Jason Harris

Age: 16 Bronxdale High SchoolTo feel, before you think and understand, is essential to how we change and develop, for better or worse. Some can delude themselves into believing that they are something they aren't, and take comfort in the fog of lies that they have built around themselves. In my case, I never felt like I was myself until I truly began to understand that my idea of being “myself” was really being what others wanted me to be. My artwork is a personal depiction of the human psyche, along with themes of melancholic existentialism that come around the age when people start to either find themselves or become lost, infatuated, or content with their concept of self. I investigate how inhuman objects in our society could be essential to what humanity is itself. Photographer Willy Spiller and manga writer/anime producer Hideaki Anno inspire me to express feelings before thinking of the rationale. Spiller inspired me to create eye-catching yet deep and thought-provoking photographs, while Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–1996) series was the base for what emotions the photos should evoke, how they should be composed, and the importance of the creative confusion that leads us to think. Feelings spill into thinking. Thinking involves feelings to be developed. Understanding oneself involves distancing egocentric feelings as one faces the reality of one’s situation—something one can never escape, no matter how hard they try.


The Outer Soul, 2020
Melancholic Interlude, 2020