SNAPSHOTS
Stories of My Life
In Photography & Teaching
Steven D. Foster
Stories of My Life
In Photography & Teaching
Steven D. Foster
Introduction
In June 2019 my wife Gloria and I went to Milwaukee to celebrate the sixth birthday of our grandson River. When John Sobczak, Director of the Alice Wilds Gallery heard we were coming he set up a meeting with Tyler Friedman, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Wisconsin Art so that the three of us could look at my photographs together. It seemed that Tyler was looking for photographs that could be exhibited in their "Downtown Gallery" located in the lobby of the Saint Kate Arts Hotel in Milwaukee where this year's Society of Photographic Education Midwest Chapter Conference was to be held in late October, 2019.
While in Milwaukee in June I also met with Jon Horvath and John Sobczak--conspirators in bringing about a mini-retrospective of my work to Milwaukee at the Alice Wilds gallery in March-April of 2018. (See my project The Rising Sun ~ Prelude To An Exhibition, 2018) At our meeting--which took place a few days after my meeting with Tyler and John--Jon Horvath told me that he was on the Planning Committee for the SPE Conference, and that the Committee had just taken a vote on the nominees for the "Honored Educator" award to be announced at the Conference. I had been chosen for the award. Would I accept the award and come to Milwaukee in late October to say a few words?
This blog project includes a revised and expanded version of the talk I gave in the concluding session of the SPE Conference on October 26, 2019 plus some additional contextual information regarding the Conference and other related events that took place during our week long visit to Milwaukee, including some special announcements that were made at the closing of the Conference, a mini-exhibition of my Steve Lacy Series photographs, the Gallery Talks associated with the exhibition, and some special moments spent with our grandson River.
SNAPSHOTS
Stories of My Life
In Photography & Teaching
The following text is an edited and expanded version of
a talk I presented at the Society for Photographic
Education Midwest Chapter Conference
held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
October 24-27, 2019
to learn more details
about the Conference
Dedication
I am dedicating this presentation—with loving gratitude—to three of the most important teachers in my life: my wife Gloria, our son Shaun, and our daughter Jessica. Being a husband and a father has been a full-time educational experience for me, and that experience has contributed in untold ways to my photography and my teaching.
Introduction
I would like to share with you a few snapshot-like stories about how I came to be a photographer and a teacher of photography. When I look back over my life, it is amazing to me how I have come to this very moment, standing before you now as this year’s Honored Educator. As I've contemplated my life in photography and teaching, I came to see with more awareness, and with more gratitude, the web of connections between so many people that has made it possible for me to be here with you tonight.
You will notice that I use the word “grace” many times in my presentation. For me the word is synonymous with the Impersonal, fully alive and Conscious Creative Power of the Universe, which I also refer to often as “my Creative Process.”
*
Like many of my photography students at UW-Milwaukee, I came from a working class family. This has helped me have a special empathy for those students who would come to my classes thinking they were not creative enough, not good enough, not talented enough in any way, and who often looked exhausted from the jobs they had been holding while trying to work their way thru college.
Because the photography program I created here at UW-Milwaukee (beginning in 1975) was situated in an Art Department within a State University, I felt it was especially important to teach photography from a “liberal arts” perspective; that is to say, as a way of exploring a broad range of ideas and photographic experiences that would provide the student with a means of accessing Self-knowledge.
Truth be told, I could not have taught photography otherwise for Self-knowledge was what I have most cared about as an artist. From the time I was a graduate student (1969-72) I believed in the power of the Creative Process, and I believed that what I had to offer students could be of good use to them in any kind of career they pursued, for it is everyone’s birthright to have a life guided by the integrity of their own Creative Process, a life lived in direct relationship to the Creative Power of the Universe.
Truth be told, I could not have taught photography otherwise for Self-knowledge was what I have most cared about as an artist. From the time I was a graduate student (1969-72) I believed in the power of the Creative Process, and I believed that what I had to offer students could be of good use to them in any kind of career they pursued, for it is everyone’s birthright to have a life guided by the integrity of their own Creative Process, a life lived in direct relationship to the Creative Power of the Universe.
The Stories: My life is an unfolding Creative Process
I was born in a small town named Piqua, Ohio. My dad worked for the city; he worked his way up from sweeping streets to having a responsible job in Piqua’s Electric Power Plant. One day something fell on my dad’s back at the plant and the injury he suffered manifested multiple medical complications. In August 1955, just weeks before my 10th birthday, my dad became very ill and had to be hospitalized.
I stayed with my cousin and my Aunt Lilly & Uncle Bob so that my mom could be with my dad at the hospital. One day, as I was waiting for my cousin to return from a trip to the drugstore with my Aunt, he all-of-a-sudden came running up to me very excitedly. He was holding in his hand a batch of snapshots. When he offered them to me to look at . . . I experienced what you might call an EPIPHANY: I knew with absolute certainty—in that very moment—that I wanted to be a photographer.
A Fire had been ignited within me that has never gone out.
Several days later I came down with a fever. I felt cold, even though it was a very hot summer day. My Aunt took me and my cousin to a park concert that night, but I began shivering so intensely that I had to be taken back to the house and put to bed.
Later that night I woke myself up: I was hitting my pillow with my fist, harder and harder . . . faster and faster . . . Eventually the hitting stopped, and I just lay in bed waiting for the morning light.
