Or by Soren Kierkegaard. I’m sorry if that sounds pretentious, but I promise it’s one of the most entertaining and profound books out there. I’m also loving Sergei Dovlatov lately. Try The Suitcase and A Foreign Woman. All of these books have excellent senses of humor and deal with heavy stuff.

View Jason Fulford’s portfolio from New Mexico

Jason Fulford is a photographer and co-founder of the non-profit, J&L Books. He has lectured at the ICP, Cranbrook Academy of Art, LACMA, Mass Art, P.S.1, SVA, Wesleyan University and Yale University. He is a contributing editor to Blind Spot magazine, and a visiting critic in the Yale MFA Photo program. Fulford’s photographs have been featured in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Time, and on book jackets for Don Delillo, John Updike, Bertrand Russell, Jorge Luis Borges, Terry Eagleton, Ernest Hemingway and Richard Ford. His monographs include Sunbird (2000), Crushed (2003), and Raising Frogs for $$$ (2006). He lives in Scranton,
PA.