SPOTLIGHT

A p p a l a c h i a n   I n s p i r a t i o n

New Carlisle photographer captures beauty, serenity of region with exhibit

by Pamela Dillon

Huber Heights-
A haunting melody by the modernist composer Alan Hovhaness fills the room as you read the Appalachian fable about a man who feels a void in his life, an emptiness that can only be satisfied by visiting his “Motherland.”  This once-upon-a-time story has a happy ending:
  “The voice told him of a secret way to take an image of the hills with him while he was away from this land - a way to connect his heart and mind with the forests of his ancestors.  When he returned home, he used the magic the hills had taught him.  And his heart sang.”
  You don’t have to be from Appalachia to appreciate this exhibition/video by Robert Miller.  The show includes a nine-minute video and 21 black and white photographs, mainly from the Townsend and Roaring Fork areas of the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee - all striking in a way that touches one, regardless of where you live.
  “I go out every spring by myself to the Smoky Mountains to recharge my batteries and get away from life,” said Miller.  “I go into the streams, and it’s the most beautiful place on Earth.”
  He found a great way to combine his two passions:  photography and music.  Most of the photographs were taken with a Shen Hao large format wooden field camera, complete with accordion bellows and dark cloth.  He follows a slow, traditional process to set up and capture an image.  When he returns to the darkroom, he spends days developing two images at a time in a rare traditional process called “unsharp masking.”  A fuzzy positive is created from the original large-format negative, and the negative and positive are printed together in an enlarger to increase sharpness, control contrast and increase shadow detail.  The images are then hand-toned in a proprietary process of sepia and selenium.
   That sharpness is seen in Stream #5, Roaring Fork, a silver-gelatin print he created last year.  The amoeba-like lichen covering the rocks and the ethereal, misty quality of the falling water with the slick, dark smoothness of the rocks is a visual banquet of contrasts.
  One of his medium-format images of a single leaf floating by in the river’s reflection of a giant tree takes on an abstract quality.  He’s included with this exhibition two still lifes of pearl nautilus shells resting on 200-year old oak from his great-grandfather’s barn.
  Some visitors to his Web site have left supportive messages after viewing his Motherland images.  Edward Hanson of California was particularly impressed.  “Excellent work.  I’ve seen the work of the masters and yours is indeed world class.  I hope to make it to Ohio for your Motherland exhibition.”