Self-taught photographer goes old world

Northern Living

Related Photos

"Van Road Pines" won first place in a juried photo exhibition at the Crooked Tree Arts Center in Petoskey. Special to the Record-Eagle/Photo by Marianne Priest
"Marsh Impressions" Special to the Record-Eagle/Photo by Marianne Priest

April 1, 2012

Self-taught photographer goes old world

By MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS mdrahos@record-eagle.com The Record Eagle Sun Apr 01, 2012, 07:14 AM EDT

TRAVERSE CITY — A toy camera, a basement darkroom, an old-world technique and lots and lots of practice.

That's what it took to nab Marianne Priest first place in Crooked Tree Arts Center's 31st Annual Juried Photography Exhibition.

Priest, 55, took the award for her silver gelatin lith print, "Van Road Pines." The photograph, shot in Pellston, was produced using the lith printing process for a style reminiscent of "pictorial" images of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

"It's very subtle," said Gail DeMeyere, Crooked Tree visual arts and education director, and manager of the Art Tree Gallery. "It hearkens back to old processes that were done at the turn of the last century: selenium prints, putting them in dye baths and toning the prints. There's a mysterious quality about them. They're very beautiful."

Priest, of Elk Rapids, is a self-taught photographer who got her first camera — a point-and-shoot — in the late '90s. After experimenting with and rejecting the "Ansel Adams-y" style of photography, she stumbled on the lith technique work of French-born Los Angeles photographer Guillaume Zuili.

"It was exactly what I was looking for," said Priest, who mined Zuili for his expertise. "It had this kind of dark, grittiness to it and this bizarre color, but it was black and white."

The unpredictable darkroom technique involves overexposing special paper from places like England and the Czech Republic and then developing it in dilute lith developer. The result is an interesting range of color tones from sepia to purple, pink and even green, depending on the paper, the toning and the developer.

"This lith printing process is a lot of trial and error," said Priest, who started out with used equipment and a temporary laundry room-turned darkroom. "Sometimes I wait 20 minutes for a picture to develop in the tray. And I can't replicate something. I can try to make one similar, but if the chemical isn't quite the same temperature or as old, it won't be exactly the same."

Adding to the diffused effect of her photographs are her choice of cameras, focus and subject matter.

"My favorite cameras are toy cameras with plastic lens you can't really focus," said Priest, whose standbys include the Chinese-made Great Wall camera and the $19 Holga. "The cheaper, funky cameras give you a more dreamlike quality."

It's that quality — and the relatively small 6-inch-by-7-inch images on slightly larger paper — that encourage viewers to come close and to insert their own ideas and dreams in the photographs, she said.

A former dental hygienist, Priest took up photography at the suggestion of her husband, a potter and landscaper. But her shyness prevented her from joining the local camera club or taking a class on basic darkroom techniques at the local college.

"If it weren't for the Internet I probably wouldn't even be doing this," she said. "I finally took a class, but most of my support and help has come from photographers on the Internet." Besides Zuili, she said mentors include Bill Schwab, of Dearborn, the host of an annual gathering of photographers in Pellston called "Photostock."

Now she specializes in landscapes and still lifes shot en plein air and in her sunroom and produced in her permanent basement darkroom.

The Crooked Tree exhibition runs through April 7 and includes Priest's "Marsh Impressions," shot on St. Simons Island, Ga. Priest's work is available for sale at Blue Heron Gallery in Elk Rapids and on her website, www.mariannepriest.com.

"It's like some of the old masters' photography work. It's really quite amazing," said DeMeyere.