In grad school, I had a close friend, Yiorgos Katsagelos,
who came from Greece to the USA Art Department
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This photograph was taken at that time and shows me and a
friend, Patti Lohrs, standing on a street in Brooklyn ,
waiting for the light to change. What
often amazed me about Yiorgos’ abilities is how deceptively effortless his
process appeared. In the fleeting moment
we stood on that corner, before we had an inkling of what he was up to, he had
his camera out, framed and focused and squeezed off a shot. Years later he mailed me the photo from Greece
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Since leaving Brooklyn
College Greece , the United States , Hungary ,
Italy , France , Germany ,
Slovakia , England , Turkey
and Sweden and participated
in numerous group exhibitions scattered throughout Europe and North
America . He’s been teaching
photography since 1987 and currently serves as the Dean of the School of Fine Arts
In spite of all my railing against photography, after
grad school, recognizing that I would be regularly making slides of my work to
submit to galleries, I purchased a decent manual 35mm Nikon SLR. Almost immediately, I became fascinated with
the potential of this device and began experimenting with all sorts of
techniques and effects. Early on, I
explored time-lapse photography, particularly images shot outdoors at night in
low light.
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I took the photo immediately above solely by low lantern
light. I asked my model, my future wife,
to remain perfectly still while maintaining a natural expression, a pretty tall
order. The exposure time was well over a
minute. Mary did great, not even
blinking once during the process.
I find keeping up with the accelerating pace of
technological innovations and format upgrades to be burdensome. Often these changes offer the user illusory
benefits and tangible deficiencies. I
have a friend who calls me a Luddite.
So, you can imagine my reluctance to purchase a digital camera even once
the technology was proven and commonly available. Over a period of several years, my wife
would now and then suggest to me that I should get myself a decent digital
camera and I would agree, my only caveat being that I had to do some research
before deciding which camera best met my needs.
And, inevitably, I did nothing.
Eventually, she got me an affordable Nikon Coolpix camera for some
holiday or another, and I had no choice but to master the new technology. It became clear immediately that the
advantages of digital photography are manifold.
Since there were no processing costs, the new camera encouraged more
spontaneous shooting, greater experimentation and the taking of multiple
exposures. And the editor that came with
the camera permitted me to get successful images from problematic
exposures. Finally, digital images are
readily copied and shared and can be conveniently stored and backed-up. The only downside to the new technology came
with printing images; the process was frustrating and expensive, and the
results were not consistent and permanent.
Of course, this is all common knowledge today (and I’ve probably lost
half my audience while expounding on these rudimentary observations), but at
the time these discoveries were revelatory.
Eventually, I bought a respectable digital SLR which takes high quality
photos. It has lots of menus, buttons
and switches and tons of options which I seldom use and takes very clear
pictures with loads of pixels. Which is
great. But I still commonly use the
Coolpix. It’s so portable, not so
precious and takes a very decent picture.
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As with most people today, I take a lot of pictures simply
to record family events, vacations, trips and our pets or to use as a resource
for my paintings. From the moment I got
my first camera, I also tried to take “photographs”: images that were carefully
thought out and composed, that presented technical challenges for me, that were
intended to deliver an emotional impact.
Many times I’ve risen with the sun to catch the early morning light
which I prefer to all others. I’ve lain
on my belly in the snow or climbed out on a precipice to get the right angle to
shoot a landscape. I’ve sat at my window
for hours hoping to get the perfect shot of a bird at my feeder. Since I lacked training and never considered exhibiting
my photos, I never thought about intent and made no attempt to establish a
cohesive body of work. As I searched
through about thirty years of work, selecting the best images from my serious
work to include here, I was surprised to see a theme emerge. A brooding moodiness seemed to infuse nearly
every image. Within the “everyday”, I
was finding suggestions of the otherworldly, a tinge of mystery. And, strangely enough, the themes I address
in my photography relate to the intention common to most of my mature painting:
to present images that embody a momentary duality when the benign and ordinary
could transform into the unexpected. My
approach is very different from Yiorgos’.
While I’m seeking to record moments when the objective suggests the
subjective, Yiorgos strives to document reality in such a way as to heighten
our understanding of his subject matter.
In doing this, Yiorgos has chosen to seek out realities that are
unfamiliar and often inaccessible such as a cloistered monastery or a gypsy
district. In his work, he’s traveled to
many countries and visited many unusual locales. Yiorgos has an easy warmth about him which
helps him in his work. He can establish
an instant rapport with strangers, which permits him access to private spaces
where his camera captures his subjects at unguarded moments.
I consider myself a pretty mediocre technician with a
good eye. I do put an effort into my
photography and take pride in my accomplishments but recognize, of course, that
it is pure hubris to present my photographs for consideration to a wider
audience than family and friends. Furthermore,
it is absolute madness to juxtapose my images with those of Yiorgos Katsagelos,
a skilled and talented photographer who has devoted his life to mastering his
craft and perfecting his art form.
To comment privately, please email me at: gerardwickham@gmail.com.
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