Focus Magazine Featuring Nicholas Trofimuk
Unforgettable Images
For Nicholas Trofimuk, photography provides a constantly changing challenge.
By Catherine Coggan
Twenty-five years ago, a wonderfully spare photograph of two rafts and a ladder eerily suspended in a seamless bed of water was the beginning of Nicholas Trofimuk’s career as a fine art photographer.
If you didn’t know it was a photograph, you’d swear it was an Edward Hopper painting.
“I entered Still Waters in a juried competition and won,” Nicholas recalls. “The photograph found its way to a gallery in New York City.”
Interestingly, Trofimuk’s climb to the acclaim he now enjoys wasn’t a straight line.
Although he came from a creative family and his aunt was a noted artist, Trofimuk was discouraged from pursuing art as a career.
“I wanted to go to Pratt Institute, but was convinced instead that my scientific abilities should not be ignored.”
While he practiced in a health profession for 20 years, his artistic side still flourished.
“I drew, I painted, I worked with stained glass, and eventually I became intrigued with the art of the camera.”
“Perhaps it is my scientific training that makes me love the darkroom. Many photographers like to click the shutter - but for me, the darkroom is an integral part of the finished product. The darkroom is where I put myself into the artistic process.”
One of the photographs on display at Photogenesis Gallery in Santa Fe is of dark, thin fronds of reeds splayed out against an almost white sky. The effect is as riveting as a Japanese ink drawing. As in all of Trofimuk’s photographs, the composition is exquisite.
After years of perfecting his photographic talent, Nicholas wanted to walk a different path entirely. He wanted a completely new environment.
He chose New Mexico.
As he explains, “Anyone who knows art knows Santa Fe. It’s culturally saturated and accessible. The light and the textures are a photographer’s dream.”
So, he and his wife spent a week at the Galisteo Inn and decided to purchase the old Galisteo schoolhouse as a home and studio.
“The die was cast.”
Since then, Trofimuk has uncovered and revealed the great beauty of the Galisteo River basin with a fabulous series of mesas surrounding the village in which he lives. Huge vistas of rock and cloud formations, canyons of striated stone that look like the skin of an ancient earth, stun the eye.
The dark and light contrasts he creates bring to mind Ansel Adams.
But whereas Adams was restrained, almost dispassionate, Trofimuk is passionately involved, unafraid of nature’s power.
In fact, you feel he wants that power, wants to capture it for us and make us feel the textures he knows and loves.
Massive fists of clouds punch across the sky or swathe a lonely mesa, keeping it company like a protective friend.
“I do landscapes,” he explains, “that are within ten miles of my house. I find the foregrounds first. I pick them out and when the clouds are spectacular, I know just where to go.”
It’s a technique used by Henri Cartier-Bresson, too.
According to Trofimuk, Cartier-Bresson had favorite spots in Paris that he knew well. He’d go there with his camera and wait for things to happen.
“It’s the best way to create an image. You don’t want to be at the whim of the gods,” Trofimuk adds.
On the other hand, when he travels, “and I love to travel to many places,” he says, “it’s a different photography. You take what’s given to you.”
There’s a large Trofimuk photograph in Photogenesis called Yorkshire Lane, that he caught while traveling with his wife by car one early, fog-shrouded morning in England.
They were about two miles outside of Wensleydale when he noticed a stand of trees looming out of the mists. He U-turned back to the spot and set to work.
The photograph perfectly describes the kind of foreboding English fog that darkens everything in sight.
You look at the setting and you hear the Baskerville hound somewhere in the distance.
“About five or six years later, we went back to that place,” Trofimuk relates. “It didn’t look anything like what I’d photographed earlier. You just have to get what you can when you’re telling like that.”
Joette O’Connor, Photogenesis’ gallery director, considers Trofimuk one of their best-selling artists.
“People relate to how he sees things and want to have the pleasure of looking at his work daily in their homes and businesses,” she says. “His versatility is legendary. He can make almost any subject appealing.”
Trofimuk’s “Santa Fe Sunlight” series is particularly popular.
An ongoing project that he’s worked on for the last ten years, the pictures portray the geometric beauty of Santa Fe walls and parapets.
