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Show Photographer Chalat's talent was nurtured in Park City . i , . . . 1 V--' s - ' ' i - 1 L ' ' I J ilL, by Rick Brough One of Nan Chalat's ambitions is to photograph everyone living on Daly Avenue. "They're one of the last hold-outs of the real Park City," she said. She would also like to photograph the entire city council because of the important role they play in the town. Chalat has already fulfilled one ambition. An exhibit of her photographs is on display in the Lower Gallery of the Kimball Art ? Center. For Nan, creative ambitions seem to be knotted together with emotional attachments, her photographic photo-graphic career and Park City. She gives credit to Park City and its community of artists and photographers for nurturing her photography and helping it bloom. "It has never been competitive. Everyone was always helping," she said. She came to Park City in the fall of 1977 hoping to be a writer. Before that, she had done the usual childhood or vacation snapshots. But she soon realized it was an asset for a reporter to write and shoot photos, too. Local photographer Pat McDowell helped her choose a camera. Leslie Miller showed her the darkroom at Kimball Art Center and supplied pointers. Chalat took photos, read books and took classes at the i Kimball from photo artists Lisa 1 McClanahan and Judy Dater (the q latter a protege of Imogen Cunning-f Cunning-f ham). 1 Along the way, she said, she was a helped or encouraged by folks like Nick Nass, John Tinklepaugh, Lori Adamski, Neal Rossmiller and the Park City Artists Association. In addition to friends behind the shutter, she has also made some in front of the camera like former Coalville mayor Copley Walker, Park City gadfly Mary Lehmer and miner Roland Savage. (They are all in the Kimball exhibit.) She regrets that some of her subjects have since died. And she takes pride in the fact the others are still her friends. Many of the black and white photos in the show have a strong sense of texture, though it may take different forms the wiry strands of Copley Walker's beard, the moldy grained wood of an old fence or the weathered dignity of a long-time Park City face. Her favorite photographs are the portraits, especially the character faces. "Some people don't like to see their photographs with all the wrinkles, but I feel weathered faces are very beautiful. They're more interesting than Bo Derek's face." Though color is challenging to shoot, she said she liked the elegance of black and white. "You have to 'see' in black and white. You concentrate on contrast, on how the light is falling," she said. Her color photographs have a clean, calm simplicity. While the black and whites in the show stem mostly from Summit County, the color works speaks of locations farther away. Her portrait of two middle-aged ladies twins in identical identi-cal garb was shot in San Francisco's Francis-co's Union Square. Her glossy wide-angle views of an automobile were snapped in San Luis Obispo, California, outside a church wedding. wed-ding. (The best man drove up in the car, screeched to a stop and dashed inside the church, she recalled. ) And a warm photograph of firelight on a rock formation was taken in Escalante. Chalat has always been a traveler. Born and raised in Detroit, she left in 1969 to attend Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. After three years working in publishing in Boston, she gave in to a yen for country life and followed a friend to Park City. She joined the Park Record in 1979 and soon was given the job of creating the well-remembered Focus supplement, which ran in the Record and three other regional papers. Focus, she said, was an opportunity opportuni-ty she never could have gotten back east. Unfortunately, she said, photography photo-graphy is a curse as well as a blessing. For one thing, you acquire a lot of equipment. "I took four lenses and two camera bodies to France (last summer)," she said. Her photographic studio, at her home in Oakley, is not exactly state-of-the-art either. She carries buckets of water upstairs to the closet-darkroom, washes the prints in the bathtub and dries .them in the shower or near the wood stove. But, ever the optimist, she also said that photography allows her to do things that otherwise she never would have done. She's gone up in a helicopter, she recalled, and descended de-scended into a mine. Looking ahead, she said, "I have a long way to go. And there are a lot more pictures I want to take." The Chalat exhibit will continue at the Kimball Art Center through Nov. 28. Chalat (R) celebrated the opening of her exhibit with friend Cathy Kennedy and others last Sunday at the KAC. |
