Jonah Calinawan: A Million Suns

FotoFest Discovery

It was clear when Jonah Calinawan sat down at my table at FotoFest that his beautifully printed cyanotypes disclosed a personal journey, and also a transcendent one. These images of his figure traveling through a surreal landscape in the deepest blue of the night sky are sublime. The photographs are collaged, yet they are seamless. I believe that he is really carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders or looking into the abyss which happens to have branches like a tree or sleeping on a boat-shaped bed that is moored, but not for long. As a viewer, I feel the moment is near when the character in these pictures is about to become untethered. It is exciting and unsettling at the same time. I find myself yearning for his journey to begin, but the unknown...well, it is the unknown. Thrilling and simultaneously terrifying.

As the artist states, A Million Suns is a story of one man's search for his future. His high-pressure existence comes crashing down one day when he encounters a fissure in the ground. This discovery triggers a chain of events that will send him to the ends of the earth and force him to face what his life may or may not be.

Using images that are collaged, montaged, erased, and drawn on, Calinawan portrays his beliefs in the unlimited variations of the future. Collage is like creating the future-we combine experiences and circumstances and move them around to see what fits and what makes sense. At any point, we may choose to go left or right, turn back or move forward. Each choice alters the trajectory and overall shape of our lives. There is a great mystery here: we are on a journey where there is no map-it is pieced together as we go along. Thus, we become the traveler and cartographer, the origin and the destination.

It is the perfect medium for Calinawan's journey. So many decisions to make in this life, so many struggles, so many options... I sat looking from his small, flawless, dream-like images to this man's face as he was talking about his process and also his labors. I kept thinking, He seems awfully young to be seeming like he's in that third painting (Manhood) of Thomas Cole's series, The Voyage of Life. I finally had to ask, Isn't 23 sort of early to be having this type of crisis? He stared at me for a while and then laughed and told me his real age...which is double. Now, it was all making sense. The urgency of the work and the importance of it as well. Veering off his projected life course could bring him to all sorts of destinations. I then learned as I reached the last print in the box that he has only completed 2 of the 3 sections of his story. I, for one, am keenly waiting for the final chapter to see how the hero's story ends.

If you too are impatient to see how the story is unfolding, Calinawan's work is going to be featured in the upcoming Diffusion Annual VIII magazine from One Twelve Publishing.

Biography

Jonah Calinawan (JO-nah ca-lee-NA-wan) is a photographic artist from the seaport city of Baltimore. People who make meaning out of their disparate lives inspire him. And he is following their lead.

Jonah is an accountant turned artist. He is still figuring out what this means. It all started when he bought his first camera in 2002 and started self-learning photography. In 2008, he attended a photography workshop where the instructor suggested he pursue an MFA degree. His first question was, What's an MFA? After two years of contemplation, he took the plunge and enrolled at the Academy of Art University.

Jonah completed his MFA in 2014 (while working as an accountant full-time). He exhibits his work nationally and internationally, and he is continually amazed at the unintended path that he embarked on. This divided life has changed the trajectory and shape of his life. He metaphorically explores this journey in A Million Suns, an ongoing photographic series that tells the story of one man's search for his future. See more of Jonah's work at www.amillionsuns.com.

Recent & Upcoming News

Jonah's work will be featured in the upcoming Diffusion Annual VIII magazine from One Twelve Publishing. Jonah thanks Blue Mitchell for this opportunity.
Jonah is partnering with local institutions in Baltimore. He had a pop-up exhibition and artist talk of his work with VTDance at the Baltimore Theatre Project in April 2016.

In May, he will be a participating artist in Maryland Science Center's event focused on art, science, and creativity.

Jonah Calinawan - Message in a Bottle II

Cedric Roux: Before Rebirth

By Cedric Roux

Publisher : ODYSSEE

2024 | 96 pages

Empty storefronts dot the downtown, while massive brick tobacco warehouses stretch the length of city blocks—abandoned and awaiting creative reuse. Wilson, North Carolina, feels frozen in the 1970s. Invited by the Eye on Main Street festival, photographer Cedric Roux made several trips to this enigmatic town. For a photographer used to capturing the vibrant energy of New York City streets—his first book, My Wonderland (now sold out), vividly chronicled the bustling metropolis—his initial encounter with Wilson was a profound shock.

