Gary Briechle
96 pages
Published last December by Twin Palms Press
(U.K. link
)
Review by Jim Hughes
One beautiful fall day in Maine a few years ago, I found myself sitting in the Subaru. I was just staring into space, admiring the spectacular foliage and wonderfully clear light while waiting for my wife to finish shopping. Suddenly, my attention was drawn to some activity in the distance on the Village Green. I saw a bunch of young people, wearing what appeared to be typical teenage grunge, gathered around a park bench. There was, if I remember, a blanket on the ground, and a young couple, literally wrapped up in each other, peering over at a man standing behind a big wooden box on an old fashioned tripod.
Approaching dusk made it difficult to see. I crossed the street to get a closer look. The box turned out to be a view camera, probably mahogany, with a well-worn bellows and a large brass lens aimed at the couple. The man behind the camera wore a floppy fedora. He held up a hand and ducked under a black oilcloth slicker of the sort worn by local lobstermen, deftly racked the lens forward to focus, hung his hat over what I soon learned was an antique shutterless barrel lens, pulled out a large dark slide, gently lifted the hat from the lens, and counted silently as the late afternoon light inexorably faded. Finally, he hung the hat back over the lens.
After quickly reinserting the dark slide, the man stood bolt upright and sprinted toward a nearby parking area, leaping over a heavy chain link fence in the process. Walking as fast as I could, I followed him. By the time I caught up, all I could see were two legs kneeling on the pavement. The man's torso had wriggled into a small opening in what appeared to be a makeshift orange-colored tent built into the rear cargo area of a Toyota RAV4 whose rear lid was open. A few minutes later, he extricated himself. He seemed surprised to have had an audience. I introduced myself.
"Oh, I know you," he said with an affable grin. I imagine he meant that he knew my writing about photography, not surprising since he was obviously a photographer himself. His name, he said, was Gary Briechle (he spelled it for me), and he had left the rat race behind in New Jersey to settle in small town Maine a few years earlier. I understood totally, I said.
"Are you doing what I think you're doing?" I asked. "Probably," he replied, pulling out from the back of the Toyota a small white plastic tray full of really murky, and smelly, liquid. "I'm teaching myself wet plate." Wet plate collodion, to be specific, using hand cut glass plates for which he had devised a way to partition an 11x14 back into various medium format dimensions. In the tray was, indeed, a small glass negative that he rocked back and forth in his home-made solution so I could glimpse the image in the lowering light.
"It's all about the light," Briechle said. "The whole process."
"Photography is seeing. Light is beautiful. Pure. I don't like the direction photography mostly seems to be going in. So I decided to take the next step. Backward, some might say. I coat my own glass with an orthochromatic [blue sensitive] emulsion in my portable little dark tent. The reddish light inside is pretty dim at this time of day, and doesn't affect anything. Then I run over to the camera, load the wet plate, remove my shutter hat from the big old brass lens, expose by feel and growing experience, then run the plate, still wet, back to the tent, where I have very little time to develop it out. Wet plate collodion is photography at its most basic. I'm still learning. I'm having fun. It's like magic again."
I thought of William Henry Jackson setting up camp next to a stream on the top of a mountain, his huge camera, a crate full of glass plates and his portable darkroom all strapped to his trusty mule "Hypo."
It's been at least five years since I first met Gary Briechle. In the interim, he has continued to photograph the old fashioned way. His subjects mostly have been friends and family willing to sit or stand for the long exposures in dim light his process requires. He has had a book in the works for years. It is finally published, by Jack Woody of Twin Palms Publishers, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The first edition of Gary Briechle Photographs (the cover of the book says "Photographs" but the publisher lists the book simply as "Gary Briechle") was 1,500 casebound copies. List $60. There is also a limited edition of 25 copies in a clamshell box, with an original print, numbered and signed by Gary, for $800, from Twin Palms.
There are 66 superbly reproduced photographs—complete with the flaws inherent to such a hand-made process—in this handsome 10x12-inch volume. Pages are meticulously coated in lustrous black ink as if they were from an album. The images themselves are reproduced in glossy duotone on glowing white-paper rectangles framed in black. In the right light, contact prints from glass seem to float above the page. The technique is a perfect match for Briechle, who somehow transforms the picturesque outer world that surrounds him into a deeply felt interior vision. Also included at the end of the book are photocopied excerpts from the journals Gary constantly scribbles in. Although there is a brief statement by the photographer on the Twin Palms website, no written introduction, or any sort of clarification, appears in the book itself. Knowing Gary, he probably felt it was better not to explain himself, to let his pictures do the talking. But as a a writer and editor myself, I believe a little context goes a long way, which is why I felt compelled to write my own brief introduction. Thus this review. I can only hope Gary understands.
Jim
Jim Hughes is the major biographer of W. Eugene Smith and the founding editor of the original Camera Arts magazine. His writings for TOP can be found here.
Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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Thanks for the intro Jim, love this guy's vision. I just squeezed in that book order with only 2 left through the Amazon link.
Posted by: Mark | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 11:02 AM
For those interested in seeing more of Gary's work or buying prints, Cathy Edelman Gallery represents his work here in Chicago.
There is also a video artist talk from Gary's December 2011 show at Edelman gallery.
Bon appetit!
Posted by: Kenneth Tanaka | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 11:05 AM
Didn't Ctein say in the last year or so that nobody cares how hard you worked?
This book strikes me as contradicting that statement. It appears -- to this viewer at any rate -- that the fact that these photographs were very hard to make is giving them extra credit.
This is a general theme in Art with a capital A, complex and difficult processes tend to imbue the final result with More Goodness in the eyes of many.
Posted by: Andrew Molitor | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 11:18 AM
Beautiful!
Posted by: Stan B. | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 11:24 AM
I just placed my order using the UK link above and was quoted the equivalent of over 90 euros including postage to Germany.. Luckily enough I was informed they could not ship (Cameron Speech Effect?).. So I ordered using the US link, and they are now shipping for 52.88 euros, including P&P.. Will probably take longer, but will be worth the wait..
Posted by: Christer | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 12:33 PM
So Wabi-Sabi. I just ordered the book. Thanks.
Posted by: Andrew Kirk | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 12:59 PM
Exquisite photographs-- a breath of fresh air in an age of indiscriminate imaging. Thanks for the post.
Posted by: Bill Poole | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 02:10 PM
Collodion is sensitive to blue light. So, like a blue filter for B&W film, it shows alot of the sitter's imperfections (eg. red blemishes will appear dark). Collodion on metal - tintype - is a 19th century version of Polaroids. On glass, they can be used for producing enlarged prints of great detail.
Posted by: Doug Howk | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 02:11 PM
That last shot...WOW!
Posted by: John Brewton | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 03:40 PM
Another photographer teaching himself wet plate collodion is Mark Tucker [http://marktucker.wordpress.com/].
Posted by: hlinton | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 04:02 PM
>> "Photography is seeing. Light is beautiful. Pure."
Agreed, but is digital not able to capture the same vision and the same light?
I feel there is quite a bit of nostalgia here. If digital was to go away and film to come back, many people will pine for "that digital look".
Posted by: Zafar | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 04:27 PM
Here is a Photoeye video featuring Gary's book
http://vimeo.com/56936448
Posted by: Andy | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 04:46 PM
It becomes absurd when you just throw yourself in and say how wonderful images are every time you see something cute. It becomes meaningless. Which is why I said I can't see in Camus Wyatt's good pictures what everybody else seemed to see as exceptional.
But I see in these photographs by Gary Briechle something exceptional, something that walks the extra mile, something where the next photograph fits with the last, a true 'work' and not just a connecting style.
Posted by: Steve Barnett | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 05:10 PM
What a nice story, and beautiful pictures...probably another addition to my library ...
robert
Posted by: robert quiet photographer | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 05:18 PM
"Didn't Ctein say in the last year or so that nobody cares how hard you worked?"
That depends.
In a marathon , taking a taxi is frowned upon for instance. Some people frown on wildlife photography in zoos or staging news photos. The same goes for faking wet plate photography.
Posted by: Hugh Crawford | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 08:30 PM
Zafar- Digital can capture the same light alright, but hardly the same vision. Most people are nostalgic for something they can relate to in their personal past. This is not only a different (and very foreign) way of doing things for most of us, it is also very much a different way of seeing. This welcomes, embraces and celebrates the imperfections of a process, each exposure uniquely rendered in its own individual physicality. Digital revels in its repetition of sanitized near perfection.
Posted by: Stan B. | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 09:21 PM
These photos to me seem to be about a fascination with the grotesque which I find rather grotesque itself. And not attractive. Takes all kinds, and so forth.
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 10:00 PM
Interesting point Steve, but I feel the exact opposite as you concerning these photos and Camus Wyatt's. To me, Wyatt's are something extra. Not something new and unseen before, but something very well done and interesting, and consistently very well done and interesting. Not that I don't like Briechle's, but to me, they (the ones I see, here. To see the real photos would be an entirely different thing) do not reach the level of "exceptional." No matter the process.
Posted by: D. Hufford. | Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 10:49 PM
It really is all about the IMAGES! T-max to silicon wafer, collodion plate to medical x-ray (radiographic film), photography rewards our fleeting consciousness with a brilliantly durable image. Images are the stuff that make us laugh, cry, and dream(imagine)! Thank you Mike for the deluge of inspiration as of late. So very refreshing to have charge coupled devices "in the bokeh" so to speak.
Posted by: Drew Marsh | Friday, 25 January 2013 at 12:12 AM
If we go to the space and we don´t have much room for a collodion camera we need an iphone with Tintype app and the Hipstamatic Tintype SnapPak a way to make fast portraits and landscapes on the alliens land.
Posted by: hugo solo | Friday, 25 January 2013 at 04:44 AM
What a beautiful story, and an amazing photographer. Thanks Jim!
Posted by: Saul | Friday, 25 January 2013 at 06:42 AM
Hugh Crawford, that is an interesting point.
Suppose -- purely hypothetically, let us be QUITE clear -- that this book was found eventually to contain 20 wet plate photos, and 46 digital images edited to look like wet plate images. How would we judge the work then? How should we judge it?
Posted by: Andrew Molitor | Friday, 25 January 2013 at 07:23 AM
"Agreed, but is digital not able to capture the same vision and the same light?" From what I've seen? No.
Posted by: Earl Dunbar | Friday, 25 January 2013 at 09:09 AM
Andrew wrote: "It appears -- to this viewer at any rate -- that the fact that these photographs were very hard to make is giving them extra credit."
I disagree. The images stand on their own. The backstory adds interest but isn't the reason to love the images or the book. From what I can see online, the images are gorgeous -- beautifully composed, shot, and hopefully printed.
Posted by: Joe | Friday, 25 January 2013 at 10:08 AM
I like all of these, probably in ascending order, even though i don't particularly care for the distressed look most of the time.
But that forth one... That is something extraordinary.
Wow.
Posted by: S. Chris | Friday, 25 January 2013 at 11:16 AM
If I may offer some thoughts...
Reactions to work such as Gary's, when presented in an online photography context, tends to run as it has here. Some think it's lovely. Some think it's pretentious old-timer junk.
This is not work that can be judged from behind your keyboard in your browser window. This is not typical snap-and-show online stuff.
Gary's work is deliberate, premeditated, and produced through an archaic technical process which he feels best represents his intentions. (It seems not dissimilar to the practice and motivations of Sally Mann's work.*) The end product is crafted for a material presentation. Its virtual representation is nothing more than a memo.
So I invite you to at least take time to sit through his 30+ min. artist talk video, which I linked in an earlier comment. Gary's strong suit is not public speaking but at the end I guarantee that you will have a much deeper understanding of, and feeling for, what he's trying to express with this work. You may still not like it but at least you will be able to more ably testify on behalf of your opinion.
There's plenty of photographic art work that I just don't believe in today. But I do make an effort to learn as much as I can about it before putting it in my pay-no-mind bin. Yes, I'm fortunate to be able to frequently meet artists, hear their stories, and see their works in person. But museum sites, gallery sites, You Tube, and Vimeo are very nice stand-ins for such opportunities.
Thanks, again, Jim for taking time to present us with a memorable anecdote packaging thought/discussion-provocative photographic art works.
--
* Video: "What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann"
Posted by: Kenneth Tanaka | Friday, 25 January 2013 at 01:59 PM
I'll second that, Ken...despite the fact that we've just been talking about a large oil painting most of us have just seen as a tiny JPEG (gak).
Mike
Posted by: Mike Johnston | Friday, 25 January 2013 at 02:02 PM
Interesting work and somehow reminiscent of Roger Ballen in it's dark semi-constructed nature. Thanks to TOP for bringing this to my notice.
Posted by: Barry Reid | Friday, 25 January 2013 at 05:10 PM
Being a hobby photographer, I like photographer that have passion about photography. Of course, we have. But how to show it? Doing what he did strike a chord. Cannot afford the limited Ed., but will try the cheaper one. Well, have to do email order and would see how it end up.
Posted by: Dennis Ng | Saturday, 26 January 2013 at 09:30 PM