Jay Muhlin says about himself:
“I have a background in editorial photography and worked as a freelance photographer in NYC for a decade before switching gears to focusing on my art practice. I have a BFA in Photography from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and an MFA in Transmedia/ Art Photography from Syracuse University. I recently completed a grant to document the South Asian art collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I have completing residencies at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY, The Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, NY, and the Contemporary Artists Center at Woodside in Troy, NY. I have taught various photography and design classes at Bennington College, Syracuse University, Moore College of Art and Design, Salem Community College, and University of Delaware.
I currently teach a wide range of photography classes, typography and digital design at The College of New Jersey, Rowan, and La Salle Universities. I also work for the Chemical Heritage Foundation, building a photo studio to document and interpret their scientific collections. I am also an artist member of the Vox Populi Gallery in Philadelphia.”
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About ‘Our Bones & Their True Names’:
I was asked to create work for a group show titled 99 Days at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center in Philadelphia, PA, that borrowed from the motifs and language of my project Guilty Pleasures. All participating photographers (Stefan Abrams, Gabriel Angemi, Andrew Fillmore, Thilde Jensen, Jay Muhlin and Brian Ulrich) were asked to use the 2012 presidential election as the prompt to express our individual thoughts about America leading up to November 6th.
My reaction was to navigate Philadelphia, examining urban artifacts that spoke metaphorically about current, divisive political issues and address them in a billboard-style: flattened and with an aggressive tone. I began recognizing my thoughts in the outside world, emotions represented by objects in the city’s geography. What came out was more of a mood; in search of loneliness. I was guided by a strange magnetism; towards evidence of what were once sacred. My walks felt primitive, like an animal recognizing it’s path back home.
In the world I see: the traditional nuclear family is extinct, nature is unavoidable, and generations of solitude and warmth have been buried in the same, overlooked hole.