Expecting a town in the midst of a vibrant renaissance, Roux wandered Wilson daily, exploring its diverse areas: downtown, affluent suburbs, and struggling neighborhoods. On either side of the railroad tracks that symbolically and socially divide the city, he sought a light that might suggest an emerging revival..

In his latest book, Before Rebirth, Roux captures this sense of disconnection, using his lens to explore a promise not yet realized. With a population of just 47,000, Wilson is a far cry from Manhattan’s 1.5 million. Used to the dense human energy that fuels his photographic style, Roux found himself reimagining his approach. His work took on a more stripped-down, documentary aesthetic, yet it remains deeply rooted in place and retains the distinctive palette and framing that define his vision..

In collaboration with artistic director Jean-Matthieu Gautier, Roux drew from his imagination and visual archives to craft a narrative that stays true to his photographic roots while stepping far beyond his usual realm.

All About Cedric Roux

John Divola: San Fernando Valley

By John Divola

Publisher : Nazraeli Press

2024 | 60 pages

From the publisher: San Fernando Valley is where John Divola was born and raised, and it served as both backdrop and subject for his earliest, serious photographic explorations, made during the early 1970s. This previously unpublished body of work shows “the Valley” through the eyes of a young photographer who would soon become an internationally-recognized artist with the exhibition and publication of his much more conceptual “Zuma” series. The black and white photographs in “San Fernando Valley” comprise a series of subject groupings which, pulled together, show early manifestations of the deadpan humor and the ability to capture everyday scenes wrapped in loneliness, for which Divola is now well-known. The book is also, and not incidentally, a fascinating record of a quintessentially 1970s Los Angeles culture. John Divola’s work is the subject of numerous books and catalogues. Widely exhibited and collected throughout the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia, Divola’s photographs are included in the permanent collections of many public and private institutions, including those of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

All About John Divola

Cig Harvey: Emerald Drifters

By Cig Harvey

Publisher : The Monacelli Press

2025 | 224 pages

Following her celebrated monograph Blue Violet (Monacelli, 2021), photographer Cig Harvey continues her personal study of sensory experience, focusing on the ephemeral nature of light, pigment, and vision. Her latest photographs are lush tableaux of her signature subjects – flora, cakes, domestic interiors, and the human figure in landscape – accompanied by prose vignettes on the science and art of color, written in her vibrant, intimate style. Featuring an afterword by award-winning novelist and poet Ocean Vuong, Emerald Drifters is a catalogue of pleasures and heartbreaks, and ‘an urgent call to live.’

All About Cig Harvey

Helmut Newton. Berlin, Berlin

By Helmut Newton

Publisher : Taschen

2025 | 244 pages

Born in Berlin in 1920, Helmut Newton trained as a teenager with legendary photographer Yva, following her lead into the enticing pastures of fashion, portraiture and nudes. Forced to flee the Nazis aged only 18, Newton never left Berlin behind. After his career exploded in Paris in the 1960s, he returned regularly to shoot for magazines like Constanze, Adam, Vogue, Condé Nast's Traveler, ZEITmagazin, Männer Vogue, Max and the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin as well as his own magazine Helmut Newton’s Illustrated. In 1979, the newly relaunched German Vogue commissioned him to retrace the footsteps of his youth to capture the fashion moment. The resulting portfolio, Berlin, Berlin!, inspired the title of the exhibition which celebrates 20 years of the Helmut Newton Foundation. This collection includes Newton’s most iconic Berlin images, as well as many unknown shots from the 1930s to the 2000s: nightcrawlers in uber-cool clubs and restaurants, nude portraits in the boarding houses he knew from his youth, and the Berlin film scene, featuring Hanna Schygulla and Wim Wenders at the Berlin Wall, John Malkovich and David Bowie. In October 2003, only months before his death, Newton moved large parts of his archive to his new foundation, housed in the Museum of Photography beside the Zoologischer Garten station―the very station from which he fled Berlin in the winter of 1938. This publication thus closes a circle in the story of his extraordinary life and work.

Jonah Calinawan: A Million Suns

FotoFest Discovery

Jonah Calinawan

Selected Books