House of Stefani

I have looked at Richard's photographs so many times that certain details have become familiar to me: a man's expression, the position of a fishing net, the color of the hills beyond the Columbia, the extraordinary white water of Celilo.

But today they became something else. Photographs again. Large, luminous, beautifully printed and framed.

Nearly seventy years after Richard stood beside the Columbia and released the shutter, his photographs were leaning against the walls of the gallery that bears our name.

And I felt almost everything at once.

Twenty-three photographs. A community beside the river. And the responsibility of remembering that every face belonged to a life.

There is a moment in working with an old photograph when the person in it stops being part of history and becomes simply a person.

When Richard arrived at Celilo in the fall of 1956, he was twenty-three years old. He carried two cameras and two rolls of color film.

That limitation matters. Every time Richard released the shutter, he used one of a finite number of exposures.

There was no screen on which to review what he had made. No nearly limitless supply of digital frames. No opportunity to photograph everything and decide what mattered later.

He had to choose.

I have worn pearls for years. They are almost the only jewelry I wear. Perhaps that is why I notice their colors so carefully when I paint.
We tend to call pearls white. But the longer I paint, the less I believe in white.
We live in a visual culture that often rewards immediate impact. Strong contrast. Saturated color. Something recognizable in an instant. Pearls ask for something different. Their beauty can be quiet. You have to come closer. You have to notice.

We live in a photographic culture of abundance.

A single afternoon can produce hundreds of images. We photograph a scene, check it, adjust, photograph it again, make variations, change positions, and keep working until we are satisfied.

Richard had no such luxury. Film imposed a discipline that digital photography has largely removed. Every exposure spent something.