These photographs, from the series “Living Ghosts,” are taken through glass filters to create blurring and obscuring effects. These painterly photographs, which live at the border between knowledge formation and the world we see, engage themes of history, politics, perception, and the mysterious question of why we think we know what we know. Given the human tendency to perceive connections between unrelated or random data, which is a pressing concern in our information-saturated world, this question could not be more current. I’m interested not in traditional photographic focus, but in a different kind of focus, one that lets the mind wander inward a little bit, in pursuit of the ambiguity of life and the slipperiness of truth. I am in search of ways to isolate and concentrate the experience of seeing. For me, these pictures are as abstract and suggestive as words taken out of context, a chance meeting of memory and the present moment.

Jeremy Freedman lives in in New York City, where he writes poems and takes photographs. His poems have been published in 2 Bridges Review, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Queen Mob’s, Pioneertown, Otoliths, and elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbook “Apophenia” (Finishing Line Press 2017) and the editor of O! Negative Poetry Review. His photographs have been exhibited in Europe and the United States and have been featured in numerous journals.