Reminiscence

When I was nearing the end of my time in art school, I began to put together a master notebook filled with notable photographers, darkroom procedure, basic camera mechanics, and notes from photo exhibitions. I had kept dozens of notebooks with this information prior and felt it all belonged in one central place. A few days ago, as I was flipping through my notes on photographers, I realized that some had since passed away. Among them were Robert Frank, 1924-2019; Jerry Uelsmann, 1934-2022; George Tice, who I’d met when he did a guest lecture, 1938-2025; and just last week, Sebastião Salgado, February 8, 1944-May 23, 2025. Salgado actually passed the day I was updating my notebook which made me feel uneasy for a short while.

Updating these dates and pouring over my notebook again, I began to think of times passed. The exhibition announcement for the Mount Washington summer landscape photography course I took in 2009 is taped between two pages. I remember that summer vividly: driving up to the White Mountains in my old Chevy Malibu listening to Death Cab, staying at the Mount Washington Hotel’s historic Bretton Arms Inn, roaming the grounds around the main hotel and finding a stockpile of old sinks and bathtubs in the woods (no doubt discarded there after the last renovation), waking up before sunrise to drive down to Franconia Notch and cautiously trying to photograph a moose through the open car window. 

Pondicherry Wildlife Refuge, Whitefield, New Hampshire © Chelsea Pathiakis, 2009

I chose to focus on creating panoramas that summer, even purchasing a nifty little gadget for my tripod to help the frames line up better. At the exhibition in the Vault Gallery (RIP), I displayed three or four long, glossy panoramas mounted on foam board. That was the summer Michael Jackson died, and we all sat around the large tube TV in the makeshift computer lab in one of the Inn’s parlors, watching the shocking news unfold while it rained in the mountains. That was the summer I took a ferry to Star Island in the Isles of Shoals and left three rolls of black and white film on a rock near the shore, and some kind soul brought them to the front desk of the visitor center I called a week later in a panic. 

Star Island, Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire © Chelsea Pathiakis, 2009

More recently, it’s been a year since I started updating this blog monthly. It’s brought me such pleasure to spend each new month researching a photographer of interest or giving an update on my Roaming project. I’m delving deeper into my areas of interest and loving the process of discovery.