As I was listening to the doves beginning to sing their mournful songs in the nearby woods, I heard footsteps coming slowly up the stairs. My Aunt told me that my dad had died during the night. Of course, I had already known that, intuitively; and I believe I actually experienced my dad’s last heartbeats.
That was my first awakening to the fact that we humans are connected to each other in ways the mind cannot understand. And it has been my experience over and over again that indeed we are connected in an ineffable sacred space known commonly as the Heart.
*
The loss of my dad was very painful for me in the months that followed, but I took refuge in reading about photography. I became consumed with wanting to know more and more about it. Not only did I look at photo magazines and library books, I began contemplating our Sears and Roebuck catalogue—in particular, the section on cameras and darkroom equipment.
Photography became my constant companion, my safe haven. And as I grew older, photography would become for me—in many different ways—a means of liberation.
*
I asked my mom for a film developing kit and a contact printing frame for a Christmas present. She in turn asked my Uncle Dave to help her get the equipment and supplies I needed. Fortunately he had spent time in the Armed Forces in a photography unite, so he was able to help me get started with my darkroom, and he was always there for me whenever I needed him in future times of crisis. By New Years Day, 1956, I was in our basement developing film and making contact prints.
*
My mom re-married a few years later to a salesman who lived in Portland Indiana 60 miles away from Piqua. She sold her house and we moved to Portland; and within a year their relationship became fraught with multiple difficulties—and it appeared to me that I had become part of the problem. I began dreaming of getting out of Portland as soon as possible.
After living in Portland Indiana for over four years, I left after graduating from High School. Many in my Graduation Class were planning to get married, have kids and work in a nearby factory, or get a teaching degree at Ball State University in nearby Muncie Indiana. Settling down in Portland Indiana was certainly not what I wanted to do.
W. Eugene Smith, The Pittsburg Story @1955
There were two important photographic influences in my life as a High School student in Portland Indiana. One of them was W. Eugene Smith and his Pittsburg Story which had been published in the 1959 Popular Photography Annual. Smith's dark and moody-poetic photo essay deeply impressed me.
(Note: later in life W. Eugene Smith and I would connect again through my photography in an unexpected way. In 1977 I submitted a selection of my Persephone Series photographs to the Wisconsin Arts Board for their consideration of an Artist Fellowship. I didn't know that W. Eugene Smith was one of the invited Jurors, but later I was told that he was largely responsible for the $2,000 Artist Fellowship I was awarded that year.)
from The Persephone Series 1976-77
(Note: later in life W. Eugene Smith and I would connect again through my photography in an unexpected way. In 1977 I submitted a selection of my Persephone Series photographs to the Wisconsin Arts Board for their consideration of an Artist Fellowship. I didn't know that W. Eugene Smith was one of the invited Jurors, but later I was told that he was largely responsible for the $2,000 Artist Fellowship I was awarded that year.)
The other major influence during my High School years was the Museum of Modern Art’s publication of The Family of Man. For my Senior English Project I created an Exhibition of photographs inspired by the paperback version which I had been studying religiously throughout the year. I took quotes from the publication and placed them under each of my photographs which were pinned up on the back wall of the class room.
That exhibition was a turning point in my life. Because I held my English teacher in very high regard, his supportive responses to my project helped give me the confidence I needed to find ways of getting out of Portland and learning more about photography.
I applied to some schools that offered various kinds of photography programs. There were very few in the early 1960’s, and I knew very little about art in those days; I just knew in my Heart that I wanted to be a photographer. The Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, NY was the only school that accepted me. In retrospect, RIT was without doubt the best photography program of its kind in the country, and the very best option for me, though of course I didn't know it then. RIT offered several photo majors: in Photographic Science; in Photographic Illustration & Fine Arts; and there was a program in Professional (Commercial) Photography, which I was at first contemplating getting into. The only problem was the expense. RIT was very expensive.
I had applied for and received a small scholarship from the Society of Photo-journalists that would be applied to the first semester’s tuition at RIT. And my mother had saved most of the Social Security money she had received from my dad’s death to help pay for my first year of college. My mom had not been able to finish High School (she instead worked in a factory which supplied our troops with warm socks); but she had made a promise to herself that my younger sister and I would at least be given a starting chance at a college education.
In the early to mid 1960’s it was possible for a young man like myself to work his way through college. Two summers before going to RIT I worked in a Portland canning factory; and the summer before I left for RIT, I worked for a roofing company putting shingles on barns.
The day finally arrived when my mom and my step-father drove me to Rochester to help me get situated in my dorm room at RIT. My mom was in tears when they drove away . . . and though I would miss her, at last I felt a sense of liberation that I had been longing for.
*
I was fortunate in being able to get a job at the RIT bookstore—because that’s how I met Roger Mertin, who was also working there. He was a Junior in RIT’s Fine Arts photography program at the time (Roger would later become a nationally recognized photographer), and he was also taking Nathan Lyon’s very first Home Workshop. As Roger and I became friends, we started looking at each other’s photographs. He could see my passion for photography and that I was making some pretty interesting photographs, even as a Freshman, so he encouraged me to take the Fine Arts Photography Program in my second year, plus Nathan Lyons’ Home Workshop!
(Note: Minor White was teaching at RIT at this time; I was fortunate to be able to take one course with Minor before he left Rochester to teach at MIT.)
