We are so similar. Even though we can be so culturally different, we have these fundamental human parts of us that you don't even need to speak that language to understand.Jared Lamont
I first meet Jared at the Pleasant Hill Bart Station. He stands out from the stark background of business workers I'm used to seeing with his messy bun and a black hoodie with a big picture of a salmon on the back. He's carrying this old-fashioned beat-up suitcase and when he opens it up, there are hundreds of photographs, images of blue-collar workers, fishing boats, and nature.
He's not charging for these photos but is giving them away.
A few days after our conversation Jared invites me to a photo session he set up in front of the Apple store in downtown Walnut Creek.
“It's an ironic place to do this kind of thing. Yeah. To give something away for free and to be on the street. I don't wanna say performing, but in a way a little bit, you know, just being, not a street vendor,” Jared says. “Cause I'm not selling anything. I'm giving photos away."
He's not trying to generalize about Walnut Creek or people who go to an Apple store because he's an analog guy in a digital world. It's still unusual even today to be doing this.
“I ride my bike to wherever I'm going. I have some kind of canvas or cloth that I lay down on the street where I will set up. It's probably five by nine feet,” Jared says as he explains his setup process.
Jared wasn't always like this. He used to work in tech —typing away at his computer, working long hours, getting lost in the ones and zeros as a coder for PayPal.
But Jared longed to be a photographer and dreamed of taking pictures of the Alaskan backcountry — as far away as you can get from coding in Silicon Valley.
He lived on fishing boats and took pictures of animals, portraits of dock workers and bartenders — people working for a living.
“We are so similar, even though we can be so culturally different, we have these fundamental human parts of us that you don't even need to speak that language to understand. And that was kind of how I got by out there a lot of the time. You know?” Jared says as he recalls his time in Alaska.
He learned how to strip down his images. One picture that stood out to me was of an overhead cabin room dresser with the words “support blue-collar workers” scribbled on it. It was simple and powerful.
“Yeah, the goal is to try to communicate that as best I can,” Jared says.
His time in Alaska made him reflect on his childhood.
“When I was 10 or 11, I can't remember," he says, "my family lost their house. Our cars got repossessed, my parents filed bankruptcy and I didn't see my dad a whole lot after that, and that is equally as important as why I do this stuff because it's just material stuff. It comes, it goes, and it caused a lot of devastation for my family to be in pursuit of all that.”
Jared was drawn back to the Bay Area to care for his ailing mother, but those lessons he learned in Alaska stuck. That's why he takes and gives away photos. Since returning, he's taken a job as a bartender to help with his mother's medical expenses and fund his next photography project.
“I have a goal to make a zine from Alaska with this handmade paper that gives it that weird, timeless feel. I'm going to scan different receipts and random notes that people left from work or documents and that I picked up from Alaska that is essentially trash,” he says.
I wanted to know if his work would keep him in the Bay Area.
“I think it depends on my mom's health and situation. For right now, this is what it is, but I would definitely like to hit the road and take it to another place, and I don't even know, just like get a car for a couple grand and maybe do it across America. I don't know,” he says.
Just pull up and stop until all the photos are gone.
