Connection to Place
Featuring Jake Reinhart Words by Nastasia Khmelnitski
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The intrinsic relation of the person to the land, the history of the place, and culture are some of the themes Jake Reinhart explores with his work. A deep understanding of the heritage, the place, and the surroundings leaves a mark and shapes the identity in a way that informs the decisions and the quality of life lived. Jake's love for the region and its influence on his career as a photographer is expressed through his words, “That’s what keeps me so engaged. That’s why I keep finding inspiration here.” The common ground between people is in the way they perceive and interpret the visual elements and the sensations that arise from the experience of pausing and pondering on an image. Emotions emerge from the linking elements to their life and knowledge gained, hinting at some connecting dots between the photographer and the viewer. The care and love that shine through Jake’s images allow one to reflect on the personal tie to the people and places unfamiliar to the viewer.
Jake Reinhart is an American photographer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Jake has a B.A. in Sociology and a Juris Doctor from the University of Pittsburgh. In this interview, we speak with Jake about the formation of identity that is based on the connection to the place and people, the choices that lead, at times, in an uncanny manner, to shifts in career paths, and the love and passion to punk and metal genres and skateboard scene. We discuss the book Laurel Mountain Laurel (2021), which was published by Deadbeat Club Press, and the effect personal connection to the place has on the narrative that will be created as the work on the project unfolds. As Jake explains, “Connection to place is what generates the creative momentum in my work. It’s the chorus that I return to. It’s how I tie concepts together. It’s where I start pretty much any photographic project.” When discussing the project Where The Land Gives Way, Jake addresses the underlying connection between the sense of familiarity and the feelings of nostalgia the viewer gets when interpreting the images through their experiences. We close our conversation looking forward to the upcoming projects Jake is engaged in at the moment, such as the collaboration with Clare Welsh, a writer, photographer, and musician from Pittsburgh who is also interested in the history of the region.
‘If you imagine an awkward teen spending his free time skating on crusty pavement and riding the bus through Pittsburgh’s declining industrial landscape, all while listening to the dissonant, heavy riffs of Nirvana and Black Sabbath, you get a pretty good picture of my experience and earliest influences.’
My Story
Hi Jake, so nice to speak with you for WÜL! Let’s start by discussing the connection between your choice to study towards a B.A. in Sociology, graduating as a Juris Doctor, working at a law firm, punk, metal, and grunge music (Nirvana albums), skateboard culture, which eventually led to a professional interest in photography — as you speak about in the Nearest Truth podcast. How did this experience of studies and your love of music help you to form your interest in the region you grew up in, the portraiture and curiosity about people in the region, and a desire to create change in society?
Hi Nastasia, it’s great to meet you! Thanks for this opportunity to talk with and to present my work so extensively.
To understand how my photographic practice relates to my motivation to study Sociology and ultimately the decision to pursue a Juris Doctor, I guess we have to start with the years right around my adolescence. That’s kind of when the lights came on for me, in terms of creative and critical thinking. We’re talking pre-internet early 1990s.
My portal into the subcultures you’ve mentioned was through Thrasher magazine. At that time, reading Thrasher felt like an act of rebellion, and it inspired me to scrounge up enough cash through doing chores and whatnot to piece together enough money for a skateboard. As a scrawny, sensitive kid who didn’t really fit into playing team sports, devoting my time to learning how to skate made me feel better about myself. It was an alternative influence and it gave me something to identify with. It started me down the path to other DIY subcultures.
Right around that same time that I started skating and reading Thrasher, my parents moved from the rural town we were living in, about 30 miles outside of Pittsburgh, back to the city, to a neighborhood named Brentwood. That move gave me access to parking lots, loading docks, typical skate spots, and more importantly access to city buses. Not too long after that move, Nirvana released Nevermind. I had turned 12 years old and had entered middle school with this burgeoning identity as a skate rat, just as Smells Like Teen Spirit hit MTV. It was a really powerful thing to witness at a pivotal time in the development of how I would come to see myself and the world around me.
Think about these periods of transition we all go through. Those early adolescent years are hard to navigate. You’re shedding your childhood naïveté, and starting to really understand how cruel people can really be to one another, and perhaps just how inequitable the world is or how unfair life can be. During the time I was experiencing that period of growth and awakening, Pittsburgh’s Steel Industry was gasping for its last breaths. My father’s generation was the last to have any real opportunity to work in the Steel Industry, and most of those who did, have been laid off within recent memory so that wound hadn’t really started to heal. While the economic downturn of Pittsburgh’s Steel Industry started in the late 60s, and greatly unraveled throughout the 70s, that decline persisted into the late 90s. Even though there are still a few active steel mills in the Pittsburgh area, running at a fraction of what they once did, the ecological and cultural effects of the boom and bust will continue to reverberate through this region for a very long time. Three generations of my family worked in Pittsburgh’s steel mills. So, I’m very aware of the stress that the economic and industrial transition has on communities and families like mine.
