Bill McAllister
Photography for me started on the same block were FRANK Gallery now stands. Foister’s Camera Store provided a Kodak Brownie camera for a Christmas morning over a half century ago.
Despite later getting a 35mm camera, I realized that I wasn’t a person who caught action, and began working in a more contemplative manner. Switching to larger format cameras and using a tripod when possible, gave me better print quality and sharpness.
Over the years my work has evolved through many different cameras, processes and subjects, but this way of working remained. It gives me the time to employ the reductive quality of photography to simplify and strengthen the composition of an image.
Along the way I’ve experimented with homemade film cameras, underwater housings, a 20” x 24” Polaroid camera and now modified digital. Prints have ranged from 19th Century processes on hand coated paper, to output from digital pigment printers.
Recently, I have been using cameras converted to capture infrared light. This extends the range of light we can perceive, producing a surreal dreamlike quality. The otherworldly feel of 13th Century temples in Cambodia and cloud shrouded peaks in Huangshan China translated better in infrared than the straight photographs that I took there.
Most of all, I’m fascinated by light - how its variations change the way objects, figures, or landscapes appear in a photograph. I’ll often stop to stare at the way light plays on object, even without a camera at hand.
