Midwest Materials
Radius Books, 2022
Foreward by Leah Ollman
Stamped across the walls of a commercial building in this volume's titular photograph are the words Midwest Materials, functioning as both external signage and wry internal caption. The words identify what Julie Blackmon works with: place and props; the center of the country, the people and stuff found there. Based in Springfield, Missouri, and part of a large extended family there, Blackmon has used home and the rituals that unfold in backyards, attics, and garages as the raw material for her images for more than fifteen years. Each frame in her ongoing epic is an absorbing, meticulously orchestrated slice of ethnographic theater starring a tribe of scuffed and shirtless nieces, nephews, neighbors, and friends. (read full text)
Homegrown
Radius Books, 2014
Afterword: In Conversation with Reese Witherspoon
REESE WITHERSPOON: As you know I am a huge fan and a collector of your work. I first found your work through a friend who showed me Power of Now and I was immediately intrigued. I love the way you comment on modern parenting. Frequently parents are distracted or not even present. When did you find this theme in your work?
JULIE BLACKMON: It's funny that The Power of Now is the first piece you know of mine. It was selected by Oprah magazine for their "Live Your Best Life" feature a few years ago. I was so excited. But then they called me a few weeks later to tell me they changed their minds. They were afraid their readers would be uncomfortable with how close the baby was to the edge of the pool. First they asked if I could move her back. I said no... and tried to explain I was being ironic-that the baby was there simply to suggest that this mom got so into her book about "living in the moment," that she forgot all about her baby. I don't think they got it. I was just trying to create tension. But that's obviously not what they were after. I don't know when, exactly, that I started playing around with this theme. It just sort of worked its way in a few years back. (read full text)
Domestic Vacations
Radius Books, 2008
Photo.com Review
The Dutch saying "a Jan Steen household" originated in the seventeenth century and has come to refer to a home in disarray, full of rowdy children and boisterous family gatherings. The paintings of Steen, along with those of other Dutch and Flemish genre painters, are the direct inspiration behind the layered domestic scenes of Julie Blackmon's photographic work. Raised as the oldest of nine children, and the mother of three herself, Blackmon takes an approach to her work that is at once autobiographical and fictional. According to Anne Wilkes Tucker of The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Blackmon has "taken a subject that is ripe for cliché--mother photographing children--and through the subtle, digital manipulations, the use of color and highly graphic images, she's given it humor and edge and taken the subject somewhere fresh."