We were lucky to catch up with Jordan Mount recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jordan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

A few years ago at a state fair, a gentleman stationed in a free bible booth asked if he could share with me the seven heavenly virtues from the bible by which he leads his life. They are: humility, charity, chastity, gratitude, temperance, patience, and diligence. After his informational lesson, he continued by asking and proceeding to pray for me, while I stood there fascinated by how compelled people are by religion as a whole. Later I learned that each of these heavenly virtues align with one of the seven deadly sins. I find endless inspiration in the contradictions between the belief of sin and human nature. One in particular that inspired my body of work, Cloverhurst, is the sin of wrath or anger (its opposing virtue being patience). I don’t find anger to be sinful or shameful, I find it to be a necessary component to the make-up of one’s emotional intelligence. Anger, even outside of religious viewpoints, is a commonly deflected emotion, but it is one with power behind it which can lead to change and prevent destruction. During the time I started Cloverhurst I was beginning to untangle the beliefs I had surrounding anger and the feminine rage that was deeply repressed in the roots of my experience growing up and the shame that followed.

While toying with this childhood shame and repressed anger I found myself alone, playing in nature, surrounding myself with green, trying to heal. For me the natural world is at the center of the relationships between the physical, the ephemeral, and the spiritual– all concepts I indulge in contemplation. In the south where I’ve reluctantly found religion to be around every corner, nature is the only place I find to hold spiritual relevance, this “nature” I found solace in although was a secluded sliver of overgrown grass next to the highway.

I was drawn repeatedly to this trail of overgrowth and over time my visits became habitual escapism. This was a place of safety and wonder, somewhere I could explore the facets of shame and rage. It was where the beliefs I didn’t want to carry anymore were scratched from my back and washed away with thick muds.

This is where and what I made Cloverhurst out of, a seductive patch of tall grass, rage found in girlhood, and sweet surrender to the Earth. It is about sanctuary found in the southern overgrowth, a place where prayers don’t go “up,” but are taken down to the soil of the divine Earth– the only real god I know. After I completed the photographs in this body of work, the trail and its connecting field where I, and many of my peers, photographed was stripped away to begin construction for what will eventually be new apartment buildings.

This body of work is not only meaningful to me for these reasons, but also because it is one of the first projects that felt true to me. It is a project where I made creative and personal risks which moved me closer to understanding my creative voice. I had to face an aspect of vulnerability with myself and others during this project, leading to a deeper connection to those around me and to the process of my work. Creatively I was experimenting with a new camera I had never used before and didn’t know much about, but this allowed me to push and play with time and movement, two components I was trying to expand in my work. This caused the identity of my subjects to become increasingly subliminal and directed viewers’ attention to the texture and form presented to them. I found this to leave tone and mood oozing from each photo.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a photographer currently living in Athens, GA who explores themes of place/home, identity, and iconography. Drawing from introspective analysis of my relationship to shame, rage, and longing I create provocative metaphors between fact and fantasy. Illuminating the contradictions I find myself surrounded by. Experimental processes aid my ability to control tone and mood throughout my work, pushing audiences to confront their internal response and presence as viewers.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I am constantly consuming and looking towards all of these for creative stimulation and inspiration, but books definitely hold the highest impact on my creative process. I found my love for photography books while in college. My former professor, Rebecca Nolan, would require a certain number of books as reference when we would begin our research phase of project proposals. She is a huge advocate for photography books and has an amazing personal collection. This led me to spend a lot of time at the library which I continued even when not required because the collection of books was astounding.

“I Am Not this Body,” by Barabara Ess was one of the books I drooled over when I started working on Cloverhurst. Her photographs, her use of pinhole photography, her writing, her career all inspire me to no extent. Her work gave me a lot of courage and expanded what I thought was possible in photography. “The Woman Who Loved Worms,” is a book of poetry by Colette Inez that I came across last year. When I was working on my artist statement for this project I went back to her poem, When I Was Soft as Ferns, which articulated themes also relevant in my project that I couldn’t piece together. Even after I was able to gather my words, I decided to include this poem with my body of work for this reason. Currently, I am reading Mona Eltahawy’s book, “The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls,” for obvious reasons. In a more general sense I enjoy reading a lot of nonfiction and personal narrative work, giving me a beautiful reference to how artists tell stories about themselves while getting a closer look into how they ingest and interpret the world around them.

Photography is often expressed as showing what you cannot describe with words, which is true in the sense that photography has given us a new visual language and vocabulary. But, it is also essential to be able to articulate your concepts, communicate your themes, and vouch for yourself and your art. This is why I find it not only inspiring but extremely important to read– whether it is written works of photographers, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, interviews, etc. Literature not only sparks new ideas; it helps me when it comes to writing and speaking about my own work.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My long-term goal is to be a working artist, which doesn’t have a particularly straight path to success. To me, creating is ingrained in the human experience and I can’t imagine not pursuing it. I’m working to apply to artist residencies and positions that offer a chance to interact with other working artists and creatives. Additionally, I want to be involved in the realm of publishing and the process revolving around making photography and/or art books. This is currently driving my creativity by exploring and creating zines, influencing the way I edit my work, and the different ways I can choose to present it.

Contact Info:

• Website: jordanmount.format.com
• Instagram: jesushatesfunnygirls