A lineup of people, such as Tim DeLaughter of Polyphonic Spree and Tripping Daisy, art curator and Observer contributor Scott Tucker and D Magazine editor Tim Rogers, rotates on the set within about 15 minutes of each other.
For the day, the space allows us to step inside the mind of photographer Jason Janik, who organized the day's proceedings as part of his NTX100 project. Part maximalist art installation, part anthropological preservation, NTX100 sets out to document the faces and voices of 100 North Texans, aged 1-100, as they step in front of Janik’s lens to share a piece of their life’s story.
Though the roster of subjects we observed is a bit more curated, Janik’s concept also hosts open shooting calls at various locations around North Texas, connecting the dots between hundreds of slices of life.
“The goal is for somebody 100 years from now to be able to see this, hear some stories and recognize that they’re not so different from what we were,” Janik says. “And the goal is that when this project is finished by the end of the year, for people right now to look at it and say, ‘these people aren’t so different than I am.’”
Janik has long been an institution in the Dallas art community, shooting photos of just every band that’s come in or out of the city. These days, he still finds himself behind the barricades at shows, in between recordings of his North Texas Music Fanatics podcast (NTXMF) and one-off art projects, like dousing Bowling For Soup frontman Jaret Reddick in shaving cream to recreate a 1960s album cover.
NTX100 has been a particularly focused muse for Janik this year, as he recruited the help of videographer Jason Whitbeck and production work from Brandi Beakley and Anthony Delabano. If all goes to plan, the project will continue shooting through the end of the calendar year before displaying the work in a gallery or series of galleries in 2026.
“The idea is that 100 prints will be shown, and as people look at that print, they can use a QR code to pull up the video corresponding with that person,” he says. “Then they can actually watch and hear that person, so you get more than just looking at a picture.”
Those videos would feature the responses to a series of loosely tailored questions that Janik asks off-camera to his subjects, often revolving around their life’s most impactful memories or ways that their environment in North Texas has specifically altered their upbringing.
The first official open call shoot was at the Kettle Art Gallery in Deep Ellum, followed by another earlier this week at Rubber Gloves in Denton. Janik says that he’s aiming for about five open calls, and plans to spread them out between Dallas suburbs like McKinney, Garland and potentially another in Denton. There will be local shoots in Dallas proper as well, tentatively planned to be hosted at the Kessler Theater in Oak Cliff.
Want to tell your story? Janik points to the official NTX100 Instagram account as the hub for shoot announcements and all further updates, which are set to roll out all the way through the end of the year. It’s an exciting art project, albeit one that’s about as ambitious as it gets. If Janik is able to effectively weave a kaleidoscopic tapestry of North Texas life in 2025, it’ll be a beautiful achievement for our contemporary and future generations. Until then, his work remains a breath of fresh air to all who pass through it.
“Right now, there’s so much division in the world and even in our local community here,” Janik says. “To see people responding so positively to this tells me that we’re doing something right.”