My friend, Jim Erwin and I took Nathan’s Home Workshop together. In fact, we loved it so much we took it two years in a row. I believe the home workshops were Nathan's way of testing out his teaching ideas in preparation for the school he had been dreaming of creating: The Visual Studies Workshop. Nathan became one of the founding members of SPE at that time, and he was its first Director. Jim and I attended one of the earliest SPE national conferences.
At the time we were taking the workshops, Nathan was still working at George Eastman House as Director of Exhibitions. I loved Eastman House: Nathan had put on some very important exhibitions in those two years; I loved all the new photo books on display; and the ritual of viewing original prints in the permeant collection (with cotton gloves) was quite breathtaking for me.
I would always go up to the second floor during each of my visits to pay homage to the ongoing exhibition of the Masters of Photography—which included many of my favorite photographers: W. Eugene Smith, Robert Frank, Harry Callahan, Minor White, Edward Weston and Alfred Stieglitz. Going to Eastman House was—for me—like going to a Holy Shrine. And I did go quite often, especially during my second year, when I took Beaumont Newhall's The History of Photography course, an RIT requirement for fine art photography majors.
I would always go up to the second floor during each of my visits to pay homage to the ongoing exhibition of the Masters of Photography—which included many of my favorite photographers: W. Eugene Smith, Robert Frank, Harry Callahan, Minor White, Edward Weston and Alfred Stieglitz. Going to Eastman House was—for me—like going to a Holy Shrine. And I did go quite often, especially during my second year, when I took Beaumont Newhall's The History of Photography course, an RIT requirement for fine art photography majors.
Nathan invited me up to his office on the top floor of Eastman House a few times to see boxes of photographs sent to him from people like Gary Winogrand and Mario Giacomelli. And in the summer following my first workshop with Nathan he helped me get a job working in Eastman House's darkroom, down in the basement. I was extremely happy to be part of Eastman House, and I was overjoyed (with feelings of liberation!) at being able to stay in Rochester that summer rather than having to go back to Portland Indiana to work.
Harry Callahan, 1951, Eleanor, Chicago (click on the image to enlarge)
In Nathan's living room--where we held our workshop sessions--there was a framed photograph on the wall which I looked at closely every time we met. It was a multiple-exposure photograph by Harry Callahan—an image of his wife Elenor standing in front of a sliding door, her form silhouetted against an illuminated background and centered in a larger dark space of highlighted bush branches. One night I told Nathan how much I liked the image, but that I didn’t understand what it was about—it was such a mysterious image for me. When I asked him if he could tell me what it meant, he said, “Maybe in five years you’ll understand.”
He was right! Four years later I would be married to Gloria (who was the sister of the woman my friend Jim Erwin had married). And then two years later, while I was a Graduate Student in Photography at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, Gloria would become pregnant with Shaun, our first of two children—something Gloria’s doctor had told us was NOT likely to be possible. (See my New Mexico project.)
The Callahan photograph helped me realize that the most interesting photographs (for me) were those that I could not understand, images that held within them a mystery that invited different interpretations and renewed revelations over time. Later, as a graduate student, I would write my MFA thesis paper about such images, which I identified as Symbolic Photographs.
Nathan Lyons, from Under the Sun, 1960 (click on the image to enlarge)
After studying with Nathan the second year, Jim and I felt prepared to move on to Chicago—to study with Aaron Siskind. Nathan had charged $100 dollars for each Workshop which ran throughout the nine month academic year. When we told Nathan we were going to Chicago to study with Aaron he gave each of us—as a parting gift—one of his photographs. I chose an image that I had seen published in the book Under the Sun : The Abstract Art of Camera Vision, an image that reminded me of a pulsating heart.
*
In June of 1966 Jim and Phyllis, (Gloria's sister) got married just before moving to Chicago where Jim would begin his Graduate studies with Aaron Siskind at the Institute of Design. I felt that I had to move on as well for at least three reasons: because Minor White had left RIT to teach at MIT, I had spent two full years studying with Nathan in his Home Workshop in Rochester, and Jim was going to be in Chicago with his wife Phyllis.
I was accepted at the Institute of Design where I hoped to complete my undergraduate study with Aaron Siskind in two years. It was my additional good fortune to discover that I would also be studying with Wynn Bullock my first year in Chicago, for he had been invited to teach at the ID as a Visiting Artist.
I paid my tuition in Chicago by working on the loading docks at UPS during the summer, then during the school year I worked in the accounting room from 6pm to 11pm each weeknight counting pick-up sheets. UPS paid well, and counting pick-up sheets was easier than working on the docks; but I would often go to classes the next day exhausted from trying to study late into the night. (I would get to my apartment around midnight after a 30-40 minute bus ride through a very rough area of Chicago.)
I was accepted at the Institute of Design where I hoped to complete my undergraduate study with Aaron Siskind in two years. It was my additional good fortune to discover that I would also be studying with Wynn Bullock my first year in Chicago, for he had been invited to teach at the ID as a Visiting Artist.
I paid my tuition in Chicago by working on the loading docks at UPS during the summer, then during the school year I worked in the accounting room from 6pm to 11pm each weeknight counting pick-up sheets. UPS paid well, and counting pick-up sheets was easier than working on the docks; but I would often go to classes the next day exhausted from trying to study late into the night. (I would get to my apartment around midnight after a 30-40 minute bus ride through a very rough area of Chicago.)
