Gerry Schallie

Gerry Schallié

Photographic Artist

ANECDOTES & IMAGES

ARTIST INFORMATION

Storm Over El Rey

In photography, the term 'happy accident' is most often in reference to unintended consequences occurring either in camera or later in the manipulation and printing stages. The image Storm Over El Rey puts a fatalistic spin on this euphemism.

Less than twenty-four hours upon arriving in the Yucatán, I found myself battling a nasty bout of food poisoning — something I have experienced but twice in countless visits to Central America. Weak and shivering, I postponed an excursion to a ruin situated on a lagoon, instead languishing poolside in clothing absurdly heavy by tropical standards, slowly regaining my strength by mixing and sipping sachet after sachet of Gastrolyte. By early afternoon, I felt well enough to consider some low threshold photographic options.

My pre-trip research revealed the existence of a small archaeological ruin behind a nearby golf course. I might never have visited this site save for the circumstance in which I now found myself. Time also became a consideration. Darkness arrives suddenly in the tropics, leaving me with little more than two hours of daylight.

Upon arriving, there was only myself and the groundskeeper, who was in the process of feeding the resident population of iguanas. First banging a gigantic metal pot filled with greens and overripe fruit, he scattered its contents throughout a small ancient plaza. Lizards of every size came crashing out of the surrounding vegetation, some upwards of two meters in length including tail. Soon afterward, tranquility resumed with most of the iguanas vanishing into the landscape other than a small number basking in the hot afternoon sun. Having witnessed this minor spectacle, I began to take a visual stock of Ruinas El Rey.

Save for the occassional limestone column and stairway, little of architectural interest remained. As well, the sun was now low to the extent troublesome shadows were being thrown by even the smallest trees. Time was at an absolute premium. However in a clearing, there was a raised platform that caught my eye; it possessed a particularly attractive blend of flora and manmade artifact.

While deliberating vantage points and lens selection, the wind picked up, the first sign of an approaching storm. Blue sky was quickly replaced with a charcoal grey backdrop. A decision would be necessary and a quick one at that. Initially irritated by one twist of fate after another, all would soon work to my advantage. Through my viewfinder, I saw a diagonal shaft of light juxtaposed with a dying tree on the platform, albeit changing position almost by the second due to the wind. In spite of the changing weather, the platform was still bathed in brilliant sunlight. One final incident light meter reading and two frames later, I was caught in a tropical deluge, zipping up my camera bag and running for cover.

Afterward I was reminded of the similar circumstances behind one of Ansel Adams' most celebrated images, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. A unique image from an impromtu visit due to unforeseen circumstances, in this case tested by trying conditions. Happy accident indeed.

Teaching Philosophy

I encourage my students to view photography as part of a visual art continuum that includes drawing, painting and printmaking, if only to somewhat lessen the emphasis (and reliance) on the numerous technologies at their fingertips.

My mantra, technique is the platform of expression, aims to employ these tools with skill but also guided by a sense of purpose. Photographic art is by nature a less tactile medium, inadvertently and frequently enabling a degree of artistic detachment, often seen in students' works at the outset of their developmental curve. In combination with impatience, this is a path to technically sound images done quickly and painlessly but also bypassing experimentation in the process.

The era of digital capture has often been characterized as lacking in integrity due to gratuitous applications of numerous technologies now at our fingertips. True to some extent given there are no laws prohibiting overuse and questionable aesthetics. As well, the implication is that contemporary photographs are less believable, lacking a fundamental honesty. But as is often the case, the truth falls somewhere in the middle. Creative options technically difficult or impossible in the wet darkroom — relating to scale, texture, integration of type, book projects and today's ever present social media — are now in sky's the limit territory. Applied with discretion, this new toolbox of sorts is in fact a means of expanding traditional photography's artistic boundaries and tapping into nontraditional audiences.

Photography exhibitions pre-digital era catered to a more conservative viewership and were often as predictable as sliced bread: generally a selection of small to medium sized prints (by today's standards) matted and framed. By comparison, contemporary photographic exhibits are highly unorthodox, incorporating works of radically variable sizes and outputting methods, stradling gelatin-silver prints to images displayed on electronic tablets. The current definition of photographic art is far more fluid and diverse than in the past. I point out the trend to works both smaller and larger: boxed folios as well as large scale works such as by Edward Burtynsky, squeezing out the old status quo. New technology should not simply serve as yet another method of replicating existing oeuvres (example: electonic books may actually possess advantages over traditional books — and vice versa). As such, I encourage students to 'think outside the box', consider the component of originality. Any technology, old or new, should make optimize its core strengths.