Jai Tanju is waging a war against any faction set on destroying his favorite form of expression: film based photography. He’s dug himself in, armed with only his wits, various analog cameras and worldwide support from enthusiast ready to prove digital is not always best.

His blog filmporvida is a nexus for aspiring photographers from all over. Although convention seems to suggest otherwise, Jai has some pretty convincing arguments why film is superior.

He’s not some raving curmudgeon; far from it, Jai is skilled in all forms of photography and visual editing. He’s just a comfortable with a high-end digital camera as he is with a Holga. We recently spoke with him about his art.

When did you get your first camera?

I didn’t get a camera until i was maybe 26 or 27. I was kinda late to the game. My grandpa gave me his Nikon FE2 because his eyesight was going out and he was getting a auto-focus camera.

When and why did you start the Print Exchange?

I started the Print Exchange program six years ago out of sheer boredom. There is a lot of down time to being a skateboard photographer, so I would sit around a lot in my office waiting for checks to come in. I was constantly checking the mail box for that check that never came; so, I started to wonder why I wasn’t getting anything good in the mail anymore.

Someone turned me on to a documentary called “How to draw a bunny” about  a New York artist named Ray Johnson who did the New York correspondence school where he would exchange art with people from around the world. After seeing the film, I noticed a photo pinned to the wall of my office that a friend had sent me a year or so before. So, I took it off the wall and wondered to myself why he hadn’t sent anything to me recently. A light bulb went off in my head at that point…I hadn’t sent him anything back.

I decided to start sending him things and wrote Print Exchange Program on there so he would know to send something back, and he did! From there I got obsessed and started sending photos to everyone I knew, friends, family, artist and other photographers. It caught on quickly and before I knew it I was exchanging with 30 people from around the world. I was sending out 50 to 100 photos a week. After 6 months, I made a zine with everyone’s addresses in it and urged them to send mail between each other. You have to remember, this was a time when everyone wasn’t as connected as we are now, and blogs were just starting. Once I made the filmporvida.blogspot.com it really took off. Now I exchange with 300-500 people and get from 1 to 10 things in the mail everyday.

Photo by Jai Tanju

Do you think your experience as a skateboarder helped your artistic endeavors? How?

Without skateboarding I wouldn’t be who I am today, and I might have never picked up a camera at all. Skateboarding gives you the freedom and confidence to move about this world in an artistic way. It’s hard to explain, but at some point historians will look back and talk about skateboarding and its affect on the world like the impressionist and see that it changed the world as we know it.

How do you see the SJ art scene these days compared to ten years ago?

Well, it seems like a lot more is going on now downtown. The A.D. gallery has done a lot for the city, cultivating a great art scene, but we need more. The bottom line is rent is too high here, and the city needs to do more to make things easier for people to start small businesses.

I have wanted to start a photo gallery for a few years and can’t because the rents are crazy. There are too many unused storefronts downtown, and the people need to put it to the test like they did in L.A. They have to rent out their space or risk losing them. L.A. changed the rule from what we have to the “use it or lose it” and hundreds of galleries and shops opened that same year.

Do they make more money not renting them here? San Jose has a rich art history that always goes in phases form decade to decade. I helped a lady, Katherine Funk, set up and take down shows at the gallery connected to City Hall on 4th Street, and she told me some great stories about the art movement in the late 70s and 80s, and it sounded like chaos in the streets. When I first moved to downtown, I thought we could do anything, but those times seem even crazier.

What were your biggest shows?

The Print Exchange Program show went to New York City then to London and most recently to a great gallery in Salt Lake City. I had three shows at the No.12 Gallery in Tokyo, which I felt good about. I had a show last year in Philadelphia called “Heavy.” I made 140 lbs of metal/photo collages. that was something new for me.

I have done a few shows in San Jose that were by far my favorite. I got to do a show with my best friend Jason Adams at Black and Brown called “beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.” I really felt like we were pushing our boundaries, and that feels great. Jason and I got to do another show this last year at the Empire Seven Studios in Japantown called “Shits getting Heavy so Kill yourself Laughing,” which was my Philly show “Heavy” and his SF show “kill yourself laughing,” which we brought to San Jose for all our friends to see.

Any words of wisdom for aspiring photographers?

If you look through your viewfinder and you don’t see what you want, go find it.

Jai Tanju’s work will be part of Black and Brown‘s 7 year anniversary on March 31st.