I saved quite a lot of money on rent by sharing an apartment with Keith Smith. Jim had met Keith in one of Aaron Siskind's graduate photo classes and invited Keith over to his and Phyllis's apartment for dinner one night to meet me and Larry McPherson, and then look at each other's photographs. Keith was looking for a roommate to help pay the rent and asked if I would be interested. The apartment was in a wonderful Polish and Mexican neighborhood in Chicago’s South-West Side, and close to an elevated rapid transit stop. Keith--a very quiet and private person--was one of the sweetest, most patient and generous people I ever knew. His concentrated work ethic, and his remarkably inventive explorations into hand-made artist books was an inspiration for me.
*
After five years, in two photography programs, in two cities, I finally earned my undergraduate degree at the Institute of Design. I then moved to New York City where Gloria was to be studying art at Pratt Institute (in Brooklyn) that coming school year. I wanted a chance to further develop a relationship with her that was just beginning to blossom in Chicago.
A friend of mine from RIT days, who was working for a commercial photographer in a studio on 28th and Broadway, wanted to take a higher paying job offer, so he recommended me as his replacement. I loved photographing in that part of the City—known as the Garment District--but working with photography in the world of advertising became intolerable for me. I began to feel desperate about finding something else to do.
Fortunately, Gary Metz--also a friend of mine from RIT days--was in the City at this time. We spent a lot of time together while he was working as an intern in the Museum of Modern Art’s Photography Department. He happened to see a poster that had been sent to the Photo Department from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque advertising a Full Graduate Teaching Fellowship in Photography. Gary encouraged me to apply for it . . . which I did . . . and amazingly, I received the Fellowship!
Gloria and I got married on August 2, 1969 and we went to New Mexico together. That was fifty years ago; we just celebrated our Golden wedding anniversary!
The New Mexico Fellowship was very generous, and fortunately for me it stipulated that I teach two Intro to Photo courses each semester while working towards my MFA degree. That opportunity to teach was one of the best educational experiences I could have had as a graduate student, for I wanted to become a teacher of photography like many of my mentors.
I learned so much teaching those courses! I was even permitted to teach a Photo II course. By the time I graduated I felt fully prepared to begin teaching at the college level. I especially liked teaching the photo course for “non-art majors.” Those students knew they didn’t know much about art, and in some ways this was to their advantage--it seemed to me. They were very receptive to what I was teaching, and many of them did surprisingly excellent, original work.
I learned so much teaching those courses! I was even permitted to teach a Photo II course. By the time I graduated I felt fully prepared to begin teaching at the college level. I especially liked teaching the photo course for “non-art majors.” Those students knew they didn’t know much about art, and in some ways this was to their advantage--it seemed to me. They were very receptive to what I was teaching, and many of them did surprisingly excellent, original work.
Ray Metzker had come to teach at the University of New Mexico in my second year there. He was taking Van Deren Coke’s position (who had gone to Rochester to become the Director of Eastman House upon Beaumont Newhall’s retirement). As it turned out, though, it was my relationship to Dick Knapp--a new graduate student in photography in my second year at UNM--that would become a more important influence on me at that time.
Dick’s interest in the ideas of Carl Jung, the world famous Depth Psychologist, inspired me to take a graduate level English course on mythology based on Jungian ideology. I then became very interested in Jung’s ideas regarding the Creative Process in Medieval Alchemy, and his ideas about Synchronicity, and his fascination with Symbolic Images. Those ideas became the central themes of my MFA written thesis which was entitled The Symbolic Photograph : A Means to Self-knowledge. I liked the teacher who taught the myth course, and I asked him to serve on my graduate Thesis Committee.
Beaumont Newhall was also on my Thesis Committee. He had come to New Mexico to teach as an Honorary Professor of Art History. I had taken his History of Photography Class at Eastman House when I was a student at RIT and I thought he could help me with my writing. I told him what I wanted to write about, and that I was having problems getting started with the writing. He told me something I’ve never forgotten: he said “Writers always begin in the dark waters of the unknown (the unconscious). You just begin writing your way up and out of that darkness.” I have carried this teaching into my Creative Process as a picture-maker.
*
Immediately after graduating in 1972 with my MFA degree, I was offered my first teaching job at Georgia State University, Atlanta with John McWilliams (who had studied with Harry Callahan). John and I created an innovative team teaching program, and together with some graduate photo students we founded the photography cooperative gallery named NEXUS which later grew into an active Community Art Center in Atlanta.
The great photographer & philosopher, Fredrick Sommer, was invited to Atlanta one spring (1973 or 74) to jury a photography exhibition and I was asked to put him up for three days at our house. Fred and I talked every minute possible about his newly published manifesto: The Poetic Logic of Art and Aesthetics, 1972. That was for me a never-to-be-forgotten experience! One the most important things he told me was: "You only find out in the world what you already have inside you."
The great photographer & philosopher, Fredrick Sommer, was invited to Atlanta one spring (1973 or 74) to jury a photography exhibition and I was asked to put him up for three days at our house. Fred and I talked every minute possible about his newly published manifesto: The Poetic Logic of Art and Aesthetics, 1972. That was for me a never-to-be-forgotten experience! One the most important things he told me was: "You only find out in the world what you already have inside you."
