THTK (Cincinnati)
“Social Medium” Wave Pool Gallery, Cincinnati, OH
2018
T.H.T.K. (2010 – Present) is an archive of photographs and photo ephemera deemed by public participants as ‘too hard to keep’ and too painful to destroy.
Submissions may include photographs, slides, photo albums, memory cards, unprocessed film, or any image-charged object.
The reason you can’t live with the photo or photo-object I do not need to know…the images are shown without explanation or attribution.
I created a repository for these images so that they may exist without being destroyed. New submissions to the archive are intermittently posted at toohardtokeep.blogspot.com.
Please dictate whether the photographs you submit to the archive may be exhibited in the future with other submissions to the archive, or are private photographs that are only to be displayed face down.
Digital submissions can be sent to , where a confirmation email will ask for the original files to be deleted. Physical submissions can be mailed to:
Jason Lazarus
THTK
212 w. Thomas St
Tampa, FL 33604
THTK (Kansas City)
Part of solo exhibition Don’t close these doors unless you know what you’re doing
Nerman Museum, 2014
from a submission of 86 photographs
a submission of 6 private polaroids
THTK (Liege, Belgium)
Only You, Only Me – Images of Love, Love of the Images
International Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts of Liège (Belgium)
2012
Jason Lazarus: Too Hard to Keep (Syracuse) Light Work, Syracuse University April 4 – May 31, 2013
Essay by Abigail Solomon-Godeau
Jason Lazarus and Chuck Mobley, Editors
Publication Date: September 11, 2013
Limited Edition: 1,000
Hardcover, 64 pages, Shrinkwrapped
In March 2010 Jason Lazarus began to build an archive of photographs deemed “too hard to keep,” a project he says he has committed to for life. To date, submissions have included a variety of photographic materials: photo albums, slide, negatives, jpegs, and photo objects depicting friends, family, pets, interiors, lovers, and landscapes. Lazarus encourages donors to the archive to indicate whether the submission may be exhibited and published or if it is to remain private. Anonymity is maintained with all donors. In its first three years, the archive grew to include more than 3,000 donations. SF Camerawork hosted a drop box to collect donations to forward to Lazarus from October 2010 to March 2013. This monograph represents a selection of more than 50 images from the archive and includes an essay by acclaimed art historian Abigail Solomon-Godeau. THTK (2010—Present) was produced in conjunction with the SF Camerawork exhibition T.H.T.K (San Francisco) (January 16 – March 16, 2013).
Contact Sheet Issue 171: Jason Lazarus
Paperback: 48 pages
Light Work, June 1, 2013
THTK (Dusseldorf, Germany)
The State I Am In
International Photoszene Köln
2016
THTK (Dusseldorf, Germany)
The State I Am In
2016
Jason Lazarus: Working with the Vernacular (38:13)
The Kodakery Podcast, 2017
submission of 59 photographs, November 2019
THTK selected press and bibliography:
NY Times
NPR
Vice
Art21
THTK by Ariana Reines for Granta Magazine
Interview with Shane Lavalette/Lightwork
Daily Mail UK
France Culture
Archive of the Ordinary: Jason Lazarus, Too Hard to Keep by Shawn Michelle Smith, Journal of Visual Culture
KQED Arts
Walker Art Center
Bustle
Juxtapoz
drain magazine
beautiful decay
petapixel
CBS in Philadelphia
Chicago Tribune
La Repubblica
Bad at Sports
