By Page H. Gifford
Correspondent
Fluvanna Art Association met May 15 with speaker and photographer Paul Stams. Stams discussed his lifelong love of photography and montage. A former middle school physical education teacher, assistant principal, and union representative, Stams delved into photography and montage more seriously after retirement.
He was at one time the center of a controversy with the old guard of the FAA, who believed photography had no place in the association. Other members supported Stams, who had a compelling argument that no matter what tools are used, photographers are still artists. Photography, like other mediums, uses certain skills and techniques to manipulate light and elicit a response from the onlooker. Stams explained it didn’t matter what device the artist used, whether it was a paintbrush, pencil, or a camera.
“This is not digital, it is photography,” he reminded those in attendance.
Photo montages became trendy in the late 19th to early 20th century. It is similar to a collage but was done in the dark room by combining or juxtaposing negative images over one another. Stams does this well and began creating his photo montages in 1972.
“One day, someone looked at my work and said, ‘When did you become an artist?’ I had never looked at my work this way,” he said, stunned at the realization that he was taking his skills and techniques to a higher level.
In his later years, computers made combining, overlapping, repeating, and blending images much easier with Photoshop, eliminating the need to spend time in a dark room with toxic chemicals.
As his techniques and tools evolved, so did his style and expression. His statements and messaging became clearer.
“Dadaists used montage as political dissent during the late 19th century.” Stams has unusual gift for translating his photographs into ethereal, overlapping, and repeating images and blending them with bold colors. They are riveting works of art that keep the onlooker absorbed, wondering where reality ends and fantasy begins.
The places he has traveled to, including Amsterdam, London, Cuba, New York, and New Orleans, he cleverly arranges his photos in a whirlwind of familiar icons and personal expression.
“I use 15-30 pictures to complete a montage.”
In his more serious pieces, he subtly combines images such as his hands with a cell phone looming large over a beautiful beach at dawn. The meaning was obvious, what we are missing in the moment in the natural world. Those things cannot be recaptured easily while we waste time on our devices. Some of his images can seem abstract and unrelated, but they have a deeper meaning that links them. In one photo, he has several African animals looking off in the distance at progress and development, and wondering why their environment was sacrificed for this.
His current photos of Charlottesville feature many subjects, including a ghostly black figure gliding over the railroad tracks in the Spirit of the Amtrak Station. He records the changes, the people who have come and gone, and the condition of the Downtown Mall in a series of photos that are a powerful expression of what he sees. His perspective is always “seeing “ what is around him and translating it into meaningful art that takes us to a different level of thinking.