*
After three years in Atlanta, Gloria and I wanted to try living closer to her family in Rochester, NY, so I applied for some teaching jobs. UW-Milwaukee was looking for someone to initiate a new photography program and they invited me to come for an interview. They decided to offer the position to Charles Traub. However Charlie decided at the last minute to take another position offered him, and so I was then offered the position.
Coming to Milwaukee in 1975 was a very exciting and challenging time for me and my family. During our first winter in Milwaukee we all got deathly sick. Indeed, our daughter, Jessica, who was less than a year old at the time, nearly died from a mutated virus. (See my project The Persephone Series, 1975-76 )
Coming to Milwaukee in 1975 was a very exciting and challenging time for me and my family. During our first winter in Milwaukee we all got deathly sick. Indeed, our daughter, Jessica, who was less than a year old at the time, nearly died from a mutated virus. (See my project The Persephone Series, 1975-76 )
In my first two years at UW-Milwaukee I wrote all of the photography courses and curriculums for both the new undergraduate and graduate photography programs; I set up the new photo lab space in the basement of Mitchell Hall with equipment and supplies; I proposed to the Art Department the idea of Graduate Reviews which was modeled after my experience in New Mexico. (The proposal was adopted and was made a requirement of the Art Graduate program.) And I helped initiate, and was one of the founding members of the photography cooperative gallery named PERIHELION which eventually became housed in the Lincoln Center of the Arts on Knapp Street.
Nonetheless, I was told in no uncertain terms that I would have to start getting exhibitions for my work in commercial galleries or art museums (preferably in NYC or Chicago) if I wanted to get tenured. Chicago was just down the road, so with fear and resistance I showed my work to David Travis, curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago. David was very receptive to my work and he helped me get my Steve Lacy Series exhibited at the Renaissance Society Galleries at the University of Chicago in 1978, complete with live improvised music at the opening. (See my blog project The Steve Lacy Series, 1977-78)
That exhibition generated interest in my work with other venues in Chicago. And in 1982 David Travis gave me a mid-career retrospective exhibition at the Art Institute that included works from five different projects, highlighting the 1981-82 Lake Series photographs. By the end of the following year I was awarded tenure by the University and I was represented by two excellent galleries—one in Chicago, and one in Milwaukee—which made it possible for me to have exhibitions of my newest work on a regular basis for the next twenty years.
Self-effort and Grace
These stories, which tell of meaningful connections with others and fortunate coincidental events, are I believe the fruit of a conjunction of at least two essential ingredients: 1) my own self-effort, motivated by my love of photography and my love of the Creative Process; and 2) grace. The two—self-effort and grace—are interdependent.
It is grace, I believe, which binds everything that is meaningful into an ineffable Unitary Reality, a reality greater than the sum of its parts. Because of my trust in grace I have been able to allow my Creative Process to go where It wants to go, even if the work does not conveniently fit into pre-established categories for marketing or any other purposes. Out of respect for grace and my Creative Process I have refused to make any compromises merely to accommodate the agendas of others.
The Symbolic Photograph, A Means to Self-knowledge
Since graduate school days, my primary intention as a photographer has been to live in alignment with my Creative Process and to make photographs that conjoin visible outer-world realities with their corresponding inner-world Imaginal counterparts. I have identified this kind of imagery, which unveils and celebrates the Oneness of Being: Symbolic Photographs.
After Gloria and I began practicing Siddha Yoga, in 1987, I gradually became more consciously aware of how grace manifested within my life, and how my photography was but one aspect of a much larger Creative Process. And with this awareness I began to witness the merging of my yogic practices (especially meditation) with my creative process in photography. (See my blog project Photography and Yoga.)
Teaching & Grace
It naturally followed—in its own time, in its own way—that I began observing how grace freely and spontaneously would come into my experience of teaching. I became aware of how teaching not only inspired my photography, but also how the the grace of my Creative Process in photography inspired my teaching.
Sometimes, when I was teaching in a classroom setting, I would experience a feeling of surrendering to something greater than myself; or I would feel myself spontaneously falling into alignment with what I liked to call the Creative Flow of Life. In those extraordinary moments I knew intuitively that something was being communicated through me that words could not articulate.
Rumi, the great 13th century Sufi poet-saint, wrote about conversations he had with his Teacher, Shams Tabriz, in which no words were spoken. He called them Sohbet, "Silent Conversations." I have often noticed, when I was having one-on-one meetings with students in my office next to the photo lab that as we looked and talked about their photographs, there would be moments of silence palpably charged with the feeling of a different order or dimension of wisdom or meaning or understanding that was being shared between us--through the photographs we were looking at. Indeed, at times it seemed to me that inside this space of silence, we were seeing the images as if through each others’ eyes.
This kind of Heart-to-Heart Conversation is—I believe—critical to any true student-teacher relationship, a relationship that transcends the purely academic, and that initiates a deeper level of understanding only possible when grace is allowed to enter into those silent spaces between words.
If teaching does not come from the Heart, what good is it, any way?
The most rewarding thing about teaching photography for me was being able to watch my students gradually awaken to their own inner longings, their own inner Fire, their very own uniquely personal Creative Process.
