Writes W. Scott Olsen in Frames magazine:
"We have all been there. Hope. Ambition. Dreams. Hard Work. The Moment. And then, disappointment. For whatever reason, sometimes justly and sometimes not, we did not get selected, recognized, rewarded. We didn’t do anything wrong. We simply did not do something right enough.There is nothing tragic in these moments. They are necessary for growing up, for developing humility and empathy, for becoming humane. But that does not mean they are easy. For photographer R. J. Kern, these are moments of compassion and sympathy. Revisited four years later, they are moments of illumination.”
"Kern’s book, The Unchosen Ones, is a collection of compassionate, insightful, beautiful portraits. And the book is made even more striking because of a second look.”
"The images in this book are pairings. And if one image opens a window, the pairing walks us outside. Two insightful images, and the implied/perceived distance between them, make this, frankly, an important book.”
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Thank you, W. Scott Olsen, for your insight and thoughtful words. I’m appreciative we connected last September at Concordia College. Always nice to see interdisciplinary writing and photography talents merge in the photo book world.