If you imagine an awkward teen spending his free time skating on crusty pavement and riding the bus through Pittsburgh’s declining industrial landscape, all while listening to the dissonant, heavy riffs of Nirvana and Black Sabbath, you get a pretty good picture of my experience and earliest influences. While this probably paints a gloomy picture in your mind, I don’t think of my childhood or adolescence as a depressing one. I was kind of a feral child. My parents worked opposite shifts. My mother worked during the day, my father worked at night. I’m the youngest of three, and by the time my parents moved to Brentwood, my brother and sister had moved out of the house. So, I spent a lot of time on my own, exploring my surroundings. My curiosity and appreciation for this region is a positive reaction to what initially was teenage boredom.
Nirvana’s influence on me is what led me to punk rock. I don’t know if you’ve ever read the liner notes to Incesticide that came in the 90s pressings of the CD. The liner notes contain a letter that Kurt Cobain had written as he was dealing with newfound fame and the meteoric success of Nevermind. In that letter, he speaks about records with DIY xeroxed record sleeves and mentions so many amazing bands and artists. He speaks out against homophobia, misogyny, racism, and general conformity. He does so, in a way that expresses humor, humility, and integrity. I can’t overstate how influential it was on me to be exposed to ideas and art like that while navigating those awkward years. Thrasher was my portal to skateboarding, but the liner notes to Incesticide were my gateway to all of the good things associated with punk.
Not too long after Kurt Cobain died, my neighborhood made national news. The local police department killed a black man during a traffic stop. His name was Jonny Gammage, and he was strangled to death similar to the murder of George Floyd. The violence and inhumanity of that act served as another catalyst during my teenage years. By that time I had already been playing the guitar for a few years and had started attending basement shows. It was during those years (1994 - 1997) that I was exposed to the politically charged music of local punk bands such as Aus-Rotten. I remember feeling a sense of urgency. I couldn’t just ignore conversations about police violence and racism. These topics were on the news, they were present in the art that I was consuming. My family was living in a tiny duplex, and the father of the family next door was a Brentwood Police Officer. This larger conversation was at my front door in more ways than one. This is what inspired me to study Sociology. I wanted to make sense of these failings of our society. I wanted to understand how I could contribute in a positive way, or if that was even possible.
Through that period in my life, I continued to play music as my main method of creative expression. I booked DIY shows for a while and also started attending the University of Pittsburgh. I got a job at the University’s Library, shelving books and running packages across campus. The guy in charge of the book stacks didn’t care that I had a mohawk, or that he’d sometimes catch me crashing out in a chair in the stacks, after having played a show the night before. I was 18, but still living with my folks, and commuting to classes. I wanted to move out, so I needed to find a job that paid a little more. I ended up getting a job, initially as a courier for a law firm. Quickly, that grew into more responsibilities as a file clerk, making sure legal documents and motions were filed with the court offices and judicial staff. I ended up moving out of my folks' house and got an apartment with a dude I had met through the local punk scene. He was charismatic and we had played in a few bands together, but after living with him for a brief period of time it became apparent that he was a downright vile creep that could hide his abusive behavior behind his fun guy persona. I tried to tell people the dude was a creep, but since he was fun to party with, a lot of people I considered friends at the time looked the other way. I couldn’t stand it and had to get out of that situation.
So, I cut ties. At the time, it was jarring, it made me disillusioned, and it was humbling and confusing. I swallowed my pride and moved back in with my folks, but managed to keep the job working at the law firm. I liked the people I was working for. They treated me with more respect than any other shitty job I had before that. About 20 lawyers worked there, and I had to work with most of them directly. So, I got to talk to them individually about their different backgrounds and education. I had interesting conversations nearly every day at work. Through these various discussions and debates, I felt encouraged to go to law school. Which was something I wouldn’t have ever considered otherwise. Since I was dealing with disillusionment from the punk scene, deciding to go to law school felt like a 'fuck you' to the people who I had felt betrayed by. It felt like another alternative. The irony of going to law school as a reaction to the conformity of the punk scene is something I’ve been making sense of ever since.
