Jerry Uelsmann has long been one of my Photographic Heroes. I didn't become aware of him until the mid-70s, when my love of photography was hatched, not with a camera but with an enlarger, in a High School yearbook darkroom. Uelsmann was featured in several photography magazine articles around that time. I purchased or subscribed to Peterson's Photographic religiously, where I seem to recall being first exposed to his surreal work.
I've recently had my interst in him reawakened and just found a great deal on a signed First Edition of his 1982 "Twenty-Five Years: A Retrospective" -- a rather funny title when you consider he is still going relatively strongly, thirty years later. I would imagine that a fascination with his work may be somewhat lost on the new generation that has grown up with Photoshop (many of whom know next-to-nothing of traditional darkroom methods). Uelsmann was not the first to employ his technique (that distinction, conventional wisdom awards to Oscar Gustave Rejlander, considered the father of the Combination Print. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Gustave_Rejlander ) Uelsmann, however, is credited with raising the technique to a whole new level. Some links for those interested in learning more about Uelsmann or, (for those who are more familiar) those wishing to review/renew their knowledge of his work: http://www.shutterbug.com/content/master-interview-jerry-uelsmann http://lightresearch.net/interviews/uelsmann.html http://www.photovisionmagazine.com/articles/uelsmann.html http://www.imagearts.ryerson.ca/dsnyder/review_1983g.php http://www.sptimes.com/2006/02/19/Floridian/Focusing_on_a_spiritu.shtml Jerry Uelsmann "Master Works" http://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/exhibitions/jerryuelsmann/masterworks/index.htm Official website http://www.uelsmann.net/ http://www.youtube.com/embed/MsVDXjthsaU The YouTube link is a teaser for Bill Suchy's HD documentary on Uelsmann, being prepared for PBS -- "The key to seeing the world's soul, and in the process wakening one's own, is to get over the confusion by which we think that fact is real and imagination an illusion. It is the other way around." -Thomas Moore, "Original Self" -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
