SHORT COURSE
In a Natural Light: William Wylie's point of viewby Laura Parsons
multiMEDIA
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View a slideshow of some of Wylie's recent photographs.
Browse a large selection of Wylie's older work.
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"Go do something interesting," the yearbook’s faculty adviser instructed William Wylie, handing him a camera. Then a high school student in Chicago Heights, Ill., Wylie recalls that he eschewed snapping photos of club meetings and cheerleading practice in favor of close-ups of light sockets and corners. "And they published those pictures," he says, smiling.
That was in the 1970s. It wasn’t until much later that Wylie began to consider photography a viable profession. After high school, he headed west to pursue an outdoor life of mountaineering, skiing and rock climbing. He began selling photographs of these rugged sports to magazines like Outside.
Eventually, he sought formal training but retained his fascination with the natural environment. In 2000, when he joined U.Va.’s McIntire Department of Art, Wylie published Riverwalk: Explorations Along the Cache La Poudre River, an award-winning book of landscapes taken while trekking the 150-mile length of this Colorado river, which moves from areas of pristine beauty through stretches of industrial degradation.
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William Wylie
photo by Jen Fariello
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What interests Wylie artistically is photography’s ability to alter what is seen. "I used to look through the viewfinder and say, ‘I want to take a picture that looks just like this,’" he explains. "What I’m doing now is a different thing. It’s a transformation. This can look like the subject matter, but it can be something else." In the photos of Riverwalk, for instance, the water sometimes takes on the texture of fluid black satin.
Wylie’s work earned him a Rome Award in 2004 and a Guggenheim Fellowship the following year. He used both prizes to complete a five-year project photographing the quarried stones and stoneworkers of Carrara, Italy, a region known for its fine marble.
He’s also been recognized as an exceptional teacher, and received U.Va.’s Mead Honored Faculty Award in 2003. "I think my enthusiasm is the best that I bring," Wylie says of what he offers students. "I’m excited about art, about their making art, about my making art, about things that are out there in the world."
Wylie encourages students to explore photography’s metamorphic possibilities. But there’s one thing he withholds, which perhaps harks back to his own first look through the lens. "I never tell people things to photograph," he says, "because I’m really much more interested in what they’re going to come to on their own. It forces people to be creative."
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DO'S AND DON'TS
Don’t focus on replicating the scene at the moment. "Try to shift your thinking from ‘taking’ to ‘making’ a photograph and realize that you are creating a new thing."
Don’t take only one exposure. "It’s easy to convince ourselves that we ‘have it’ and stop looking before we really see the subject that matters."
Do pay attention to the quality of the light. "Sure, the camera will work in most situations, but when you get the right light, it all comes together."
Do pay attention to the background in portraits. "The right configuration can make all the difference, while that telephone pole appearing to stick out of your best friend’s head can be frustrating."
Do embrace chance. "Photography can seem so mechanical that it becomes easy to lose sight of—or not see in the first place—those things we didn’t expect."
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GREAT IMAGE MAKERS
Eugene Atget—"A French turn-of-the-century poet of the streets in a changing Paris. He was an influence on Americans Bernice Abbott and Walker Evans and eventually most of modernist photography."
Ralph Eugene Meatyard—"In his day job as an optician, he helped people see more clearly. In his photography, he used a sense of the surreal to help us see the mystery at the core. He photographed everything from his kids wearing grotesque masks in abandoned houses to highly experimental studies of light and movement."
George Barnard—"A Civil War photographer of extraordinary clarity and vision. Not as graphic as some from the time, but he really saw what was happening and used the landscape to reveal the human devastation of war."
Frederick Sommer— "An absolute visionary. Not everybody’s taste, but give him some time. His ability to find beauty in the details of decay was revelatory."
Robert Adams—"Not to be confused with Ansel, this photographer shows the contemporary landscape like we know it (or want to know it): honest, personal and, despite the carelessness of the stewards, full of hope."
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