Jordan Manley's "A Skier's Journey"

I am thoroughly impressed with Jordan Manley's work. Without exception, his photo and video projects have left me speechless; and while the imagery is breathtaking and the writing elegant, the combination of these two mediums in his "A Skier's Journey" series transcends the limitations of either art.

Manley seems to have the ability to impart a tangible sense of feeling and flavor to a subject and place. Interweaving elements of culture, respect, fear, beauty, and history anchored within timeless and iconic landscapes, Jordan's work places new footprints along the path of the great and creative explorers; a quest to communicate the sublime.

Boldly taking up the mantle of the modern day explorer, Manley Pioneers not only through the proverbial dark areas of the atlas, but to the multicolored soul of the experiences themselves, answering what Susan Casey coined the age-old philosophical quest; to distinguish between beauty and its twisted cousin, the sublime.

“…for the merely pretty to graduate to the sublime, terror was required in the mix.
‘The alps fill the mind with a kind of agreeable horror’ wrote one seventeenth century thinker, summing up the concept. And while humans were capable of creating the lovely, the dramatic, the sad, or the inspiring, only nature could produce the sublime. It was a concept both comforting and disturbing; there are many things out there more powerful than we are.” (The Wave p.62)

And perhaps that is the true common thread. The true masters of the modern medium are not so different that their polar fore-bearers- Shackleton, Amundsen, and Scott. Like these men, the modern creative explorers are pushing new boundaries; wrestling to explore what can only be expressed as the sublime. But what's so unique about Manley's art is the respect-beyond-reverence that he takes to his subjects, be they people, places, cultures or fleeting moments in time.

So well done Mr. Manley; I tip my hat and raise a glass. Keep on pushing, exploring, and inspiring.



For more of Jordan Manley's work, check out his website and blog: http://jordanmanley.com/blog/