“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention,” economist and computer scientist Herbert Simon warned in 1971. In our era of digital overload, it feels increasingly urgent—ironically—to remember to slow down. Too often we’re distracted by one thing or the next, looking down at our screens or paying attention to our surroundings just briefly enough to snap a photo before moving on. Jonathan Knight is captivated instead by the quiet moments, the beauty in stillness, and the gentle, gradual changes around us that take time to fully appreciate.
Known for his ethereal, minimalist images, Knight conceived of Exhale as a way to explore the nuances of color and “the emotional experience of looking,” he says in a statement. On one hand, the photos are of water, but it may be more apt to describe them as portraits of atmosphere. Clear skies brimming with stars complement foggy mornings and a billowing release of rain from a heavy cloud.
“The project grew out of my background in both photojournalism and landscape architecture, and from thinking about how we experience landscapes differently when we stop trying to document them and simply spend time with them,” Knight says. He adds:
There is also a technological tension at the heart of the work. We now live in a culture of instantaneous image-making, computational photography, AI-generated imagery, and endless visual consumption. Yet I’m deliberately using technology to do almost the opposite: to slow the photographic process down and make images that resist immediate consumption.
There is a sense of restraint in these images, where a lack of “flashiness” and few defining events lend a sense of the mundane. This is an invitation: through long exposure, both photographically and in the act of looking itself, Exhale invites us to practice noticing.
See more on Knight’s Instagram.
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