*
The most rewarding thing about teaching photography for me was being able to watch my students gradually awaken to their own inner longings, their own inner Fire, their very own uniquely personal Creative Process.
Students who have been graced with this experience—which is their birthright--begin to shine with a new sense of self-confidence. They become visibly happier, and act more fully and spontaneously alive because of the connection they have established with something greater and more meaningful in their lives than the limited conceptions they had initially held of themselves when they first entered the photography program.
I knew myself how liberating that experience--those feelings--can be.
I knew myself how liberating that experience--those feelings--can be.
A Creative Life After Retirement
I retired from teaching in 2007 and Gloria and I moved to Canandaigua, New York, which is about 20 miles south of Rochester. Preparing for the move--and then the move itself--was an ever unfolding array of disruptions which kept me from fully engaging with my Creative Process in photography. I began wondering if I would ever be able to get back into the kind of flowing relationship with picture-making that I had become so accustomed to when I was teaching. Before I retired, teaching photography had been an integral and inspiring aspect of my Creative Process.
My son Shaun (who was teaching at RIT computer 3-D animation) suggested I try creating a blog about my photography. I had been thinking that my days of exhibiting photographs had come to an end, so I decided to give blogging a try. In November of 2010 I initiated The Departing Landscape (the name of my blog on Blogspot.com). After a few shaky months of learning the technical procedures, I began creating a digital archive of some of my earlier photography projects, and I began creating new projects specifically for my blog. And though I am still trying to learn how to write, I have found that the blog texts I write to accompany my photographs has satisfied my instinctual need to share the unfolding array of ideas and experiences associated with my Creative Process.
My blog writings constitute a kind of “silent dialogue” with my own self. Even after my work on a project feels complete, and I share my photographs and the fruit of my contemplations on my blog with "others," it nonetheless feels to me that these "others" are in some deep way my own self.
The process of blogging has indeed become for me a deeply satisfying form of contemplation--of my life, my Creative Process, and my life as a Creative Process. In the past nine years I have been blogging, I have become more joyfully prolific than ever before in my life. My blog now contains a complete digital archive of my projects dating back to the late 1960’s and it includes all of my recently completed projects. ~ I invite you to visit my blog’s Welcome Page which contains all of my projects, contact information, my resume, biographical material, and much more. Visit: http://TheDepartingLandscape.blogspot.com
Gratitude
In closing, I want to express my gratitude to the Planning Committee for this year’s SPE Midwest Conference, held here in Milwaukee. The committee members are: Jon Horvath, Joseph Mougel, Kevin J. Miyazaki, Lindsay Lochman, Allen Morris and Aryn Kresol.
It has been a very full and beautifully organized conference, and it has been a great honor for me to have been nominated for this year's “Honored Educator” Award, and to have been invited by the Committee to share with you some of my stories. Thank you all for being here tonight and for participating in this year’s Conference.
I also want to thank Tyler Friedman, from the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, for his elegant installation of my Steve Lacy photographs in MoWA’s dedicated Downtown exhibition space in the Saint Kate Arts Hotel Lobby; and I am grateful to John Sobczak, Director of the Alice Wilds gallery in Milwaukee, for the support he has given me and Tyler in getting that exhibition up on the walls.
[note: I then invited everyone in the audience (350 had registered for the Conference) to the Gallery Talk scheduled for the next day, Sunday, October 27. See below for more about the MoWA / DTN exhibition and the Gallery Talks.]
[note: I then invited everyone in the audience (350 had registered for the Conference) to the Gallery Talk scheduled for the next day, Sunday, October 27. See below for more about the MoWA / DTN exhibition and the Gallery Talks.]
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The Larger Context
(More stories)
(More stories)
My Honored Educator talk (above) was presented in the UW-Milwaukee Student Union Ballroom on Saturday night, October 26, 2019, during the concluding session of the Conference.
Just before I presented my talk Saturday night, Joseph Mougel--one of the Conference Planning Committee members (and teacher of photography in the Art Department at UW-Milwaukee)--made several announcements and thanked everyone for coming to Milwaukee for the Conference. He then introduced Jon Horvath, another member of the Planning Committee (Jon teaches photography at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design).
Jon was the first of two presenters who shared their experience of me as a photography teacher at UW-Milwaukee. Jon was a graduate student in the photography program at UW-Milwaukee when I retired in 2007. After Jon's talk, he introduced John Sobczak, Director of the Alice Wilds gallery of contemporary art in Milwaukee. John was one of my earliest Milwaukee students after I arrived in 1975 to create the Photography Sub-Major in the Art Department.
After John completed his presentation, Jon Horvath came back to the stage again and announced (to my great surprise) that the Conference's Planning Committee had decided to purchase two of my miniature silver gelatin photographs from the 1999-2001 Garage Series project for the purpose of gifting them, in my honor, to the Museum of Wisconsin Art. (MoWA)
Then Jon introduced Tyler Friedman, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the MoWA. He came to the stage to officially accept the two framed photographs, then Tyler proceeded to announce to everyone in attendance that MoWA would be presenting a Retrospective Exhibition of my work in 2021, and that there would be a publication associated with the exhibition, and that there were plans to travel the exhibition. (Note: a few months later the Covid Epidemic swept through the United States and everything seemed to come to a standstill, including the plans for the Retrospective Exhibition, etc. In March, 2022, I did hear from the Museum through my gallery director John Sobczak that it intended to go forward with their plans, and that the proposed date for the Exhibition, etc would probably be sometime in 2024.)
