Interview With Photographer Stuart Rome
Congratulations to Stuart Rome for earning his place as the 2nd Place Winner in the Boynes Artist Award 11th Edition!
Who are you?
My name is Stuart Rome. I grew up in a small suburban town in the Northeastern United States of the 1950s. I left my home for the first time in 1971 to study photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology. But I was restless and wanted to travel, to experience more of life than what was offered in school. After that first year, I took a leave with the plan to join a friend to travel to Alaska, build a house in the wilderness and live off the land. I bought the gun and the sled dog but never made the trip. After a year in Rochester I learned that I hated cold weather. I spent a couple of years trying to learn photography while holding down odd jobs, and finally resumed my studies at R.I.T in 1974. There, I studied with John Pfahl. I became his assistant and assistant printer for his groundbreaking series, “Altered Landscapes.”
H39-1-2, Prairie Creek, CA. From the Series, "Oculus, within Worlds" Photographs from with inside Giant Redwoods and Sequoia Trees.
Film based photograph/archival pigment print.
By Stuart Rome
What inspired you to become an artist?
I never felt like I fit in with many of my young friends who seemed to be interested in material gain and the pleasures that can bring. Something essential seemed to be missing in the ethos of living to work. I always felt that life was short, even at a young age and I wanted the time I had to amount to something attuned to learning and finding out what the whole story as it plays out might mean so I guess it was meaning that was absent; religion tried to claim that territory but it too felt confining for me. Originally I had hoped to be a writer, it was books that were my big escape and the life of an artist appealed to me: a life of adventures outside of the restrictions of a daily job. But I was introduced to the poetry of photography by a high school friend and developing those early rolls of film and making prints in the darkroom was like discovering a 20 C alchemy: I was hooked. Photography then became my kind of poetry: my palette was reality from which I could, in a single image combine imagery that might challenge notions of what my reality might mean.
How would you describe your work?
I have spent the better part of the past five decades making works inspired by patterns in nature that are simultaneously recognizable anthropomorphic and zoomorphic references and a description of the forests and waters from which these patterns are found. It is my way of building a bridge from human experience to the vast and wilder intelligence found in Nature, from which we are but a small part. This concept was born from my early work photographing pre-industrial cultures in Southeast Asia who directly spoke to their landscape and whose land spoke back in the form of ceremony and trance while represented in the tribal arts of weaving, painting and sculpture.
H14-KC8-15, Kings Canyon. CA. From the Series, "Oculus, within Worlds" Photographs from with inside Giant Redwoods and Sequoia Trees.
Film based photograph/archival pigment print.
By Stuart Rome
Can you discuss the inspiration and thought process behind your winning work?
The photographs for which this award was granted is a Series, entitled, “Oculus” These pictures were made with-inside giant redwoods and sequoia trees; some over three thousand years old, a small remnant of their species. These giant trees were hollowed-out from millennia of lightning strikes and fires, forming apertures to the sky and the canopy above. Though hollow, they remain very much alive and their charcoal dark interiors reveal strange shapes that suggest a passage from one recognizable world to one that is like a waking dream.
For me, every process in picture making is a vehicle for considering meaning. The choice of black and white materials simplifies chaotic imagery into a form where a new visual order appears.
Over the course of my decade of work on this project, Oculus: I have learned that amongst other amazing qualities, these trees: communicate through a vast network of fungus filaments to move water and nutrients to other trees in need that could be miles away; were and still are considered sacred, ancient ancestors by the Yurok tribes though the only work available to those tribes was cutting them down. This is a project that for me has profound aspects relating to long term loss of natural habitats for short term gain as well as an appreciation for what still remains.
Bluto. H-3-15. Mariposa Grove, Yosemite, CA. From the Series, "Oculus, within Worlds" Photographs from with inside Giant Redwoods and Sequoia Trees.
Film based photograph/archival pigment print.
By Stuart Rome
Can you tell us about the technical steps involved in creating your award-winning work?
I made the first redwood picture on a break after finishing another long photo project. I had been camping and saw one of these trees whose interior reminded me of a vertical version of some sea caves I had photographed decades earlier. When I returned home, I processed the film and saw to my astonishment what riches were contained in that image. So, for the next seven summers, I travelled, hiked and camped in Northern California to try and find as many of these hollow core trees that might still be living. I mapped out all the redwood and sequoia stands, did research to find out where remnants of the old growth stand of trees remained and visited as many as I could find. In the first few years, it was mainly finding these rare trees, finding an entrance in the root ball, sliding inside, setting up a tripod and making a long exposure that I would then adjust in the darkroom development to pull as much detail as I might from both the brightest and darkest areas of these interiors; on a good year I might have come away with three to five new trees. It was slow work but each year, I learned more about the trees, where to return to and that the trees would light up for about 10 minutes a day when the sun was overhead. Around year seven, I entered this work in progress to the Guggenheim committee and received a fellowship award which I used the next few years to return and hire forest rangers that I had met, who on the days off would scout for trees for me to visit which increased my yield of new photographs dramatically.
