Your future, our focus
POWELL, WYOMING – On Tuesday, November 12, Northwest College presents a new photographic exhibit titled "50 Years Behind the Lens”, featuring the work of Associate Professor of Photography Christine Garceau. The exhibit takes the viewer through the transitions Garceau made as she followed the trajectory of photographic practices, from analog black and white image making in the 1970s, hand-coloring portraits and freelance photojournalism in the 1980s and ‘90s, and eventually to the current world of vivid color provided by digital DSLR and mirrorless cameras.
The opening reception runs from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the SinClair Gallery, located inside the Orendorff Building, and the exhibition will be on display through January 17. For those unable to attend the opening, gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and an individual tour can be scheduled by contacting Garceau at christine.garceau@nwc.edu.
The chronology of the exhibition provides glimpses into Garceau’s curiosity of the personalities represented in her portrait photography, as viewed alongside images gleaned from travels to Europe, South America, Cuba, and her more recent explorations since coming to Northwest College in 2012, into the back roads and wilderness of the Mountain West.
Among the images are black and white analogs from her “Black Portfolio”, which came from the grieving process she experienced in 2004 during the final months of production of Agfa photographic paper. Also included in the genre of black and white prints are images of renowned photojournalist Eugene Smith and civil rights activist Rosa Parks, who were each in their own way pivotal in Garceau’s development as a lifelong photographer. Garceau considers the images as two of the most important photographs she has included in her body of work over the years.
They represent, she has said, “the essence of photography’s place in my life because they remind me that change comes from the little things we do day-by-day to make a difference in the world we live in. Smith represents the passion to create images that help bring to light the injustice inflicted on individuals as the result of corporate and economic production.”
Bridging the 1980s and 1990s are the black and white hand painted portraits of children she made after earning her master’s degree in photography from Northern Michigan University and the birth of her son in 1986. Images from this time period populated her final thesis portfolio exhibition at NMU and were awarded an Individual Outstanding Artist Award by the Michigan Council for the Arts in 1990.
In the 2000s, Garceau began a long-term investigative documentary project title “Food For Life”. It looked closely at the types of foods individuals identified with as “their” food totem, and recipes family members have passed down from one generation to another. Images include 8-foot hanging fabric pieces of a woman dressed in traditional Austrian clothing, to mothers and daughters working side-by-side preparing enchiladas, Chinese dumplings, and classic American cinnamon buns.
A large part of the exhibit reviews her travels throughout the world including the more recent excursions with the NWC Photographic Communications program on annual study abroad trips to Romania (2007), Cuba (2013), Argentina/Uruguay (2015), Portugal (2018), Colombia (2020), Greece (2023), and Spain (2024).
MORE ABOUT CHRISTINE'S "BLACK PORTFOLIO"
Garceau's “Black Portfolio” came from the grieving process she experienced in 2004 during the final months of production of Agfa photographic paper. Anticipating the loss of the photographic surface she had come to think of as an extension of her inner voice, she asked friends, students, and even strangers she met in the grocery store to come to her Marquette studio for a sitting. The only request she made of them was to wear black and bring one thing they felt “represented” them. Never knowing what the individuals who accepted the invitation would wear or bring for their session, she received each new subject with the excitement of a young child opening a present on a birthday or holiday.
MORE ABOUT THE EUGENE SMITH AND ROSA PARKS IMAGES
Meeting Eugene Smith at such a young age, while an undergrad photography student at Northern Michigan University helped sharpen Garceau's focus not only on the craftmaking of photographic images, but also the impact held within the photographic frame. Something she held on to while working as a freelance photojournalist in the 1980s and 1990s. Similarly, meeting and photographing Rosa Parks furthered Garceau’s commitment to using photography to allow viewers to see people and places in a way they may not have considered in the past. The portrait of Parks speaks of how identities are often mixed and contested.
“As Parks stood quietly by the window waiting for me to snap the shutter, I recognized her mixed heritage, one that also included that of an American Indian.”
MORE ABOUT GARCEAU'S
As her project, "Food for Life", began to broaden even further, Garceau took the opportunity to immerse herself into more diverse understandings of food cultures at home and abroad. In May of 2011, while traveling to Gründburg, Austria to complete research for her PhD at Michigan Technological University, she documented some of the food cultures typical of local villages where she stayed. The image of Barbara Neumueller making traditional vegetable strudel, as well as the banners of Christine and Jon Saari, were inspired as a result of this visit. Similarly, Grace Chien, who immigrated to California from China before the Cultural Revolution, allowed her to witness and record the inter-generational connection between mother and daughter that forms while transferring the tradition of making steamed Chinese dumplings.
After arriving in Wyoming, she quickly added the mother daughter duo of Paulina and Gloria Gutierrez making traditional Chihuahua, Mexico tamales. And recently she has added images of her colleague Jennifer Litterer-Trevino and her daughter Abby making tradition American cinnamon buns.