A CENTURY OF ART: THE WILEY TRADITION

	Lucia Wiley 1906-1998 Aunt of Drew Wiley WPA Muralist	Wayne J. Wiley 1940-1995 Brother of Drew Wiley Professional Photographer	Drew H. Wiley 1949- Large-format Photographer and Printmaker
	Paul Bunyan (Scraperboard 1933)	Lichen Detail (4X5 Agfachrome 1964)	Jeffery Pine Detail (30X40 Cibachrome)

For me, photography is a process of incessant discovery. Painters seek to reorient their world, when placing it upon canvas or paper, to match some idea or impulse of creativity. Digital printmakers often operate in similar manner. But I am captive to a fundamentally different mode of vision, an inherently photographic one, in which I am instinctively seeking intact correspondences in the visible world which have specific resonance to an inexplicable inner order, something not itself directly visible. Yet I cannot say whether this transpires by encountering an intangible realm within oneself, with the outward world serving as the catalyst, or whether one is interpreting actual nature through some related inborn instinct. For there seems to be a symbiotic junction between these two things, in which visual reality and the subconscious become interchangeable in the photographic instant. One thing is certain, however, and that is, the photographer must somehow instill into his prints the mystery of this perceptual dance.

When I first began making prints, at about the age of thirty, I was obsessed with ways to render the picture plane through complex reflections and shadows, and sought out dimensional anachronisms with mystical overtones. I wanted to leave the viewer uncertain exactly when he was entering or leaving the tangible three-dimensional realm. This was not an attempt at "abstraction," but the actual way I perceived the quality of light, with its inherent veil of transience. What I wanted to accomplish was to play a game, and provide a surface illusion which was permeable, coaxing one back and forth across an implied three-dimensional curtain. It would be like Alice in Wonderland remaining uncertain whether to enter the lure of the rabbit burrow or not. Perspective had little to do with it. But rare hues, subtly advancing or receding from the picture plane, and translucent or metallic reflections on the print medium itself, were important to achieving this. Printing on the Cibachrome medium, with its reflective surface, proved ideal.

My aunt and I once had an interesting argument about this subject. Her own paintings had become famous in the 1930's and 40's for a very flat perspective, with a very opaque pigment surface. Yet fluidity was achieved through her distinctive circular-flowing compositions. What the art critics never realized, however, was that she was blind in one eye. She actually saw the world two-dimensionally, and rolled her good eye in a circular motion to study things! Her hero was the Renaissance master, Piero Della Francesca, and she left me hundreds of slides she had taken of his murals in Italy, which demonstrated his own accommodation of perspective to a very flat field. I personally saw the world three-dimensionally, of course, but despised the exaggerated perspective of many scenic photographers. In fact, I have never cared for any kind of theatrics in still photography, either in color or composition, and perhaps this is why I sometimes cast a jaded eye against digital photography. For I tend to judge the weight of any photographer by the ability to actually perceive things, and by the judiciousness of one's restraint. Any fool can create visual noise.

My late aunt was one of the very few persons I knew who genuinely understood art through sight rather than pretense. Yet I personally visualize surfaces much different than a painter does, with the possible exception of the great early Impressionists, who adored the transparency of light.

Later I pursued highly intricate detail, perhaps because I was attempting to objectify the complexity of life at that time. And one of the benefits of large-format prints is that you can put a lot of detail in them. Conventional wisdom teaches that the bigger the print, the farther one stands away to view it; but people seem to put their noses right up to my prints, to see the fine detail. To this day, I relish the tangled disorder of windblown weeds and untamed brush.

Eventually some of my prints became solemn and majestic, which is likewise something the big 8X10 camera excels at rendering. Perhaps I am simply aging, and now sometimes need visual rest following a long battle. However, the majority of my photographs are taken purely for personal satisfaction, and many of them would probably be of limited interest to an uninitiated public. Yet I never have worked in a single, fixed style, and continue to explore various options.

It is commonplace for photographers to talk about exotic places they might have visited, or the fancy equipment they have acquired. But the inner journey of a photographer is more difficult to describe. I was raised in the Sierra Nevada mountains beside the immense canyons of the San Joaquin and Kings Rivers. Here I learned to appreciate the infinite delicacy of the light long before I owned a camera. When my aunt gave me her prized set of handmade watercolor pigments, I first attempted to paint this light, but quickly destroyed each of these paintings. Then, when I was seventeen, my older brother gave me my first camera, and I could now roam the peaks and canyons to record my impressions freely. Or so I thought. Today, however, I recognize how long the journey is between wanting to describe something and actually describing it as a print. In fact, the struggle never ends. But this fact is part of the mystique of photography.

