In the Gallery: August

Like a cool breeze on a blistering hot day in August, it refreshes! Like a cool exhibit of photographic images by California film artist Loren McKechnie, it promises to refresh! Loren comes to us through a veil of family genes and unique historical perspective on the art of photography. Loren's father, a passionate landscape/nature photographer, gently introduced his son to the art of photography as a ten years old by giving him one of his own Olympus SLR cameras and a 50mm lens. Tagging along on nature jaunts with his father, the wealth of beauty observed became fertile fodder for Loren's imagination and future interest in photography. Working at the Lawrence Berkeley Radiation Laboratory machining precision parts and refining the functional works of the cyclotron particle accelerator used to smash open atomic nuclei; Loren's maternal grandfather used photography to document work-day successes and failures. With Loren's budding interest in photography, it wasn't long before the basement enlarger and darkroom was up and running for Loren, under the tutelage of his grandfather. Loren's maternal great grandmother was a photographer for the victory ships built in the California naval shipyards during WWII. Loren inherited his first enlarger from her. Through these hereditary genes and passionate family interest Loren was inspired Loren to pursue his lifelong quest to capture photographically, the nature of truth. Loren's photographic passion continued through high school where he became more focused on darkroom manipulations and the pursuit of quality and precision. At the University of California he began to master the concept of different cameras and lenses presenting different results. Loren chose manual focus and exposure cameras so he could compute each element in the creative photographic process. "Thinking through the assets and liabilities of each camera and its affect on the vision of the photographer is what makes an image come to life", Loren says. From his father's camera Loren upgraded to a medium format camera capable of taking pictures on larger film. After experiencing the benefits of that for a while, Loren lusted for a better way. In 2001, he bought a lighter M6 Leica and fell in love with it. He also became intrigued by a 5" x 7" large format one-hundred year old camera found in his grandparents' basement. Purchasing a range of high quality German-made lenses for the antique camera, he found it performed like today's state of the art cameras. He used this camera on backpacking trips with nature photographer Tony Rowell, but soon realized it was too unwieldy in the mountains and switched to a Noblex medium format rotating lens camera for his panoramic work. A few months ago Loren haltingly submitted to the draw of digital photography and purchased a manual Leica M8 digital camera with a variety of lenses. "Until the advent of digital images", Loren says, "photography has had the power to produce refreshingly truthful images, but with digital capabilities and Photoshop looming on the horizon, there is a chance of losing this belief." Like summer rain on hot August sidewalks, Loren McKechnie's personal photographic journey in the Mary Bishop Memorial Art Gallery at the Library, it promises to refresh!