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world in transforming reality into monochromatic art
Ansel Adams, the legendary 20th century photographer known best for his hypnotic black-and-white images of Western landscapes, once said, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” Indeed, Adams was a true composer, who carefully nurtured images from reality to paper, and then into a new reality in his viewer’s mind. “The negative is comparable to the composer’s score and the print to its performance,” he said, prior to his death in 1984. One can only guess what Adams would say about modern digital photography, which has prompted many artists to turn in their film and unwieldy enlargers for computers, image software and high-tech printers. A small contingent of local fine-art photographers refuses to sink to the digital level, preferring instead to carry on Adams’ tradition of manually crafting expressive black-and-white photographs. Patiently, they spend countless hours in the field and the darkroom to create images that speak to the heart, mind and soul.
“Oak Alley” by Barbara Kline Three of those highly dedicated Sun Valley area photographers—Steve Snyder, Barbara Kline and Paul Potters—embody the movement. They are on call virtually every waking minute, waiting for relationships of line and light to come perfectly into balance and reveal an ideal image. Not one of them keeps a roll of color film in his camera bag. "I’ve shot probably 20 rolls of color in my lifetime, and I’ve never developed them,” Snyder said. “Color to me is a lot of energy. It goes a lot of places and can save bad composition. But with black and white it’s more real.” Snyder, who has been a fixture in the Sun Valley arts scene since the early 1970s, said he has always been drawn to black-and-white photography. “It has a calmness to it,” he said. “And it’s more spiritual.” Snyder moved to Ketchum from Oregon in 1972, shortly after he traded a motorcycle for a used Pentax single-lens reflex camera. He immediately started recording images of central Idaho landscapes, animals and Western culture, some of which he framed in antique stovetops and steering wheels. In the summer of 1974, he sold his entire inventory at the annual Sun Valley Center Arts & Crafts Festival. “That’s when I realized I was a photographer,” he said. Snyder said he believes that attractive or unusual natural images typically become great black-and-white photographs when planning and serendipity collide, if only for an instant. “You have to let go of preconceived notions to take great photos,” he said. “A lot of the best photos come from serendipity. Being in the right place at the right time.” Snyder does his own darkroom work. He maintains that proficiency in the darkroom can “coax” an image to be its best, but cannot make up for poor techniques or timing in the field. "Buffalo Standing" by Steve Snyder Sometimes, Snyder intentionally searches for a plain background—a snowy pasture or a thick bank of fog—and waits for his subject to enter his field of vision. He equates the approach with “painting a blank piece of canvas.” In other instances, he seeks out his subjects with more zeal, and waits for an exact moment that captures a story that is somehow larger than the scene itself. “The images have their own words, their own story.” In Snyder’s world, all his images have a poignant story, a history that tells the viewer of the subject’s place in the natural order. A group of Idaho horses trotting through the snow in perfect cadence embodies the settlement of the West and the unique rhythm that only nature can achieve. A Wyoming bison, breathing in painfully crisp winter air, becomes the living symbol of an ancient species that was nearly exterminated by man. To say that Snyder is connected to his work is surely an understatement. To capture one particular image of the Salmon River coursing gently beneath the Sawtooth Mountains, he spent 11 years waiting for the perfect composition and light. “I go for that one moment when it just feels right,” he said. Color enters the picture for Barbara Kline, but not until her black-and-white images are rendered to perfection. Kline, who moved to the Sun Valley area from Florida in 1983, has in recent years perfected a unique style that has established her as one of Idaho’s most respected photographers. Her work contrasts sharply with Snyder’s, but can be deemed similar in its profound ability to inspire the imagination. After apprenticing under renowned photographer and professor Jerry Uelsmann, Kline in the 1980s and 1990s refined a darkroom process that combines two or more black-and-white images into one invitingly rich photographic composition. The images are sometimes enhanced with nuances of oil-based color paints, which Kline applies by hand with a Q-Tip. Kline’s ultimate goal is to create artistic images that entice the viewer to daydream. “I sort of create places I would like to visit,” she said. “Places I would like to go.” The process—which Kline emphasized is not aided by computer technology—requires numerous hours in the darkroom. “I like the darkroom. That’s where the magic is.” To compose her
multiple-image photographs, Kline first sets out to capture first-rate
black-and-white images. Her subjects include landscapes, sculptures,
furnishings and various types of architecture. “I go into the darkroom with a couple of ideas, but I might come out with something else,” she said. “In a way it’s surrealism, but in a way it’s not, because the images are real.” Her images have proven to have great public appeal, and have been featured in exhibitions worldwide, earning several awards. One of her works was selected to be the featured artwork on the jacket of a 1995 novel by Alice Walker, “The Same River Twice.” Kline believes creating quality black-and-white photos is much more complicated than simply capturing an interesting subject. Images must carry a quality that can invoke various emotions, but must also have flawless tonality and clarity. “It starts with the richness of the blacks and the whiteness of the whites,” she said. “It must have the right highlights, contrast, and details in the shaded areas. And it must be in focus.” “To me, if it’s not an absolutely perfect-quality print, it’s torn up and thrown away, regardless of the composition.” For Kline, there is no photographic medium other than black and white—even if the end result sometimes includes applied color. “I don’t even think in color,” she said. “If you take a color photo, you are limited to those colors in your end result.”
"Elk
Fog" by Paul Potters sees his monochrome world from a vintage perspective. A resident of Ketchum for 22 years, Potters works with techniques and materials that date back to the 19th century. Potters has been composing black-and-white photographs since 1968, but in the last year has specialized in producing handmade platinum-palladium prints, brought to life through a paper coating that combines the two metallic elements. “I’m looking more toward the 19th century masters and their tools,” Potters said. “I guess I’m looking for a less-contemporary look.” Potters works almost exclusively with an old-fashioned, large-format Wizner camera, typically shooting images of Western landscapes and historic adobe structures. He uses four-inch by five-inch film negatives, and occasionally works with an eight-inch by ten-inch film format. The film negatives are placed directly on hand-treated paper and exposed to the sun, before chemical developer is applied to produce the final image—which is never enlarged. Producing a single platinum-palladium print can take up to an hour. “It’s a totally different chemistry than what is used today,” he said. “No one print is ever the same.” The platinum-palladium medium, Potters said, produces prints that have a wider range of monochromatic tones. “There’s a lot more scale in the middle-range. It creates a warmer image than silver prints.” Potters said he looks for several components in assessing the quality of black-and-white photographs. “A really good black-and-white photograph is all about the tonalities and the contrast,” he said. “It’s about the light and how it conveys the light. If you haven’t conveyed the light, you’ve probably failed.” Black-and-white photography, Potters believes, cannot be easily compared to color photography. “A color photograph should be about color,” he said. “A black-and-white image is much more abstract.” And, Potters said, in the abstractions, the viewer should see something, or learn something, that is somehow new. “An axiom I like to work with is: Every photo should be a revelation, and ‘good enough’ isn’t.” |
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