Osoyoos photographer Greg Reely shows one of his landscape photos. Reely’s work appears with other Osoyoos Photography Club members’ in the exhibition “Exposed” at the Osoyoos Art Gallery. (Richard McGuire photo)
More than 150 years ago, an early member of the Photographic Society of London argued that photography was “too literal to compete with works of art” and couldn’t “elevate the imagination.”
The debate about whether photography is art or merely mechanical reproduction has continued to this day, though members of the Osoyoos Photography Club are quite certain that their work is art and does elevate the imagination.
What’s important, said club president Peter Hovestad, is that photography should move people. And if it does, it should be considered art.
Club members are putting some of their art on display at the Osoyoos Art Gallery in a three-week exhibition that starts Saturday.
The exhibition, entitled Exposed, will feature more than 50 framed images ranging from still life to abstract to landscape, portraiture, street photography and other styles, said Hovestad.
There is a reception at the gallery to launch the show on Friday, Oct. 17 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Although the club includes some relative beginners to photography, it also includes some veteran photographers who cut their teeth in the film era.
And some, like Hovestad and Merv Graf still use and value the quality of film, although both now shoot digital, as do other club members.
Graf plans to show three black and white landscapes from the Osoyoos area.
While some photographers prefer black and white for its aesthetic quality, Graf has another reason for liking it – he’s been told he’s colour blind, even though he still perceives colours.
Graf, who has been doing photography since he was a high school student in Oliver, has had a darkroom wherever he’s lived. Today, however, most of his carefully composed work is digital.
Graf gets his back up when people fail to recognize the artistic quality that photographers create in their work.
It’s like, he says, if a cook creates a magnificent gourmet meal and the diner gives credit to the stove.
Greg Reely wasn’t completely certain last week which photographs he’ll show, but one he definitely intends to display is a panorama made by electronically stitching together images taken on an iPhone.
While he does much of his serious photography on a Canon digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR), he likes the iPhone because he always has it with him.
This is the second Osoyoos Art Gallery show where Reely has displayed his photographs. Two years ago, he managed to sell the same picture three times.
It wasn’t one of his better photographs artistically, he admits, but the subject clearly attracted viewers – it was of his cat facing down a mouse.
While Reely started photography with film, he has enthusiastically embraced the possibilities that digital photography allows for image manipulation in post production.
Reely’s photograph of his niece in black and white with a few coloured flower petals around her head was selected for the show’s poster.
Digital image manipulation certainly is an art, Reely insists, even if the canvas is Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop software and the brush is a computer mouse.
More “pure” photography, without manipulation, can still be very artistic, Reely says.
Another photographer in the show, Lisa Young mentions Graf and Reely as two photographers whose work is very different from her own.
“In my opinion, there are two types of photographers,” she said. “One that sets up and one that captures. I capture.”
Both Graf and Reely are skilled at using lighting and carefully chosen fabric backgrounds, she said.
“That’s not me,” she added. “I’m the type that drives along the back roads and when I see something, I get out. I might be there three minutes or 10 minutes and then I move along. I’m not sitting there waiting for the sun to change. I capture the moment.”
Young, who also displayed in the show two years ago, said she only had a basic point-and-shoot camera at the time. Learning to use her Canon DSLR has been a steep learning curve, but she’s not afraid to experiment and break rules.
She’s happy with the photos, some of birds, that she will be displaying in the exhibition.
“I love birds and Haynes Point is one of my favourite spots,” she said.
Like Reely, Young says she loves to work with her photos afterwards on a computer.
“You may call it manipulation, but to me, I’m cleaning up,” she said. “I don’t want the telephone poles or the hydro lines.”
Young started photography with a Pentax SP1000 film camera back in 1976, but film photographers had to be more careful so as not to waste film.
Years later, she shot about 1,500 photos with her digital point-and-shoot camera at Cottonwood Beach during an electrical storm with smoke from forest fires, experimenting to get an image.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said. “Then when I saw one of the whole bunch that had the lightning, I thought ‘I’m hooked.’”
The exhibition features a more formal display of uniformly framed, matted and mounted photographs in the front room of the gallery. In the back room, photographers can display their work as they wish.
Exposed runs through November 8. The gallery is open noon to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
