jåste is a photographer
loosely based in Detroit

jaste@MeetsShootsAndLeaves.com

Picking up a camera as a child, jåste never would have imagined where a simple desire to reflect the world would end up. Constantly seeking overlooked and under-appreciated stories has led into the heart of communities ready to be seen in new lights with delirious colors and blunt honesty.



Compiling a parade of individuals perhaps otherwise relegated to marginalia and footnotes, jåste digs into fertile communities teeming with hyperbolic sensibilities juxtaposed with an undercurrent of vulnerability. Marked by vibrant washes of color and considered textures, subjects find themselves immersed in a world both ours and vaguely, discomfortingly not. Leveraging that mental stutter, we’re left to consider how these lush characters consider us and if, to them, we are just as compelling.



With an origin in defocused landscapes mimicking near-sightedness and now splashing into razor-sharp portraits awash in excess, jåste’s arc into ebullience never dips into absurdity but comes across with an easeful use of aesthetic. Ever rooting in the world’s discard bin for new material, the captures intimidatingly incriminate the act of overlooking material as banal or unworthy of serious contemplation. Keenly focused on progressively more hopeful futures, jåste’s vision might just engender a more empathetic well of humanity in us.