July 13, 2024 through August 07, 2024
Stu Levy • All the Years Combine: Selections - 1979 to 2024
In June, 1979, I attended the Ansel Adams Photography Workshop in Yosemite. It was a profound experience, which not only changed my photography, but changed the course of my life. I decided that this would be a good time to sample the photos I’ve made over these years, with the exception of musicians in performance (which is a whole other story).
The earliest photos reflected my recently acquired environmental concerns, and tried to show a pristine landscape. Aspects of abstraction started to appear in my photos, and I was asked to join a group of former Minor White students. They continued to meet monthly, and often repeated one of his quotations: “One does not photograph something simply for ‘what it is’, but ‘for what else it is.” This meshed nicely with my growing sense of abstraction.
Gradually, man-made elements began appearing in the photos. As I was attempting to photograph a bridge in the Columbia River Gorge, I made a Polaroid of my friend Terry Toedtemeier (photographer and curator) who was with me, then continued to photograph the bridge in 15 sections, including him in four. This was the beginning of my Grid-Portrait project, which combine photos of my subject at different times and in different places, and often includes the photographer.
Ultimately, fleeting lighting conditions and phenomena became part of my visual language and create a common thread through the images.
I think of the lines from the Grateful Dead song “Stella Blue”:
All the years combine
They melt into a dream
And that’s how the last 45 years of my photos feel to me.
Stu Levy is a photographer living in Portland, Oregon. He has led photography workshops on the Oregon Coast for over 30 years. He studied with Ansel Adams and was an assistant instructor for Ansel’s workshops in Yosemite and Carmel; he was also an instructor at the Ansel Adams Gallery Workshops.
His photographs are in many public and private collections including The Center for Creative Photography, the George Eastman House, the Portland Art Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art (Atlanta), Museum of Photographic Arts, San Francisco Civic Center, Portland Visual Chronicle and the Wilson Centre for Photography.
He was one of the founders of the Photography Council of the Portland Art Museum and was the Council President from 2003 to 2006.
He is also on the Board of Directors of Photolucida and the Pacific Northwest Photographers Archive.
Publications:
Cranial Czar, Eh? (One Picture Book #30) Nazraeli Press 2005
Grid-Portraits (Monograph) Nazraeli Press 2010
Honk If You Love Stieglitz (Jerry Uelsmann) (One Picture Book #75) Nazraeli Press 2012
Photographs 1979 – 2013 (In Search of the What Else) LensWork Press 2014
Magazine Articles:
Camera And Darkroom May 1993
Lenswork #59 Jul – Aug 2005
View Camera Magazine September/October 2007
Photographers Forum Fall 2013
On Landscape #201 March 2020
Black & White Magazine, Issue #162, October 2023