Book: Nowhere in Place

Nowhere in Place

Christopher Jordan, with an introduction by Hank Lazer


Publisher: George F Thompson Publishing

Hardcover
144 pages with 92 color photographs by the author 
9.5″ x 9.0″ landscape/horizontal
ISBN 978–1–938086–85–4

Published May 2021

Distributed by Casemate/IPM  
www.casemateipm.com

Published in association with the
Center for the Study of Place

Praise

“Christopher Jordan has a legacy of drawing us into alternate realities, but with his book, Nowhere in Place, we consider the small worlds that exist right in front of us. For this collection, he slows down and really sees—details, nature, marks of humanity in places around the globe. The photographs reveal something internal, a state of being that allows for the acknowledgment of the overlooked and the sometimes ordinary, photographing these markers as a way to say: “This is what I witnessed today.” Jordan’s engagement goes beyond place to a state of perception, and it inspires us to slow down and appreciate all that the world has to offer.”  
—Aline Smithson, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Lenscratch

“Christopher Jordan’s photographic meditations—tightly attentive and colorfully geometric—encourage the ordinary to be seen as the extraordinary.”
—Robert Hirsch, author of Transformational Imagemaking: Handmade Photography since 1960 and Seizing the Light: A Social History of Photography

“Christopher Jordan’s fascinating book, Nowhere in Place, delights not only the eyes, but the intellect, with engaging ruminations on the nature of seeing and how we experience places within the flow of the moment. The fresh and colorful images from Tuscaloosa, Boulder, and India are intriguing visual meditations, certainly capturing traces of their localities but also transcending them with a sense of immediacy on the printed page. This is a book that deserves repeated viewings, revealing something new each time.” 
—Gerald Auten, Director of Exhibitions and Senior Lecturer in Studio Art, Dartmouth College

“Profound, unique, thought-provoking, inherently compelling, exceptionally well organized and presented, “Nowhere in Place: Where Photography and Meditation Meet” is an especially fascinating volume showcasing the meditative potential of full color photographic imagery — making it a welcome and highly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, college, and university library Contemporary & Contemplative Photography collections.”
—Julie Summers, Midwest Book Review

“Christopher Jordan’s intriguing intersection of photography and meditation takes us on an aesthetic journey across Tuscaloosa, Boulder, and India in Nowhere in Place. Profoundly simple and evocative, this compelling volume stirs our emotions and imagination. Stunning images and philosophical reflections lead us towards a transcendent horizon where each composition of colors, lighting, and design gives us a glimpse into our universal humanity. Seeing familiar scenes through Jordan’s creative lens is mysterious and enchanting. Every reader will be swept away by the magic of Nowhere in Place.
—Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, Chair of the Department and Crawford Family Professor of Religious Studies, Colby College 

“For the contemplative photographer, every moment arrives as a nowhere place of emptiness where the waiting potential of NOW materializes for the curious eye. With his camera and a meditative presence, Christopher Jordan practices photographic wanderings in the fertility of impending gestalts. The images in this stunning book serve as humble visual poetries where lyrical visual elements silently live on walls and streets. Image and artist find each other, dine together on mutual discovery, and then part ways as the wind rises and blows the random leaf along. This collection of photographs is not exclusively the result of “decisive moments” but rather “random discoveries” seen through contemplative eyes. Introspection here blends with observant resonance where inner silence finds its visual corelates on buildings and boulevard surfaces. The gift for us as viewers is that we are literally seeing meditation imagined and materialized in Jordan’s painterly photographs.” 
—Michael A. Franklin, Ph.D./ATR-BC, Professor and former Chair, Naropa University, and author of Art as Contemplative Practice: Expressive Pathways to the Self

A pioneering book on how mindful meditation informs an artist’s visio

Photography and meditation are known to facilitate reflection and introspection. They teach us to see both the outer world and the mysterious landscape within. In Nowhere in Place, photographer Christopher Jordan explores the meeting place between meditation and photography and how this mirroring of outer and inner worlds plays upon both the surface of his consciousness and the sensor of his digital camera.

Before Jordan ventures outside to make pictures, he spends time in quiet meditation. This is an important process of switching gears from the everyday noise of the cluttered mind to a more serene state of awareness. This reset allows Jordan to see the world in fresh ways, appreciating overlooked details that might escape a mind preoccupied with business-as-usual.

The book starts in Tuscaloosa, where Jordan lives. For many, T-town is a place of Southern charms and Alabama football, but, for Jordan, it becomes a visual play of textures, colors, and abstract planes with nary a person in sight. The pictures reveal a placeless solitude within the frame of his camera. The book moves west to Boulder, another college town, where his contemplative eye continues to fix upon unusual shapes, colors, and textures while intersecting with an occasional figure. The book reaches full bloom in India, where the interplay between inner and outer landscapes knows no bounds, as his camera reveals a kaleidoscopic interplay of people, places, and things.

Within each locale, Jordan photographed “nowhere” in particular, because, for him, the photograph becomes a place of its own being: a sanctuary for meditation, a record of what is seen and heard and felt, an opportunity to see a place and an image right now. For Jordan, the photograph is a medium of meditation and transcendence, providing a point of intersection where one recognizes our shared, common humanity.

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