While I was in law school, I got the opportunity to join another band with some guys who were a few years older than me. They all had similar experiences with skating and punk rock, but were more aligned with the Dischord Records vein of punk than, say, the street/crust punk stuff that I was burnt out on. I was really excited to play music with them. Over a short period of time, we went through some line-up changes but eventually settled in. The band was called Voice In The Wire, and we signed a recording contract with Eyeball Records in the early 2000s and ended up being friends and label mates with bands like Murder By Death, My Chemical Romance, and Thursday.
My experience with Eyeball Records is a highlight within my artistic practice. Spending time around Alex Saavedra and Marc Debiak was really inspiring. The record label was run out of this house in New Jersey, and my band would stay there anytime we were in the area. Some of my fondest memories are the ones of just hanging out at the Eyeball house with Gerard and Frankie from MCR or Adam and Sarah from Murder By Death. There was a creative energy there that was really palpable and exciting. The energy that Alex and Marc fostered was a catalyst for so much momentum. I feel lucky to have been exposed to that.
‘My student loans came due and I was struggling even to make enough money for rent. I tried to put it off for a while, but ultimately I had to make the decision to quit the band. Which wasn’t an easy decision. It felt like a failure, to be honest.’
After I graduated from Law School, I toured with Voice in the Wire for a little while and took a camera along with me. Eventually, my student loans came due and I was struggling even to make enough money for rent. I tried to put it off for a while, but ultimately I had to make the decision to quit the band. Which wasn’t an easy decision. It felt like a failure, to be honest. Unlike my experiences as a file clerk the years before I went to law school, I was now struggling to find steady work practicing law. Thankfully that came to pass and I ended up practicing as a trial attorney for a few years. I was building a good reputation around the courthouse and got to work with some really brilliant and progressive attorneys, but it ate up all of my time and left me too exhausted to pursue any creative outlet.
Art is why I became politically conscious in the first place. It’s the underlying influence for why I have the education that I do. So, not having the time to make music or other creative outlets, was depressing and stressful. It was killing me. I made a career shift which provided me with a better work/life balance. That’s when I decided to put my energy into photography. I didn’t have any expectations that it would lead to where it has.
To put it into perspective I was 30 years old, shooting with a hand-me-down Minolta SRT, and had no exposure to the photographers who inspire me today. I didn’t know about the world of photobooks or any of this. I simply wanted to make photos that made me feel something. I didn’t know where it would lead. I started by learning about the photographers that I had spent all those formative years looking at in skate magazines and fanzines. This snowballed into making my zines, which made me want to make more informed photos and get better at the craft. Visual literacy, understanding of the history of the medium, the desire to just get better at the craft, all of that ties back into looking back upon my earliest creative inspirations. Photography gave me a reason to apply those influences in a way that allows me to thoroughly consider the space I occupy, the environment around me, and the experiences that have shaped my perspective.
‘When you’re looking at photographs, you’re translating them. You’re filtering the photographer’s point of view through your own inherent biases.’
Laurel Mountain Laurel
The project and what turned into a beautiful photo book, Laurel Mountain Laurel, takes the viewer on a journey through inhabited areas, meeting some of the characters, to picturesque landscapes and abandoned places. What is striking is how emotionally charged the images are and the emphasis on life that emerges from viewing the images. Life comes as a powerful source of everything around us that propels the present into the future but also connects to the past. A life that through your work shows that it exists even in abandoned places, houses, and spots in nature long forgotten about. In what way does your connection to a place drive the creation of the narrative and affect the printed version in the form of the book?
Connection to place is what generates the creative momentum in my work. It’s the chorus that I return to. It’s how I tie concepts together. It’s where I start pretty much any photographic project. The narrative of the work and underlying theoretical threads develop through the course of shooting, editing, researching, and sequencing. I strive to make deeply informed work, but more importantly, it needs to be accessible first. Connection to place helps make the work accessible because a photo can be read as simply a document of a landmark or location. The deeper read and emotional connection are harder to convey, but that’s what I believe elevates a photograph and turns it into artistic expression.