The evening concluded with a slide talk by Darcy Padilla about her Family Love project.
Sound / Asleep
A Place to Rest & The Steve Lacy Series
MoWA / DTN exhibition in the lobby of the Saint Kate Arts Hotel
During the SPE Midwest Conference some of my The Steve Lacy Series photographs were being presented in a two person exhibition in a beautiful gallery in the lobby of the Saint Kate Arts Hotel, officially called MoWA DTN (The Museum of Wisconsin Art, Downtown Location). The exhibition, entitled Sound / Asleep, curated by WoWA's Tyler Friedman, also includes Tomiko Jones' installation entitled A Place to Rest.
Photos by Tyler Jones for the Alice Wilds Gallery
Tyler Friedman, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at MoWA opened the Sound / Asleep exhibition in September, 2019 with the idea of it being on display during the time of the SPE Conference because many of the Conference programs were held in the Arts Hotel.
Tyler personally selected the eleven Steve Lacy images and designed the installation consisting of three walls, each with a different constellation of framed prints, and a fourth wall upon which was placed a large flat screen monitor playing a video (continuously) of Milwaukee jazz musician Russ Johnson performing trumpet improvisational responses to each constellation of photographs. He gave brief talks after each improvisation. Click here to see the video
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Tyler scheduled two public Gallery Talks at the WoWA/DTN gallery during the SPE Conference: the first was Thursday, October 24, 2019 at 4:30, three hours before the SPE Conference officially began in the Arts Hotel; and the second was on Sunday, October 27, the day after the Conference officially ended.
Tyler, Russ and I were present at both Gallery Talk sessions, and in each of those sessions Russ performed a trumpet improvisation to the photographs and their installation. Russ's two Gallery Talk improvisations were quite different in approach compared to the set documented in the video: he stood next to the video screen and played from that one position looking across the gallery at each of the three walls while he performed. (An added bonus to this approach was being able to see him perform live next to video images of his earlier performances. The juxtapositions between the video and live improvisations provided some fascinating visual results.!)
Tyler, Russ and I were present at both Gallery Talk sessions, and in each of those sessions Russ performed a trumpet improvisation to the photographs and their installation. Russ's two Gallery Talk improvisations were quite different in approach compared to the set documented in the video: he stood next to the video screen and played from that one position looking across the gallery at each of the three walls while he performed. (An added bonus to this approach was being able to see him perform live next to video images of his earlier performances. The juxtapositions between the video and live improvisations provided some fascinating visual results.!)
I thoroughly enjoyed our Gallery Talks. Tyler asked important leading questions, and he contributed comments of his own, and in general he kept the conversation moving along; and Russ and I reacted to each other's ideas and commentaries in lively, engaged ways.
During Sunday's Talk, Greg Marcus, owner of the Saint Kate Arts Hotel came in to listen to the concert and our discussion. At the end of the session he publicly expressed his appreciation and enthusiasm for what had just transpired during our dialogues with each other and Russ's musical dialogue with the photographs. Mr. Marcus said it was exactly what he had wanted to have happen in the gallery when he initially conceived of idea for the Saint Kate Arts Hotel.
I am grateful to John Sobczak and Jon Horvath and Tyler Friedman--and so many other of my Milwaukee friends that have supported me in so many ways in regard to my return to Milwaukee as an exhibiting artist. See my project The Rising Sun ~ Prelude To An Exhibition, 2018 in which I describe the story of how Jon Horvath and John Sobczak conspired to bring me and my photographs back to Milwaukee for a mini-retrospective exhibition at the Alice Wilds, March 17--April 28, 2018. Their initiative and that exhibition was the seed from which everything else has since unfolded.
Besides the two Gallery Talks in the MoWA/DTN Arts Hotel Gallery, and delivering my Honored Educator talk on the concluding evening of the Conference, Gloria and I found time during our visit in Milwaukee to see the film Hilma af Klindt, relax and catch up with many old Milwaukee friends, and I met with John Sobczak to begin discussing the challenging question of how to approach the forthcoming retrospective exhibition in the Museum of Wisconsin Art's new building located in West Bend, Wi.
For Gloria, it was a more challenging time, for she was in quite a lot of pain from her fall in Alaska and she was having dizzy spells from a concussion; but she insisted on coming to Milwaukee to be with me and to spend time with our grandson River and his mom and dad.
During Sunday's Talk, Greg Marcus, owner of the Saint Kate Arts Hotel came in to listen to the concert and our discussion. At the end of the session he publicly expressed his appreciation and enthusiasm for what had just transpired during our dialogues with each other and Russ's musical dialogue with the photographs. Mr. Marcus said it was exactly what he had wanted to have happen in the gallery when he initially conceived of idea for the Saint Kate Arts Hotel.
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I am grateful to John Sobczak and Jon Horvath and Tyler Friedman--and so many other of my Milwaukee friends that have supported me in so many ways in regard to my return to Milwaukee as an exhibiting artist. See my project The Rising Sun ~ Prelude To An Exhibition, 2018 in which I describe the story of how Jon Horvath and John Sobczak conspired to bring me and my photographs back to Milwaukee for a mini-retrospective exhibition at the Alice Wilds, March 17--April 28, 2018. Their initiative and that exhibition was the seed from which everything else has since unfolded.