For these pictures, he shoots in June between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., when the walls, as Trofimuk points out, “are bathed with vertical sunlight. The play of light on Santa Fe’s adobe walls creates a surreal effect which cannot be found anywhere else in the world.”
For Trofimuk, photography is constantly changing, constantly challenging.
As to new directions in the future?
“I’m always going in another direction but I like landscapes the best. If I could offer one piece of advice to anyone beginning this, I’d say just keep working hard and believing in yourself. That’s what I do.”
Photogenesis - A Gallery of Photography
Where Photography is Art!
Nicholas Trofimuk is one of today’s most collected contemporary photographers.
Perhaps most noted for his sweeping landscapes of the American West, his versatility in subject matter is legendary.
He has a distinctive style which is evident in all of his portfolios.
Photogenesis Gallery
100 E. San Francisco St., Santa Fe, NM 87501
(inside La Fonda Hotel)
Composing the Exceptional
Nicholas Trofimuk is a respected and widely collected contemporary photographer.
His work hangs in homes that only own one piece of “real art” as well as in some of the world’s most prestigious private collections.
Important collectors don’t put his work in a drawer to await appreciation along with some of their other acquisitions.
They hang it in places of honor to be viewed daily.
He usually shuns publicity, and I was happy to convince him to agree to this interview.
Although he travels extensively, his home base is in Galisteo, New Mexico.
Nicholas Trofimuk
O’Connor’s Corner - by Joette O’Connor
How did you get started in photography?
It’s very complicated.
I always wanted to be an artist. It’s probably genetic. My aunt was an accomplished painter and illustrator and my father’s family had a history of artistic accomplishments.
I’ve always loved the finality and meaning that comes with completing a piece and seeing it actually hanging on a wall.
So, photography has always been your profession?
Lord, no!
I experimented with a variety of other art forms.
Originally I loved working in great detail with colored pencils. These pieces were so realistic that people would want to touch them to see if they weren’t actually photographs.
I also tried oils, but I didn’t find these precise enough to appeal to my personality.
I wanted desperately to go to art school, but I’m a first generation American. It was considered essential that you make a good living, and art didn’t fall into that category.
Artists were known to starve to death!
Fortunately I was equally drawn to science and the health professions, and I can’t say that I’ve regretted the years I spent there.
Now I have the best of both worlds.
Photography is definitely an art form, but it’s dependent on chemistry and physics. It also fits my personal inclination for detail and perfection.
I know you do all of your own darkroom work. How did you learn your techniques? Classes? Workshops?
I’m completely self-taught.
Classes weren’t available where I was living when I started, and I’ve always felt comfortable learning from books.
Surprisingly in medical and dental school, you learn most things on your own. I applied the same principles to photography.
There’s a lot of trial and error, but the journey is the most enjoyable part.
Sometimes making mistakes can teach you more than doing it right the first time.
I’ve gone to a few “student” photographic shows and been appalled by the strong influence of the teacher on the student’s work.
It was almost like cloning, and in the process all originality had been stifled.
A good teacher should never do that.
You have a variety of subject matter in your portfolios. Do you have a favorite?
Well, I started out as a landscape photographer.
I love the outdoors. I’m really a country boy - born and raised in the city but still loving there.
Cities are great to visit, but they close you in physically.
Nothing makes me happier than to throw a backpack over my shoulder and spend time tramping the fields.
I get a chuckle out of what I call “the parking lot photographers.”
Carrying a large format camera can be exhausting, but I’ll never stand in a parking lot and take a photograph!
I also love to travel, and landscapes are everywhere.
My favorite portfolio is always the one I’m involved with currently.
Right now I’m fascinated with doing studies looking from the inside of buildings to the outside.
Most of these might be classified as urban landscapes, if we have to classify.
Now don’t go looking for some deep-seated psychological reason for this! There isn’t any.
I just happened to be inside a Starbucks one day after I had just photographed the outside of the same building and was struck by the different perspective we get from the inside.
I began to look more closely at the outside from the inside, as it were, and began a portfolio capturing this feeling.
I’m also working on a portfolio of signs.