At it’s most obscure in Laurel Mountain Laurel, I’m pondering the theoretical qualities of photographs. A photograph can provide you with exacting detail of the visually observable aspects of its subject and yet still tell you nothing about the photographer's intentions, absent other contextual cues. This imperfect quality of photographs is fascinating to me. It’s a paradox in some ways. When you’re looking at photographs, you’re translating them. You’re filtering the photographer’s point of view through your own inherent biases. I express this in the body of work by photographing billboards, graffiti, and broken and erased text, as a visual metaphor for the act of visual interpretation or even mistranslation. The back and forth between suggestion and translation is one of the reasons why photos are so easily adapted to poetic narrative storytelling. I think my connection to the place helps guide me in deciding what to photograph. Connection to place also helps in the sequencing the selection of the photos to use when compiling a body of work. Which in turn, influences the pacing of the photographs in the form of the book. All of these elements combine and build visual context and subconscious hints, which help to convey the emotional charge that you mentioned.
When I first started making photos for Laurel Mountain Laurel, I didn’t start with the conceptual theme that is outlined in my artist statement. The inspiration for the project initially came from a thru-hike that my wife and I completed in 2017, of the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail. It’s a 70-mile backpacking trail that runs along the Laurel Ridge of Southwestern PA. The hike took us 6 days / 5 nights to complete. When you’re carrying all of your supplies on your back, and you’re hiking through the woods, filtering water, doing all of that; it gives you a lot of time to think about your surroundings.
When we finished the thru-hike, I knew I wanted to make photos of the Youghiogheny River (Yawk-uh-gain-ee), because it would give us more reason to camp and hike around the watershed. I also knew I wanted to research both the industrial and the indigenous history specific to the Youghiogheny watershed because it would deepen my appreciation for the area while we were hiking around. I figured I could rely on early childhood memories of the area, recent experiences, and friendships I developed over time to balance out the research and academic influences. So, connection to place was the foundation for the work from the outset, but the nuances took time to tease out and develop. I worked on that project for nearly five years.
‘Experiencing something familiar through a piece of art, music, or literature encourages you to interpret the piece through your personal experiences, which opens the door to a new or deeper understanding.’
Where the Land Gives Way
Going back to a familiar place that brings pictures of childhood back to memory and triggers nostalgia is special in a way that it is personal but also relates to the common knowledge of the place by the community that resides there. The relationship between the person and the place, between the present and the past, and the connection to change that happens on the personal level and also affects the surroundings is one of the motifs I see in your work. A place that is home to one might be unfamiliar to another person. How does photography help to address nostalgia and build a new understanding of the familiar place and people living there?
I kind of consider Where The Land Gives Way, as a photographic demo tape. I was working on the techniques that I would eventually use to make Laurel Mountain Laurel. I was learning how to convey an understated emotional essence through photographs. Actually, I’m still working on that aspect of this medium, but Where The Land Gives Way is where these things first crystallized into something that I think was palpable to other people.
The feelings of nostalgia stem from how I was personally feeling at the time. I was frustrated by my day job. Friends that I spent a lot of time with, people who inspired me, were moving away from Pittsburgh. I was anxious that I might lose touch with people that I loved. I used photography as a positive outlet for these feelings and embraced nostalgia as the antidote to the general melancholy that I was experiencing.
It’s been said before that photography is a time-based medium, and to a certain extent this is true. The passage of time, however brief or long, has a direct impact on the way in which a person or place is articulated in a photograph. The passage of time also influences our interpretations of photographs. This is true for family photos, snapshots, historical documentation, fine art, etc. You don’t need to be versed in the history of the medium, or visually literate on a deep level, to appreciate the effect that time has on photography. Nostalgia is another way that we translate and make sense of the passage of time. Who hasn’t experienced feelings of nostalgia before? I think it’s a very common and relatable feeling.
So, when you ask about the way in which photography helps to address nostalgia and build new understandings of places and people, I think it’s the underlying relatability of that feeling that helps to span that gap between the familiar and the unfamiliar. I think that someone who’s never been to Pittsburgh, could look at Where The Land Gives Way, and recognize the familiar emotions being expressed even if they don’t recognize the people or places that I’ve photographed. Experiencing something familiar through a piece of art, music, or literature encourages you to interpret the piece through your personal experiences, which opens the door to a new or deeper understanding.
The Theme
With your photography, you research the questions of places that people inhabit. Your background and connection to a place also have an important role in peeling off the layers of perception to reach something deeper. The concept of ‘change’ that occurs due to time passing and the effect it has on the place or people comes to mind when looking at the images. What effect did your hometown have on you, on the formation of your identity, and on the interest you developed later on through your photography projects?
