PREVIEW
GUIDE TO GALLERIES + MUSEUMS
Gerry Schallié
Third Avenue Gallery
November 14 - December 12 (1998)
Before Christopher Columbus + pan paxil
In his fifth exhibit of exquisite black-and-white photographs that evoke what Octavio Paz called "the hallucinatory and circular" nature of Mayan history, Vancouver photographer Gerry Schallié presents two new thematic groups. Originally a photojournalist, Schallié imbues these documentary photographs of the remains of pre-Columbian Mesoamérica with a depth of immediacy and strong presence.
His ongoing title, "pan paxil" or broken place, refers to the mythological site of human origin in the Mayan book of creation. The title ironically makes reference to both the sacredness of the legendary site and the current dilapidated state of the existing ruins. One group of photographs captures the ecological naturalization and decay of ancient man-made sites in Central America, while the other metaphorically represents the human drama and cosmology of this formidable culture.
Schallié's infrared film was subjected to split-filter printing and the prints bathed in gold and selenium toning solutions. The details of the carved and natural rock surfaces and the moody, theatrical stage setting-like presence of their pastoral environments are reminiscent of daguerrotypes from the 1840s or antique stereo photographs. However, they are exquisite to the point of visual agony and lush with a poignant spirituality. They recall a formidability as powerful as any reconstructed culture might.
"Mayan history is by nature at once hallucinatory and circular." So writes Nobel laureate Octavio Paz. And so quotes Vancouver photographer Gerry Schallié in the statement that accompanies his current exhibition... In black-and-white photographs of immense beauty and mystery, he has documented some 49 archaeological sites in four Mesoamérican countries, which he's visited during the past seven years.
Some sites are in national parks and others are on private land. Schallié describes visiting a small cluster of ruins in a farmer's field and pressing through a crowd of dogs, ducks, turkeys, and geese to get to it... Although documenting archaeological sites in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras is a passion and obsession with him, Schallié comes across as a low-key and well-organized kind of guy, someone you could count on to be well-equipped with camping gear, government permits, and snakebite kits...
Schallié comes across as extremely knowledgeable, too... He's read the preeminent Mayanists of our age, including Eric Thompson, Michael Coe, and Linda Schele, but says he prefers the accounts of 19th-century writers, with their sense of discovery and their rich descriptions of a civilization lost for centuries in the jungle — lost even by the Maya themselves. "It's much more fun to read John L. Stephens from 1841," Schallié says... Whatever the shape and selectivity of his knowledge, Schallié is clearly excited by his subject matter... He speaks at length about the astonishing sculptures he has photographed at Copán in Honduras... and the range of architectural styles he has encountered from site to site throughout the Mayan world. "They're as different as going from Germany to Rome to Turkey," he says...
The prints themselves have an antique feeling to them, as if they were produced in another age. This archival effect is intentional, and is the result of the infrared film (in which halation occurs) but also a complex and labour-intensive printing process using split filtering, selective bleachings, and gold and selenium toning, all on a silver-rich paper imported fromn Hungary... Looking at his photo of the Temple of the Foliated Cross at Palenque, I am amazed at the intricacy of the surrounding forest, each leaf luminous and articulated — an effect not possible with regular film and indifferent development. "You get this wonderful tapestry, this texture... that the chlorophyll is just emanating back to the film," Schallié explains. He is clearly a perfectionist who may spend an entire day making one print — and he can't imagine handing off the printing process to someone else. "Printing is one of the few areas where you can exercise an incredible amount of control and have a distinctive style," he says.
— Robin Laurence (Photographing an Ancient Land excerpt ) Georgia Straight ‧ Nov. 26—Dec. 3, 1998
Before Christopher Columbus + pan paxil
Gerry Schallié's photos of Mayan ruins — in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize — are meditative testaments to a civilization seen both before and after the arrival of Columbus. The show continues until December 12th. (Third Avenue Gallery, 1725 West 3rd Ave., Vancouver)
— CANADIAN ART ‧ WINTER 1998
pan paxil, Gateway Gallery
The effects of (tonal) "blooming" and halation, the diffusion of light and the softening of detail, the gentle merging of foreground and background, stand in concerted opposition to the crisp, almost clinical articulation realized by contemporary photographic technologies... Architectural and sculptural features, carved in limestone, take on a vivid yet ghostly presence, and the trees stand as if irradiated by some supernatural fission or fusion, some numinous explosion of light, time and space... Incongruously, a European sense of the pastoral is conveyed in images like El Observatorio, Mayapán and Temple Base, Oxtankah, where well-tended trees and short grass create an almost parklike setting for the "picturesque" ruins.
— Robin Laurence (Godly Growth and Mystery) BorderCrossings ‧ SUMMER 1995 (Canada)
Picturing the Past
Gerry Schallié's "Storm Over El Rey" is the winner of ARCHAEOLOGY's Fifth Annual Photography Contest. A marketing executive in Vancouver, British Columbia, Schallié's avocational passion is photographing Maya sites. Little is known about El Rey, a Late Postclassic site on the island of Cancún dating to ca. A.D. 1300—1400. It takes its name, Spanish for "the king," from a stone and stucco sculpture of a human head found there. Schallié captured the image on black-and-white infrared film. "As with most standout images, circumstance played a role," he says. "An approaching storm was a dramatic backdrop to a sunlit platform in the foreground. The heavy rains approached so quickly that neither I nor my equipment were able to escape the ensuing deluge." Schallié says much of his inspiration comes from the simple yet elegant illustrations in the travelogs of Frederick Catherwood and John Lloyd Stephens, who explored the Maya region in the mid-1800s. "It is this painterly look I have striven to emulate."
— ARCHAEOLOGY Magazine ‧ November—December 1995
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