A dystopian world run by children in the exhibition 'Metaverse'

How Blackmon fell in love with 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings:

“Most photographers are looking to other photographers to inspire them, and I had had years of that, shooting black and white. But I went to switch to color, and I just was looking at, ‘Okay, what other angle could I come at this from?'” Blackmon recalled. “When I saw the Dutch and Flemish paintings, Jan Steen among them, I was just completely enraptured. Just the everyday moments, the vantage points, the quality of life, and just these ordinary domestic scenes, how even though they were nearly 400 years old, they seemed current and contemporary actually in some ways – just the humor and the chaos and the moments.”

“I saw it as it related to my life, and having young kids at the time and often feeling overwhelmed. And a lot of those scenes were just kind of crazy and funny, and they also seemed metaphorical, not just for me as a person and as a mother, but just on the bigger sense of, just, life… Like, wow, if I look at it from this angle, just the social commentary that could unfold from that perspective. So even though I was a photographer, I started thinking, ‘Okay, how can I do my own version of these paintings?”

On fantastical, metaphorical photography:

“I started getting this work… and I got one piece, it was called ‘Nail Polish,’ and it didn’t look like a real environment. It was kind of that fantastical take on real life, where this little girl was painting her nails and her mom was in the other room on the phone. And it just got me thinking, ‘Why does it have to look exactly like real life? Why can’t it be a fantastical take on it?’ ….Sometimes, we all know this about writing, that fiction can tell the truth more than the truth itself. But it’s kind of a stretch to do that with photography, just because what people want to think of photography, and the history of photography, it hasn’t lent itself to that. But photography’s just a medium.”

Blackmon added, “As much as this work is about childhood and kids – I can’t deny that it isn’t – but it’s also sometimes the absence of the adults in these crazy and chaotic scenes, with kids doing dangerous things, that are really just metaphorical for the stress that we are all feeling in today’s world.”

Meditations on the meaning of “metaverse:”

“My daughter’s boyfriend brought over an Oculus when my sisters and I were sitting around one night. It was probably early March, and we just hadn’t seen it before. So we all took our turn, and it was hilarious with us just watching each other with our hands like we’re shaking people’s hands and giving them high-fives,” recounted Blackmon. “It’s like, oh my God, as funny as it was, it still just seemed like… this is the apparatus that just defines where we are right now, with everyone in a different reality… Then there was something about the word ‘metaverse,’ almost musical, and that’s where the piano figured in.”

Julie Blackmon’s photography exhibition “Metaverse” is now on view at Jackson Fine Art through July 23. More information is available at www.jacksonfineart.com/exhibitions/225-julie-blackmon-metaverse/.