J.D. La Brie -- Art From the Fifth Zone

I was born and raised in San Jose, California, witnessing the uneasy transformation of the orchard-filled Santa Clara Valley into the urban sprawl of Silicon Valley today. Watching countless black & white movies on TV with my Dad (himself an amateur cinematographer), peering for hours into my microscope, and reading countless issues of National Geographic, I think I was unconsciously primed for a life in photography.

When I joined the C.C.C. (California Conservation Corps) at age 18, I bought my first SLR camera, and discovered a whole new way of seeing and remembering my life. Two years later I was a college student, living, studying, and photographing in Nepal for a half a year. Six and a half years ago I bought a one-way ticket to Jakarta, Indonesia and taught English there for three years. After a revolution, evacuation by the Army, and the death of my father I returned to the States. Since then I've been taking care of my family, have written a book, and have found new love.

I was once asked if I "take" pictures or "make" them. The truth is that for the most part I "take" them, in that I work directly from experience. The same can be said about my digital art. Having no preconceived notions about what I'm going to make, my work is more like a snapshot of my unconscious, created in order to understand myself and the world, not on an intellectual level, but on an intuitive level.

You can see more of J.D.'s images at www.zonefivestudios.com