The Forum 21 | Lucas Blalock

Lucas Blalock’s photographs often look like they’re interrupting themselves.Objects bend out of place. Edits remain visible. Corrections become part of the image instead of disappearing behind it. Rather than using photography to create the illusion of clarity, Lucas uses it to expose the decisions, accidents, and contradictions that make images possible in the first place.In this NewCrits conversation, Lucas sits down with Ajay Kurian for a discussion about photography, discomfort, and what happens when the process becomes part of the final work.The conversation begins with a story Lucas has returned to in recent years: a childhood accident that resulted in reconstructive surgery using his own toe to replace his thumb—a collision of advanced medicine and old-world improvisation that he jokingly describes as “the first bad Photoshop.”Lucas reflects on discovering art through CD covers before museums, studying at Bard, and coming of age as digital tools began changing the medium itself. Instead of treating manipulation as something to conceal, he became interested in making it visible.Again and again, he returns to the same idea: images become more interesting when they stop trying to appear effortless. 00:00 — Intro03:10 — The Disney Accident and “The First Bad Photoshop”09:45 — Origin Stories and Discovering Photography15:30 — Album Covers, Culture, and Looking Before Art20:10 — Studying with Stephen Shore26:00 — Photoshop as a New Problem for Photography31:20 — Signature, Style, and Staying Strange36:15 — Making the Worst Possible Image41:00 — Working for Vik Muniz46:10 — Labor, Accident, and Unfinishedness50:20 — Pictures That Resist Digestion54:15 — Photography, Bodies, and Sensation58:40 — AI, Anxiety, and the Future of Images1:03:00 — Outro Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe