All artwork presented in this column is (c) the respective artists, and may not be copied, altered or re-used without express written permission.
Greetings, Cyberfolk, and welcome to the November Keepers of Light. This month we return to the Exposure Gallery (see the October '93 issue for details about Exposure) to visit a fascinating exhibition of photographs by Vancouver artist Gerry Schallié. We'll also be speaking with Schallié to discover more about what he is trying to achieve with this on-going documentary of the Mayan ruins in southern Mexico.
The first impression on entering the gallery and glancing around is that some one has gone to a lot of trouble to produce an elegant presentation. All of the works in the show are identically, simply and impeccably matted and framed. The mattes have been cut optically centered , and a subtle score line has been expertly made around the openings. The overall effect is one balance, harmony and order. Even the title tags on the walls beside each piece have been tastefully laser printed on fine paper and placed with precision beside each frame.
Right. Of course consummate display is often camouflage for inferior photographs, but happily this is not the case with Pan Paxil. This show, shot at various locations in the Yucatan in 1992, represents some of the most carefully executed photography I have seen in a long time. Shot entirely on Kodak High Speed Infrared film the images have all of the glittering grain and highlight glow that this film, properly handled , can produce. Further, the prints have been made on especially high silver content papers, and gold toned, giving them a depth and body they could otherwise not posses.
The images themselves are curious, almost disturbing. The ruins are the subject, or perhaps it is the effect that the sight of these destroyed places has on the viewer that is the subject. These are not glamour shots, although some of them are quite dramatic. Most of them seem quite impersonal, almost empty of meaning at first sight. Very little, if anything, has been done by the artist to try and impose any interpretation upon these sad and maddeningly enigmatic ruins. They simply are.
The first I viewed, "El Mercado" almost made me laugh. Ruined columns stand in a overgrown vineyard-like setting. It might have been somewhere in Greece. The sun beams down from behind the foliage and the trees and columns both glow in the diffuse light. It had a fantasy quality, like a matte painting in a movie. There is a small clearing, and I half expected to see Captain Kirk and an away team beam into the picture. The longer I looked at it the emptier it appeared to grow. I moved on.
One I particularly enjoyed was "Annex of the Knives, Edzná". Here the glitter of light on the grass and worn and shattered rock dances, as if the knives in the title were growing in sharp myriad profusion on the ground, in the trees, the air. It sparkles.
Annex of Knives, Edzná
I spent a lot of time looking at "Chac (Raingod), Maya Pan". This fierce figure has seen better days. He is all pocked, teeth broken, chipped. One eye has been put out. I got the impression from the damage that Chac had suffered the indignities of perhaps generations of post-modern Mayan punks pelting him with rocks, where once they might have stood with awe.
In his artist's statement Schallié refers to the work of writer John L. Stephens and artist Frederick Catherwood, who first chronicled the then virtually unknown Mayan civilization in 1841. Schallié says found himself influenced by the feelings invoked by the explorers work, and he found himself photographing many of the same places visited by them, in some cases perhaps standing in the exact same spots. Indeed there is a tremendous similarity between some of Catherwood's drawings and woodcuts and some of Schallié's photographs.
Palace of Masks, Kabah (Schallié, left) Detail of Ornament 1st Casa, Kabah (Cartherwood, right)
"Fallen Ornaments, Kabah" along with "Chacmool & Serpent Heads, Chichén Itzá" (the latter perhaps more so) and a few others appear at first to break from the impersonal feeling of the majority of the work in this show. The closer view of these details and fragments seems more intimate than the larger scenes, a function of size and viewpoint. But again this feeling of intimacy fades, and the mystery and, yes, desolation returns.
Chacmool & Serpent Heads, Chichén Itzá
"Governor's Palace, Uxmal" is a favorite of mine with its deep shadow between the two strangely curving walls. Again and again the questions recur: who were these people, how did they live, what happened...
Governor's Palace, Uxmal
I found myself becoming depressed. Not depressed, exactly, but subdued rather by the emptiness and wonder of it all. The utterly alien mystery of it. It accumulates. Each image reinforces each other. The whole show seemed to echo.
Another fine image was "Roofcomb, Edzná". Here is a photo that could be used to teach design. Striations in the rock and streams of light and shadow in the clouds appear to radiate from the common centre of a black and threatening empty doorway. The fingers of the rooftop and columns rake the sky above the rounded hilltop and the dark and featureless plain below.
Roofcomb, Edznà
Altogether "Pan Paxil" is an excellent show. It is also a work in progress. Schallié intends to return to southern Mexico this December to do further work. I'm looking forward to seeing the final project.
Pan paxil [pan pashil] broken place, the cradle of civilization in Mayan mythology; a citadel or mountain struck by lightning, mixingcorn and water to produce the first true humans.
Tech Notes
Profile: Gerry Schallié
Gerry Schallié is a very interesting man. His passion for and dedication to photography is evident in both his conversation and his work. By day he gigs as Fuji film rep (and his choice of a Kodak film for this exhibition was a source of some jocularity around the office.) He enjoys the work, but finds it somewhat, well, corporate. It does give him the freedom to travel to Mexico on photo expeditions, though, and it allows him to take a stricter approach to pricing his artwork than an artist who has to live on print sales alone might be able to swallow.
He maintains his own darkroom, separate from his house because, he says, it lets him get away from photography for a few hours by going home. He keeps a "huge" darkroom, and keeps it scrupulously clean. The printing process he employed for Pan Paxil is arduous, to say the least. The dilute glycin developer he uses with the Forte paper calls for print development times running over seven minutes (compared to the forty-five to ninety seconds common with developer-incorporated emulsions and high energy developers). Worse, the combination of weak developer and high silver paper means that the developer in the tray is rapidly oxidized, and replenishment is necessary after every print is processed. The prints must then be further painstakingly washed to archival standards, and then the process has only begun. Schallié often uses a selective bleaching process to bring out certain details in an image, using a variety of applicators and brushes, sometimes as fine as a single hair. The prints must then be washed again, in preparation for the gold toning process. The gold toner adds extra archival permanence to the prints, and has the further virtues of adding shadow contrast to the images, and cooling down the somewhat olive warmth of the Forte paper. Then, of course, the prints have to be washed.
Schallié goes to these (and other) lengths to achieve the print effect that he feels most completely empowers the image to speak. That was my overriding impression from talking with him while we scanned the photos for this review. Everything is subordinate to the image. He searches first for the feeling of a place or event, then begins a process of discovery to find what will aid the images in conveying that feeling, and what will hinder.
Obviously quite taken with the delicious mystery of pre- Colombian Mayan civilization, he is headed back to the Yucatan for another look, and may venture further south to Belize. His first trip, he relates, was something of an exploratory expedition. He asked around and pretty much went where people told him to, often with disappointing results ("Chichen Itzá was like Disneyland"), but this time he's going back loaded for bear. When I asked about where he might go he started pulling elevation maps, aerial photographs, and honking great tomes from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology from his reinforced cordura satchel. He's serious.
Schallié is quite well spoken, and will talk for hours about his work and his impressions, and does so often at the artists' round table discussions Thursdays at the Railway Club. He may be reached there or at (604) 737-7035, or by Snailmail at 307-1345 West 15th Ave, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, V6H 3R3.
- Kent Barrett, Vancouver, Canada
