December 12th | Michael Miner: The Craft & Art of Large Format Landscape Photography
The Wildling Museum of Art and Nature is pleased to announce an upcoming presentation with photographer Michael Miner on Sunday, December 12, 2021, 2 - 3:30 p.m. Miner’s demonstration and lecture will explore the art, craft, and technical aspects of large format black and white landscape photography. The event marks the museum’s first in-person event since early 2020 and seating will be limited. Advance registration is recommended.
Program attendees will enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at the large format photography process. For this event, Miner will assemble and explain the operation of an 8 x 10 sheet film field camera, share fundamentals of aesthetics and composition, and describe the process of “wet” photochemical enlarging made famous by Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Edward Weston. He will also review 20 x 24, 24 x 30, and 30 x 40 silver gelatin enlargements from his portfolios and share anecdotes about gallery representation. His prints have an archival integrity of over 200 years, and no digital steps are employed.
Using geologic time frames, in a slide presentation developed for two National Park Artist-in-Residence grants, Miner will discuss the origin and foundations of humanity’s appreciation of nature, often referred to as the “art instinct.” The lecture will explore the timeless universality of depictions of nature from Lascaux cave drawings to representational landscape paintings to photography and link the modern epoch to our aboriginal ancestors. A Q&A will follow.
General admission is $10.00. Current Wildling Museum member admission is $5.00. To register in advance, click here or call (805) 688-1082. This presentation will not be recorded.
Please email info@wildlingmuseum.org with any questions.
The Wildling Museum’s ongoing lecture programming is sponsored by Montecito Bank & Trust.
Michael Miner, Tree and Storm, Silver gelatin print, Courtesy the Artist.
About Michael Miner
After twenty-five years as a filmmaker, in 2002 Michael Miner began recording landscape images on large format black and white sheet film. He uses a Canham MQC57 and Wehman 8 x 10 field camera to capture images and employs the “wet” photochemical process made famous by Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham to print the images onto fiber-based silver gelatin paper, which has an archival integrity of 200 years.
Miner received National Park Service Artist-in-Residence Grants for the Grand Canyon and the World Heritage Site Chaco Canyon. He also received a grant from the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts in Wyoming. The grants have helped immensely in his growth as an artist and photographer.
In an essay on aesthetics, Miner writes: “Neurophysiologists and art scholars agree that complexity creates conditions which transcend logic. Like jazz, classical music, abstract painting and cinematic montage, visual complexity resists analytic interpretation. When the mind cannot organize an image, a reverie develops. Only poetry, the last refuge of language, comes close to evoking this experience.”
Michael Miner currently exhibits images at Photography West Gallery in Carmel, California.
Explore more of Miner’s work at: www.michaelminerphotography.com and www.photographywest.com/pages/MichaelMiner-OriginalPhotographs.html