What do you hope to communicate to an audience with your work?
For me, this work is a culmination of all the previous projects I have been involved with. The images form a kind of visual bridge to connect our limited human understanding of the world with a grander, wilder one found in the natural world we are rapidly fouling. So this work, in my estimation, is a kind of medicine or at least a meditative device for conjuring wonder for what we might still save or hold dear.
H14-PC33-11, Prairie Creek, CA. From the Series, "Oculus, within Worlds" Photographs from with inside Giant Redwoods and Sequoia Trees.
Film based photograph/archival pigment print.
By Stuart Rome
Can you talk about your biggest learning experience during the process of creating your work?
There were so many. While working on this project the book, the “Wild Trees” came out, describing how some young kids discovered what botanists had never uncovered about these giant trees; Suzanne Simard discovered how these trees communicate amongst each other and care for each other over hundreds of miles; and the history of how these trees were both revered by the Yurok tribe prior to contact and then became their only source of income as lumber. But I can think of few failures along the way: though the humid conditions of a temperate rainforest caused my gear to constantly break down, so I began arriving with spare cameras, film backs and some time had to wait out bad weather and the return of my gear from a quick repair turn around. There were small returns at the beginning of how many usable pictures I could bring home in a summer. But those problems were small in comparison to what felt like the riches I saw on my contact sheets.
Can you discuss your biggest success since starting your artistic journey?
This is a difficult one to answer. But in retrospect, my greatest successes came to me as if out of thin air. Early on, I was interested in learning more about anthropology and had considered studying that field of knowledge. While heading east from New Mexico, my car broke down, I went to see if I could sell some work to the local art museum and I landed a job for the next two years photographing Mayan art treasures and Ruins. Less than a decade later, I started looking for grant funding to photograph trance in Indonesia, when I was approached by an old friend who knew about my trance pictures from Haiti and he arranged for me to work for the next decade on and off photographing Indonesian reliquary objects along with the peoples who still used them ceremonially and the landscape that tied this content together. So I have always felt that I prepared myself for adventures and made myself available for them.
H15-5, Prairie Creek, CA. From the Series, "Oculus, within Worlds" Photographs from with inside Giant Redwoods and Sequoia Trees.
Film based photograph/archival pigment print.
By Stuart Rome
Can you give us the best piece of advice you have ever heard/received?
In between getting my undergraduate and graduate degrees in the arts of photography, I felt lost; I had no idea of how to support myself using my skills and so I arranged a meeting with the head of the anthropology department at a prestigious university. I brought my portfolio of work with me and after a lengthy conversation, this very wise and kind man who loved photography and showed a great appreciation for what I had brought, said “If I were you, I would hire myself out to archaeologists and anthropologists, who would share with you knowledge that they wouldn’t with their own students and pay you for the privilege” It was advice that helped to launch my career for the next forty plus years.
As a winner, do you have any advice for artists who want to apply for awards, competitions, residencies, etc.?
I understand that there are many reasons to apply for awards: for people struggling financially, for self-esteem, ego……. But what I have learned is: if the project you are working towards satisfies a curiosity towards finding out who you are in relationship to your world, what your worldview is saying, then the work comes first and when it finally becomes clear to you what your work is talking about, then its time to find out if the larger world is interested and that can come in the form of awards.
H41-17, CA. From the Series, "Oculus, within Worlds" Photographs from with inside Giant Redwoods and Sequoia Trees.
Film based photograph/archival pigment print.
By Stuart Rome
What projects are you working on currently? Can you discuss them?
When covid hit, I struggled to find something beautiful and mysterious to get me out of that low dark time, something that felt like travel but could be done near my home and I began making water pictures from a kayak in the river near my home. This work is now called WaterWorks and I have been photographing it near my home as well in cities with canals and waterways.
What is your dream project or piece that you hope to accomplish?
Currently I have three. One is to find a publisher for Oculus. I have lined up excellent writers for this work but no publishers, as yet have chosen to bring the work out as a book. One other is the Indonesian pictures that really fueled my 4 plus decades work has yet to be published. There has been some talks between an American Museum and Indonesian cultural alliance to bring me back one last time this year to make another series of pictures and then to publish that work along with my extensive archive of pictures. Finally, I would also like to work with accomplished gravure, lithography and wood block printers to create editions of my ongoing forest works as well as the newer color water pictures.
Wells - 1-16, CA. From the Series, "Oculus, within Worlds" Photographs from with inside Giant Redwoods and Sequoia Trees.
Film based photograph/archival pigment print.
By Stuart Rome
Lastly, I like to ask everyone what advice they would give to their fellow artists, what is your advice?
Life is shorter than you think. Make your time count. Be curious, sensitive and patient. Treat other artists and fellow aspirants with the respect you yourself would like; these qualities will open a life up to a multiplicity of possibilities and projects.
To view more of Stuart Rome