From The Aspen Times February 2003 “Gossamer Dreams” article by Stewart Oksenhorn When photographer Peter Sahula began his “in the Garden of Gossamer Dreams” series, there was no issue about the technology involved in creating the photographs. It was in the mid -1990’s when Sahula began the series, and the age of digital photography — photography in which the images could be easily manipulated by computer, and made into high quality prints - was in its relative infancy. Sahula’s “in the Garden of Gossamer Dreams images are not straight photography but neither are they digital, or computer altered, images. Instead, they are photographs made of multiple negatives: generally a naked woman, a river, a moon - or starfilled sky and more. Sahula’s photographs are made not on a computer screen, but in a traditional darkroom, where he cuts and pastes as many as five different negatives to come up with one dreamy, slightly surreal image. Sahula, a former New York fashion photographer, wasn’t looking to experiment with photographic technique with his latest series. But working with both nude figures and outdoor landscapes required some creative thinking and forward - thinking solutions. “At one point,” he said “I was trying to photograph a nude, outside, by the river.I couldn’t do it there— I was right by a road, there was traffic. I couldn’t get the model across the river to a spot where I wanted. So I decided to shoot the river there, and shoot the model in my studio. “When I do one of these, I will plan what the foreground is, what I want for the background, and then shoot the model in perspective so the scene has a realistic look. There’s no way you could shoot these in one negative.” Sahula found that the slightly artificial technique had its advantage. He could give longer exposure to certain elements of the image - say, make the moon unusually bright, while the nude body was less bright. “It worked out really well,” he said. “I was able to control the lighting and the end result was every bit the way I saw it in the beginning. That started this whole thing.” While a piece from the series has been shown here and there, including at the Aspen Art Museum’s Roaring Fork Open in 2001, “ In the Garden of Gossamer Dreams” gets its full unveiling this weekend. Some 50 photos from the series will be exhibited at the Woody Creek Gallery and Store, with an opening on Friday, Feb. 14, from 5 to 8 p.m. Sahula is also set to present the series in a one-man show in June at Denver’s Camera Obscura Gallery. The Valentine’s Day opening at the Woody Creek Gallery is not coincidental. While Sahula never intended “In the Garden of Gossamer Dreams” to be a technical advance, it was meant to have an emotional quality of romance. In juxtaposing the naked female figure with the natural elements of land, water and sky, Sahula was seeking to compose landscapes of pure beauty. Before the current series, Sahula had completed a series of images that focused on comets and stars in the night sky. With “In the Garden of Gossamer Dreams,” he has added another piece into the equation. “This is what I like now,” he said. “I feel I’m really doing something that’s me, once I started combining the nights with the nudes. They have a romantic feeling, which I really like to put in the scene. There’s something for me romantic about water, the night sky and the nude figure, which for me is the most beautiful thing there is.” “Putting her in a romantic, kind of isolated situation, makes her romantically accessible to me. Where if it’s a nude in the studio, it can be beautiful, but it doesn’t have the same romantic, storytelling, emotional feeling. (In real life) you don’t see it this way. But it would be nice if you could.” *** Had Sahula shown his recent images when he started working on them seven years ago, he probably would have fielded numerous questions about how they were made. Now, however, with the capabilities of digital photography making quantum leaps every few months, most viewers will silently assume the images were computer-aided. Which they are not. “I believe photographs are made with negatives and printed in the darkroom on photographic paper. There’s something about that that collectors and galleries want.If they’re going to be collecting photographs, that’s the medium. I call it true to the medium.” For the moment, anyway. While nobody would have mistaken Sahula’s “In the Garden of Gossamer Dreams” images for computer-manipulated art in 1996, it’s a different story today. “Now, it’s an issue,” he said. “I’m sure people are going to think these are digital images.” Even Sahula himself says that, even with his trained eye, if someone showed him these images and similar images made with the assistance of a computer, he might not be able to tell the difference. “You could six months ago, because of the resolution. But the resolution keeps doubling, If you look at the photography magazines, and see what they’re doing with the new Nikons and Canons, you see that the quality is getting so good, it’s getting hard to tell the difference.” Even the question of how long the images will last is becoming increasingly less of an issue. “Until recently, digital prints faded in the light,” said Sahula. “Very recently though, the problem is getting fixed. But they don’t really know yet. But we do know that a black and white, properly processed print can last for 200 to 300 years. There are still prints around from the beginning.” Sahula doesn’t see the mixing of photography and computers as an unholy alliance. He himself uses the Photoshop software for a variety of purposes. He can even envision the day when he will start making the art prints that he sells from digital cameras: “At some point, Kodak may stop selling me film,” he notes. But he does think there should be a distinction drawn between the media of traditional photography and digital imagery. “Maybe they shouldn’t be called photographers. Maybe they should be called digigraphers.” he said. “When you think of a photograph, you think of something taken on film and printed in the darkroom. I’d like it if there were a clear difference, to tell people.” For the moment, Sahula believes that digital photography hasn’t quite caught up with images made from film. Much of his comparison is based on work done by his son, a videographer and editor for a Boston TV station. “The video doesn’t have the same look,” said Sahula. “Film has a smoother, romantic look, even after it’s changed to digital for TV. Film has a better look to me.” A separate but related issue to the quality of the images is the accessibility of the medium. While film photography is not a prohibitive medium, digital imagery is far cheaper and more accessible. And that, too, is changing the playing field. “One thing about the computer - in a way, it’s easier to do this kind of thing.” he said. “It’s easier to put images together without much thought. People take images off the Internet and make collages with them. And because it’s easy, it may force the stuff that comes out to be better. The standard needs to rise, because anybody who knows Photoshop can do it pretty well.” *** Like all photographers of his generation, a switch to digital would mean, for Sahula, breaking with years of habit and practice. After growing up in the Texas panhandle, the son of a Czech-born painter, Sahula moved to New York City, where he began making photographs at 14. After attending the Art Center School in Los Angeles as a scholarship student, Sahula became a fashion photographer, his work appearing in top fashion magazines. After 30 years he found he had had enough. “I burned out,” said Sahula. “The business changed. They stopped hiring people for their talent and made people bid for jobs. So sometimes you’d get a job because your price was less.” He moved to the Frying Pan Valley in Colorado in 1986, and stopped doing commercial work, “because you’re always trying to please someone else. It was never as satisfying as you’d expect,” he said. Last year, he was about to accept a commercial job, but the project was cancelled. “It was such a relief.” he said. Sahula has found all sorts of happiness in his current existence. For the past 9 years he has lived with fellow photographer Karla Nicholson, who has specialized in ballet photography and now does hand-colored landscapes. And in his latest artwork, Sahula is finding creative satisfaction. “When I do the Gossamer Dreams pieces, I feel like I’m making something,” he said. “When I see them, when they’re done, I don’t see them as individual things, as separate units from separate negatives. That’s what gives me the most satisfaction - I’ve created something that really wasn’t there. It’s photographic, but it’s not something that existed before I got my hands on it.” And all without the help of a computer. Next