The particular fascination of photomontage lies in the spaces between images: where pictures meet, leave their original contexts behind and give rise to unexpected new realities. This is precisely what happens in Frozen Features, the new project by American photographer, publisher and artist Jason Fulford, published by Loose Joints.
Fulford fuses time and space, places and memories into a visual waking dream. A tiny coiled leaf meets a vast landscape, a hand floats across a bedspread, traces of civilisation are layered over images of nature. Pictures that originally had nothing to do with one another suddenly begin to speak. The everyday becomes enigmatic, sometimes humorous, sometimes almost mystical.
For nearly three decades, Fulford has explored how meaning emerges between images. Even the title Frozen Features can be read as a play on the very nature of photography: it freezes moments, forms and details – only for Fulford to set them in motion again decades later by removing them from their original contexts.
For Frozen Features, he combines photographs made between 1996 and 2026 in overlapping layers, leaving part of their encounter to chance. The pairings move freely across time, place and scale – almost like a metaphysical slot machine, shuffling memories and producing unexpected combinations. Formal echoes and dry humour run throughout the work, while the detail-rich square compositions develop an almost subliminal tension.
As early as 1942, American photographer Barbara Morgan wrote that modern life itself was photomontage – unrelated things sharing a single instant, much as thoughts and feelings do in our minds. Fulford takes this idea at its word. What interests him is less photomontage as a historical technique than its playful freedom: images are allowed to collide, seduce and unsettle – and to create something that did not exist before.
Designed by Loose Joints Studio, Frozen Features finds its fullest expression in book form: through sequences, unexpected juxtapositions and the productive play of chance.
Jason Fulford, born in the USA in 1973, is a photographer, publisher and educator, a Guggenheim Fellow and co-founder of J&L Books. He has taught at Yale University and served as a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University. His numerous books include The Mushroom Collector, Picture Summer on Kodak Film, The Heart is a Sandwich and Lots Of Lots. Together with Gregory Halpern, he co-edited The Photographer’s Playbook and is also the editor of Photo No-Nos: Meditations on What Not to Photograph.
Frozen Features – Book Launches & Events
To celebrate the launch of Frozen Features, Jason Fulford will be at Anthology Film Archives in New York on 17 September 2026. The evening begins at 7.30 pm with two films exploring the idea of photomontage: Marie Menken’s fast-paced portrait of New York, GO! GO! GO! (1964), followed by a rare screening of John Smith’s SLOW GLASS (1988–91), which uses the art of glassmaking as a starting point for a cinematic exploration of memory and transformation. The book launch follows at 8.30 pm.
New York: Thursday, 17 September 2026 · Films 7.30 pm · Launch 8.30 pm · Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave, New York
Further launches follow in Japan: Osaka on 24 September, 5–7 pm at Blackbird Books, Toyonaka-shi; Morioka on 28 September, 6–8 pm at Booknerd, Morioka-shi; and Tokyo on 1 October, 5–7 pm at POST, Ebisu Minami, Shibuya-ku.