No one will ever outshine Walker Evans in that department, and I wouldn’t even want to try, but signs have changed a great deal in the past 50 to 60 years, and many of them deserve to be preserved for all time and in a way quite different from Evans.
Every good artist has to mature and change.
It would be pretty boring and barren world if I were limited to one subject.
Even Picasso had his different periods.
Why shouldn’t fine art photographers expand their horizons?
Who are your favorite photographers?
My all-time favorite is Brett Weston.
It’s obvious from his work that he had an exceptionally perceptive nature.
I like the way he looked at things.
I tend to become more impressed with artists working in other media, for example, Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper.
They both paint the world as I feel I see it, so I really relate to their work on a personal level.
One of my earliest photographs, Still Waters, has often been compared to Hopper’s work.
I’m always very flattered at the comparison. Who wouldn’t be?
Do you collect photography?
Absolutely.
And my collection is probably as eclectic as my own work.
I love my Babe Ruth’s Farewell to Yankee Stadium by Nathan Fiene even as much as my Wright Morris’ GANO and Koudelka’s Gypsy with Horse.
The paintings I own have been relegated to obscure corners, and the photographs are in places of honor.
I don’t own any digitals yet, but I wouldn’t rule that out.
Color, on the other hand, doesn’t have a chance!
Do you have any advice for beginning photographers?
Do some self-analysis.
What interests and excites you?
Take that and apply it to your photography.
Photography is your vision.
By far the best advice, however, is to have patience.
There is no immediate recognition.
In today’s world it’s common to expect instant gratification.
That’s not going to happen unless you have a parent who is the curator of a museum!
There are so many different fields of photography, commercial, cinematic, documentary, but if you want to enter the field of fine art photography, and your goal is to have your work viewed as a piece of art, it’s not about the kind of film, filters, chemistry, f-stops and every new item that comes up.
Find a technique that works and stick with it.
If you’re going to take a class in something, take it in composition.
Do you give workshops?
I’ve never taken a workshop and have absolutely no desire to ever give one.
I do all of my own printing, and I’m too busy working on my own photography and keeping up with sales to afford the time for workshops.
Sometimes I feel like a one-man band because I do all of my own prints from start to finish, even the matting.
I guess I’m too particular to let someone else touch them.
It works for me.
Do you have a theory on why so many people are drawn to your work?
I don’t know, but it’s really very flattering.
Sometimes I think it is absolutely wonderful that it’s never appreciated by buyers, while another that isn’t a particular favorite of mine becomes a sold-out edition.
I think my composition is always exceptional as a result of my early efforts at painting, and that’s a huge part of why people like a photograph.
Even if they aren’t consciously thinking composition, their inner eye rejects the discordant.
To quote G.K. Chesterton, “There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.”
I believe that’s true.
You limit your work, sometimes to very small numbers. Why?
Occasionally I feel this may have been an initial mistake on my part.
There are so many images that have sold out, and a lot of people won’t get to enjoy them.
I confess I hate telling people they can’t have the one they really want.
My editions are arbitrary, and some of the most popular ones were given a small edition number.
For example, I made Silverado Church an edition of 50, and this was gone in no time.
I even made a couple of artist proofs, which I don’t usually do, to satisfy some clients.
I’m very strict about not exceeding the limit of any particular image.
A great many fine art photographers would like to support themselves as you do, solely on the sale of their work. To what do you attribute your success?
This will sound strange to some, but truthfully I would have to say “the power of positive thinking.”
Years ago I attended Marble Collegiate Church in New York City when Norman Vincent Peale was the minister.
It was a round trip of 120 miles, but I considered it essential.
At the time I thought it was giving me the strength to get through another difficult week.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was learning to apply his principles in everything I did.
Trust me, they still work.
They allow you to look at the world positively, and how you see the world is essential to photography.
If you were to sum up your entire photographic philosophy what would it be?
Don’t take yourself too seriously!
Photography should be fun.
If you have to describe and interpret your work in a great many words, you’re in trouble.
Photography is about seeing and feeling.
If you have to tell someone how it feels, the photograph is a failure.
There is an Ansel Adams quote on my wall that says it all:
“You don’t make a photograph just with your camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”
I think he summed it up very nicely.