We moved to Gainesville, Florida from Austin, Texas, right after I completed my MFA in photography, in 1995. I was soon out to meet any local art photographers and ended up getting to be part of the University of Florida (UF) photography studio critique group, which included the photo faculty and students. There were a couple of well-known photographers on the faculty there, of which Jerry Uelsmann was one, and I felt honored to be invited to join them. My role was mainly to hang out and give informal feedback on the photos completed by UF photo students.
The first meeting I joined was in the art department conference room. We were seated around a large table, just getting started, and Jerry walked in. Wouldn’t you expect someone who was so well known to have an air of importance? He had a stack of books and mail with him which he thumped down on the table and said in kind of a goofy way, “Hi, I’m Jerry.” It turns out he was just a regular person, accessible and unassuming. Over time I would have that further confirmed as the group migrated around Gainesville, to do critiques in the studios where people were working. We ended up at Jerry’s house more than once to talk about his work and hear him think aloud about the creation of some of his photo montages. His darkroom setup was large, totally customized to his way of working, with multiple enlargers that he would outfit with different negatives to make the montages.
He was just getting started with digital photography when I met him and it was amusing to me to see a master in visual thinking being prompted to retrain himself in a new environment. I appreciated that he was so open about his methods, using a casual and exploratory approach to image making. I still remember him talking through the creation of one of his montages, saying, “I tried this with the hands in the sky and didn’t like it, so I put them over here instead.” It was affirming to have an accomplished photographer respond to an iteration of an image visually, making adjustments as he went, until he was satisfied with how it looked.
Jerry died this week (link to an obituary in the Gainesville Sun newspaper). I was lucky to have him as part of my life for a while.
image from Museum of Contemporary Photography
