During my studies in the late 70's I started to be self-taught in photography. In 1988 I attended the photography class of Michael Schmidt, Berlin, at the International Summer Academy Salzburg. Since then I have been working as a freelance photographer. Since 1989 I have been in charge of the photography project at the Munich Adult Education Centre, a study program for free photography, lead photo workshops, curate exhibitions and have teaching assignments at photo schools and various educational institutions.
As a photographer I am looking for my own pictures of the unknown and unconscious. I would like to explore unknown images and bring them into associative contexts. I work intuitively and associatively with my unconscious layers. Every found picture should be a surprise, a personal discovery of pictures not yet known to me. I am no longer interested in pictures that I already have in my head, because I already know them and therefore no longer have to photograph them. For me, analogue photography holds the secret of not immediately seeing what's on it and the surprise of accepting the photo as it is, without the immediate possibility of correction, such as in digital photography. Analog photography requires the direct haptic handling of the materials, which I love. If at all, I use digital photography as an instant camera and exclusively for color. I photograph where I am, on the road, diary-like, but often follow my subjects for decades. For 30 years I have been working with self-portraits, literary themes and photo essays. I develop artist's books and book objects using visual language methods. With my pictures, which I show in exhibitions, I work spatially and installatively. The compositions and image combinations are always different and break through project boundaries. Each exhibition has its own face, even if the same images are used. My pictures and picture combinations encourage an associative approach and ask questions, they leave room for pictures in the viewer's head. The viewer is encouraged to immerse himself in his personal associations and to engage in a dialogue with the images and to immerse himself in the world of images.
The artist's book was published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name in the city Galerie Traunstein 2015 in an edition of 50+10a.
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The artist M.J. takes himself as the object of the picture. He is photographer and depicted person, actor and observer at the same time. In a playful working process, he develops his visual investigations of his own person from rapid gestural movements. …. Jochum dissolves the border between subject and object in the photographic action. What emerges as an image is beyond the precise control of the photographer. ... Jochum incorporates the surrounding of found materials in different places into the photographic process. …. He traces intimations and explores the diversity of possibilities and states. ... He himself is part of a comprehensive photographic work, which the artist repeatedly places and changes into new pictorial-language contexts. The pictures deal with life and death and interspaces - sensitive, ruthless, existential. Petra Gerschner
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Term from ethnology; coined by A. van Gennepp, Les rites de passage, Paris, 1909, it refers to rites that accompany the transition into a new phase of life or community. These are mostly actions associated with purification and symbolism of death and resurrection. Birth, sexual maturity / initiation, death and dying rites. Each photograph marks a transition from the moment to the past. Photography itself therefore becomes a kind of rite de passage, a reality lying in front of the camera is transformed into an image reality, something only in the moment. Existence in permanence. As with ceremonial actions (rites), death also plays an essential role in photography (according to R. Barthes, "The Bright Chamber"). The work is conceived as a book and refers associatively to this theme, but is also shown in the form of an exhibition.
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...from the archives of subjective memory a general repertoire is created, reminiscent of pictures from the family's own history. Family pictures are questioned about their memory content and their own past by means of renewed photography (re-photography). Excerpts, blurring and lighting create new images. Material and traces of use become visible, referring to the past and history. Like memories, they show cracks, traces of scratches or blur more or less. The work does not want to reconstruct family history on the basis of pictorial material but remains fragmented like memory and interspersed with other images. Only the pictures reconstruct their own history.
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Flag installation Maria Valeria Bridge - Danube (9-2010) Sturovo/Esztergom SK/H Portraits on flags 32 flags, each 3x2 m + 6 banners; 2x100 m total length Sponsor: Lansche Fahnen HansLansche GmbH, www.lansche-fahnen.de The song title of Simon and Garfunkel. (ca.1970) symbolically refers to connecting and separating, and the conflicts associated with them. This reflects the eventful history of the bridge - of destruction and reconstruction - and the conflict-laden relationship between the states of Hungary and Slovakia. He also refers to the water: the Danube, "the European river", which has been both connecting (trade) and divisive (wars of the 90s, ethnic conflicts from the 15th century until today). The installation of text banners and flags was visible from a distance, but also on the bridge. The portraits were created in an "open air studio" of passers-by. They could pick up their photos for free. The work was created in the artist in residence "Bridge Guard" in Štúrovo - SK.
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