Pittsburgh, Southwestern Pennsylvania, this region in the United States where the Rust Belt overlaps with Appalachia, has had a profound effect on my identity and my appreciation for photography. Growing up in a place that is economically depressed and frequently misperceived, cultivates some complicated feelings. It promotes embracing the underdog and yet can encourage fatalism. Emotions that can be co-opted and manipulated. So this environment fosters a guarded pride, but there is also a down-to-earth generosity. The history of this region makes you realize that you better appreciate the good times when you can because they won’t last forever. So that promotes humility but also nurtures nostalgia. Pittsburgh and this region as a whole have a complicated history that is as fascinating and inspiring as it is problematic.
I love it here. The hills and valleys, the way the rivers cut up the landscape, all create this patchwork of neighborhoods, staircases, and bridges. I find it to be really photogenic, and I’m proud of the deep connection and family roots I have here. Yet I also recognize that the landscape creates division and segregation, physically and culturally. This can be a tough place to live in, especially for members of vulnerable or disenfranchised communities. Hell the overcast skies alone, especially in the winter, can cause you to question your circumstances. Personally, I try to look for the things that I can be grateful for; which means recognizing the privileges that I have; but to fully appreciate how the environment around you has shaped your identity you also have to acknowledge the failings of its structures culturally, economically, environmentally, politically. It’s the totality of all of these factors that shape who you are.
There is a reason that so many revered photographers travel to Pittsburgh and its surroundings. There are many vantage points from which you look at this place, literally and figuratively speaking. It’s multifaceted. Pittsburgh, and the region as a whole, has served as a representation of so many themes within American society that I believe you can also interpret as a comment on the human experience in general. That’s what keeps me so engaged. That’s why I keep finding inspiration here.
‘I’ve been thinking about how to express instability and confusion without excluding the glimmer of hope that is inherent to humanity.’
Upcoming Projects
What theme or narrative are you researching, and what can we expect from you in the upcoming months?
I have a few things that I’m working on right now.
Within the next few months, I’ll have another iteration of my folio print series which are available for sale through my website. Last year I started making handmade folios in my studio. I wanted to focus on the importance of a single image, while also considering the textures, materials, and tangible aspects of photographic prints. I cut the book board to size, wrapped and bound the folio with Japanese Bookcloth, and glued and assembled each one by hand. Each folio has an 8”x10”, signed and numbered print inside. The prints are limited to an edition of 15. They’re designed in a way that the print can be exhibited simply by turning the folio inside out.
If you were inclined to frame the print, the title card, colophon, and print are all tipped in. So, the folio is easy to dissemble to provide you with all of the elements you’d need for archival framing. I started making these folios because I didn’t want to rush right back into crafting a narrative. I was also contemplating what gives a photographic print its significance as an art object.
Over the years I’ve built a humble collection of prints from some of my favorite photographers. Every time I purchase a print I have the intention to frame it and hang it, but what usually happens is that I store the print with others in my studio. Because of this, I don’t get to look at those photos as frequently as the photobooks in my collection. So, I started experimenting with folios, because they can be stored on a shelf in the same way a photobook can. Therefore, you’re more likely to pull it off the shelf and admire the print.
I’ve also recently started sharing ideas and works in progress with another artist from Pittsburgh, named Clare Welsh. She’s a writer, photographer, and musician; who has a similar fascination with the history and culture of Southwestern Pennsylvania. I really appreciate her deep understanding of the folklore of this region, and the way her writing combines the macabre with personal anecdotes and social critique. During studio visits, we've been discussing landscapes and still-life photos that I’ve made, and talking about the written pieces she has shared in return. It’s the beginning of a collaboration; and is really just in the initial sketches of what might come. I’m interested in seeing how I can loosen my grasp to blur the lines between fiction, fine art documentary work, and perhaps abstraction.
I still have a collaborative body of work in draft which was made with my close friend, Ian Kline. The photos are centered around the energy and environment of a local demolition derby that we attended pretty much every other week for an entire summer. The demo derby has been happening since the 1970s and has a lot of community traditions associated with it. It gets wild on derby night. We made the work prior to the pandemic, and it’s remained on pause since then. One day we’ll dust that off and revisit the work when the time is right.
All of these things are extensions of the main body of work that I’ve been focused on, which builds on the thematic basis I’ve already established through Where The Land Gives Way and Laurel Mountain Laurel. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how to express instability and confusion without excluding the glimmer of hope that is inherent to humanity. I’m trying to make sense of the volatile political and cultural environment here in the United States. I have a body of work that I’ve been sequencing and editing. It’s not quite ready yet, I’d like to incorporate more portraiture. So, we’ll see how that develops over the next year.
