Nausea
1990-1992
Remarks on Nausea:
“Nausea—taken from the title of Sartre’s book— is a remarkable body of photographs using the interiors of schools to explore what Jude calls ‘psychic oppression’. Using a highly original visual language, this first show of Jude’s work in Britain includes some of the most intriguing images to emerge from America in recent years.
...Jude appears to be returning to the scene of a crime—peering through windows, doorways, and iron grilles into deserted rooms and corridors. Avoiding sentimentality, Jude trains his camera on the mundane, recalling the banality of humdrum life.
Jude’s photographs have an affinity with William Eggleston’s most vital work. In place of obvious pictorial devices he employs radical framing and narrow focus. With an immaculate eye for colour, he invests, each scene with a tension and unease that brings to mind the films of David Lynch.”
—David Chandler, Senior Curator
The Photographers’ Gallery, London, 1992
“...With this series, Jude returns to the institutions that are part of a shared experience of a large cross-section of American society: public schools. ...Through radical framing, narrow focus and an eye for the connotative quality of color, Jude’s images disorient the viewer and instill a sense of profound tension and unease. His photographs of iron grates, rusty light fixtures and brick walls dwell on the mundane details of his memory like the absent-minded stare of a student who finds it impossible to focus on his lessons. With Nausea, Jude has effectively translated his memories of school—not the faces of his classmates or the events that transpired, but the far more elusive realm of feeling.”
—Michael Read, Friends of Photography “Review”
March 1993