*
Besides the two Gallery Talks in the MoWA/DTN Arts Hotel Gallery, and delivering my Honored Educator talk on the concluding evening of the Conference, Gloria and I found time during our visit in Milwaukee to see the film Hilma af Klindt, relax and catch up with many old Milwaukee friends, and I met with John Sobczak to begin discussing the challenging question of how to approach the forthcoming retrospective exhibition in the Museum of Wisconsin Art's new building located in West Bend, Wi.
For Gloria, it was a more challenging time, for she was in quite a lot of pain from her fall in Alaska and she was having dizzy spells from a concussion; but she insisted on coming to Milwaukee to be with me and to spend time with our grandson River and his mom and dad.
Indeed, I had plenty of "play time" with our six-year-old grandson, River! He is such a treasure, and he ran me ragged with his "throw-Grandpa's-hat-over the-couch" game he spontaneously invented. We also went to the neighborhood playground to kick a ball around; and we ate pancakes together--which his mom (our daughter Jessica) made for us.
Our first meeting with River on this trip occurred on Thursday afternoon before my first Gallery Talk. Gloria and I pulled River out of his last hour of school (he goes to a Milwaukee Public Montessori School) and we took him to Babe's for an ice cream cone! (River chose chocolate ice cream, covered with chocolate sprinkles, plus a small cup of M&Ms on the side!)
An extra special treat for me was seeing River and his Mom and his Dad, Paul come to Sunday's Gallery Talk. When they entered the gallery River handed me some paintings he had made, as a way of saying "Congratulations Grandpa." When the Talk began many of us assumed that River would get restless and want to run around the Hotel. Jessica kept checking with River to see if he wanted to get up and leave, but River insisted on staying. He sat and listened, and he seemed especially fascinated by Russ's trumpet improvisations. Russ, in turn, responded musically to River's presence!
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It was a wonderful visit to Milwaukee, but we are back home, now, in Canandaigua, NY. Gloria and I have taped the pictures River gave us up on our wall--next to other paintings that our granddaughter, Claire (4 1/2 years of age) had given us earlier. Claire and her mom, Hao and her dad, Shaun (our son)--who live just 15 miles from us near Rochester-- will be with us for Thanksgiving Dinner.
There is so much I have to be grateful for . . . and Gloria and I are looking forward to Christmas time when Claire and River will have a chance to play together here in New York State (with Grandpa too, of course!).
Our first meeting with River on this trip occurred on Thursday afternoon before my first Gallery Talk. Gloria and I pulled River out of his last hour of school (he goes to a Milwaukee Public Montessori School) and we took him to Babe's for an ice cream cone! (River chose chocolate ice cream, covered with chocolate sprinkles, plus a small cup of M&Ms on the side!)
An extra special treat for me was seeing River and his Mom and his Dad, Paul come to Sunday's Gallery Talk. When they entered the gallery River handed me some paintings he had made, as a way of saying "Congratulations Grandpa." When the Talk began many of us assumed that River would get restless and want to run around the Hotel. Jessica kept checking with River to see if he wanted to get up and leave, but River insisted on staying. He sat and listened, and he seemed especially fascinated by Russ's trumpet improvisations. Russ, in turn, responded musically to River's presence!
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River, "The Forest" Claire, (Untitled, Self Portrait?)
It was a wonderful visit to Milwaukee, but we are back home, now, in Canandaigua, NY. Gloria and I have taped the pictures River gave us up on our wall--next to other paintings that our granddaughter, Claire (4 1/2 years of age) had given us earlier. Claire and her mom, Hao and her dad, Shaun (our son)--who live just 15 miles from us near Rochester-- will be with us for Thanksgiving Dinner.
There is so much I have to be grateful for . . . and Gloria and I are looking forward to Christmas time when Claire and River will have a chance to play together here in New York State (with Grandpa too, of course!).
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Addendum
May 2024
Of course, just a few months later, when the Pandemic became a living nightmare for so many people around the world, including the USA, the plans for my 2021 exhibition, etc. by the Museum of Wisconsin Art simply faded into the background, and has never been realized as I write this note in late May, 2024. I never received an official statement from the Museum that the project was off or simply in a holding pattern, so I don't know if this event will ever take place at all, or in my lifetime. I keep this recent teaching by Gurumayi Chidvilasanda in mind as I write this Addendum:
Gurumayi said (my paraphrasing):
We should set aside time to celebrate the splendor of
our efforts and admire the mystical workings of
grace & the hand of destiny in our endeavors.
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This project was announced on my blog's
Welcome Page on November 28, 2019
Thanksgiving Day
Thanksgiving Day
Addendum added Late May, 2024
RELATED Links:
https://vimeo.com/360691657 Russ Johnson's improvisation video
The Rising Sun ~ Prelude To An Exhibition, March 2018
Snow Photographs ~ Homage To Harry Callahan and All My Teachers, April 2018
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Homage to Minor White, A Stieglitz & V Silvestrov, 6-2019
Photography and Yoga 2015
Visit the Welcome Page to my Departing Landscape photography blog which includes the complete listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and much much more.
Visit the Welcome Page to my Departing Landscape photography blog which includes the complete listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and much much more.