Probably no place on earth has received as much attention from notable outdoor photographers as the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Here, Carleton Watkins produced some of the most visually sophisticated landscape images ever made. He is the only photographer I know of who could take a tapestry of intricate curves, like those Eliot Porter often chose, and seamlessly anchor this onto a dimensional support of strong graphic accents, like those Charles Sheeler composed with. Watkins was well ahead of his time as a forerunner to modern art, and it surprises me that some of his best visual strategies remain largely unrecognized. His successor and rival, Eadweard Muybridge, likewise arrived in Yosemite Valley with a huge plate glass camera, and made some of the most majestic images ever taken there. The lives of both these men eventually proved as tragic as the fading frontier itself. But when one looks at their wonderfully detailed albumen prints, their stubborn persistence seems rewarded.

Later, every important photographer in the West seems to have visited the Sierras. One of my favorites was Brett Weston, whose images of Mono Lake are particularly compelling. I once printed a photograph of petrified wood which I consider to be an homage to Brett Weston; and it is this particular image which attracted him to one of my exhibitions.

Of course, the most popular photographer with the general public proved to be Ansel Adams. I never viewed an actual print of his until I had already begun exhibiting my own color work. I was immediately impressed with his visual sensitivity to that same alpine light which I loved. This sensitivity is something conspicuously absent in the photographs of many of his disciples, who mimic only the dramatic flair in his landscapes. A decade later my big Cibachrome prints were chosen for display beside the largest collection of his classic black-and-white murals assembled up to that time. The cumulative effect achieved by alternating our respective pictures was quite interesting. Ansel's best images seemed poetic, while my own prints at that time were rather metaphysical. Previously, I had been exhibited beside abstract expressionist painters, or solo.

I have taken only a handful of pictures in Yosemite itself, which is merely the most accessible of the Sierra's great glacial canyons. I have always preferred more secluded portions of the range; and when I was younger, routinely avoided even trails, choosing my own routes. As a teenager I traveled very light, hoping to live off the land with a fishing pole or rifle. I once spent three nights in the Spring at 9000 feet in a makeshift igloo, without benefit of either a sleeping bag or decent jacket, and without firewood, after losing everything fording a stream swollen with icy snowmelt. But I did manage to save the camera! I could relate quite a few similar misadventures. Guess I have changed a lot, looking more like a human pack mule today, whenever I enter the mountains. Overall, I have taken hundreds of trips into the back country, often with an eighty or ninety pound pack loaded with view camera gear.

I began black-and-white photography largely as a respite to the expense of printing color, but found it to be an interesting diversion in its own right. The very first monochrome print I ever made was a very delicate scene, printed to 16x20 from a 4X5 negative taken during a November snowstorm in Utah.

The Sierras seldom receive the same justice in color film as in the traditional black-and-white medium. The conspicuous scenic beauty of this region has led to its prostitution in the form of stereotypical postcards, mountain sports posters, sticky-sweet coffee-table books, and disgusting SUV commercials. There have been some notable exceptions, of course. But I have always felt the Sierra needed the interpretation of someone native who could perceive its inner soul. One of my most intense projects was a portfolio of the Mother Lode foothill country which essentially became an elegy. The suede gray-greens of chaparral and oak leaves, with bronzed grasses and elegantly fading ruins, all became part of a statement too poignant for me to ever adequately relate. Yet this land is home to a species of individualist particularly callous towards the uncommon beauty; and as one approaches the Valley below, myopic developers are rapidly becoming the contemporary version of what John Muir once termed hoofed locusts. Many of the things I photographed just a decade or two ago are now gone.

After I moved to the California coast, I began to frequently photograph at Point Reyes National Seashore. This is a delightful place with abundant wildlife. And the rolling hills of the East Bay Regional Parks, representative of a distinctive California topography, assuage some of my nostalgic longing for the open-range ranch lands I knew in my youth. Redwood forests, with their scintillating light and playful little waterfalls, are also not far away, and are particularly welcome during the summer months, when it is hot inland. However, I still love to explore the high Sierra in the Summer and Fall, and about once a year might backpack a canyon in the Southwest, or some mountain range in the Rockies or Northwest. The Wind River mountains in Wyoming are reminiscent of the high Sierra in some respects.

Whenever I travel, I am essentially an opportunist, and might photograph anything. Sometimes I have carried a huge camera for days on end, without ever using it. As I have already hinted, photography is a special symbiosis for me. Getting out and enjoying nature is one thing; photographic beauty itself is something else, and far more elusive. I love the health and solitude of walking the mountains and forests, so that is where I spend my free time, and my camera naturally goes with me. Yet I am not seeking to "capture" nature the way the pioneers once attempted to conquer and exploit the wilderness. I guess that is what makes my own methods very different from those of many scenic or nature photographers. I cannot blame them for wanting to make a living outdoors, but for me, beauty really arises from an undefinable inner reflex, and not from any outward marketable stereotype. And I wish that more photographers would follow their own heart, rather than slavishly pursue what they assume the public expects from them.