John Telford, a native of Utah, has been making photographs of the landscape and environment for nearly 40 years. His photographs have been published extensively (including over 50 cover photographs) and exhibited both nationally and internationally (more than 70 solo and group shows) and are included in numerous public and private collections. He has authored and co-authored seventeen books, and is currently a professor at Brigham Young University.
Personal Selection From Four Decades in Photography
In 1968 I got my first full time job in photography and began a professional career that has now lasted 40 years. About 1972 I decided to seriously pursue photography as an art. I first met Ansel Adams that year while on a trip to San Francisco and Carmel, California. I began a serious study of his Zone System along with large-format photography. I studied everything I could find. I studied his photographs and his techniques and how he made such exquisite black and white prints, and eventually got to study with him in Yosemite for a short time.
He and several other photographers I met, both in Yosemite and while I ran the Edison Street Gallery in Salt Lake City, had a profound influence on my personal photography - my fine art photography. I met and became friends with Cole Weston, (Edward Weston's youngest son) Wynn Bullock, Eliot Porter, Al Weber and a host of other great photographers. I fell in love with black and white photography and the alchemy of the gelatin silver print. I was reminded many times that the prints were not black and white, but silver - a precious metal that glows and shines. Ansel talked about the brilliance of the print and the ephemeral quality of light and weather, along with the "great earth gesture" that was the hallmark of his photographs.
In polite Post-Modern circles today the name Ansel Adams is not mentioned - or if it is it is spoken with derision and criticism. "he was a modernist 'T&R' (trees & rocks) photographer," they say. "He was a nature copy-cat, more interested in superficial and sentimental beauty than facts or issues." In this exhibit I have chosen to acknowledge the profound influence that this great 20th Century American Master has had on my work and to return to those early roots of my own personal photography. I stand by a statement that I have made in previous "Artist Statements":
My photographs celebrate light and beauty and the ephemeral things of the world. While I photograph the landscape that seems eternal and unchanging, I am more interested in the light and weather that is constantly changing and fleeting. In a world today, where we are pre-occupied with challenging the intellect, I choose to nurture the soul.
This exhibit is a small personal selection of gelatin silver photographs taken over the past four decades. Some of them were taken during the 70's, others as recent as last May. Most have not been exhibited in more than 20 years. Several have never been exhibited. The prints from the Great Salt Lake Portfolio are vintage prints from two of the last remaining sets of the portfolio that I have. Those sets are available for sale.
These prints are rare. Let's face it. When Kodak stopped making black and white photographic paper, and young photographers began making the switch to simpler, easier and more repeatable digital printing techniques, the more difficult and elusive gelatin silver prints became rare. These are all gelatin silver, split toned, archivally processed prints.
To the man who knows nothing mountains are just mountains, waters are waters and trees are trees. But when he has studied and knows a little, mountains are no longer mountains, water is no longer water and trees are no longer trees. And when he has thoroughly understood, mountains are once again mountains, waters are waters and trees are trees.
Caribou Skull & Door
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