The work of j.frede has been presented throughout the United States and Europe including such institutions as The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Soundvision Gallery (Portland, OR), Phantom Galleries (Long Beach, CA), Ausland (Berlin, German), Machine Project (Los Angeles), 321 Gallery (NYC), Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley, CA) and more. j.frede continues to work in various mediums in Los Angeles.

Artist Statement:


I feel that with a photograph that is lacking a focal point such as a family member or specific location IE: the destination of the trip, then the photo is something of a placeholder for what was happening in the photographer's life at that moment. [...] Once these photos with no discernable direction have found themselves in a bin at the flea market these ambiguous images and their secret associations with memories are lost forever, or possibly the memories are safe forever like a diary whose ink would expire with its author. Arranging these into new landscapes that have never existed speaks to the stitching together of human behaviour and how we relate to time and the past: How many people have pulled over at that rest stop and taken nearly the same photo of the plain hillside? All locking their own associations into the view, first road trip with a new love; last road trip to see grandma; one of many road trips alone.

Choosing photographs that create a perfect line from one to the next while allowing the colours and contrasts to not play a part in my decision results often in dramatic changes visually in both exposure and colour tones but allows the passage of time to be instantly recognisable from the 1970s to the 1980s to the present. With the black and white versions, the time shifts are far less apparent and act more as documents of the past than the colour pieces. While we tend to identify black and white photos as “the past” with detailed edges that belong to a specific time period (speaking from the view of my generation) the colour ones resonate more out of “our past”.

I never incorporate personal photographs of mine or my families into the project as I want to maintain the concept of these works being monuments to lost memories. My knowledge or association with any photograph used would comprise the integrity of the series and its magic even if I were the only one who knew. I do have memories associated with some of the found photos which feature places I have been and even further I have memories of what was happening in my life at the time each arrangement was being made that span from happiness to anticipation to loneliness. These memories are now a part of the work along with those of the collectors who purchased the pieces and in who’s homes they now hang. Their memories with the Fiction Landscapes will continue the process of the work as they hang in silence and life continues its pace around them."- j.frede (2015).