Film photographer captures Glacier Park in black and white

"Death before digital" says photographer Norman Riley. Riley, one of this year's artist-in-residence in Glacier National Park, makes photographs with a large format film camera. He always uses film.

With the invention and widespread adoption of digital photography many companies discontinued film as sales all but vanished. In 1998 and 1999 Kodak discontinued the film he used. Riley said this was the darkest moment of his life. He stopped making photos until 2002, when he bought an 8-by-10 Deardorff camera made in 1978.

He visited the Park in 2014 and loved it so much that he had to return. His acceptance to the artist in residence program was a dream come true, he said during a Brown Bag talk in Glacier last week.

His project was to "capture scenes that are not ordinary." Places that are not photographed by every tourist. He's leaving the Park with nearly 450 black and white 8 by 10 inch negatives. He captured many scenes multiple times as insurance. He may end up with about 150 unique scenes, when he's all done, he said.

His photography will become part of the visual legacy of the Park. Photos are an important part of the history of Glacier Park and all national parks. They originally pushed Congress to establish the National Park Service, Riley said. Photos told the truth about the western landscape and magnificent mountains - something that was hard for people in the East to believe just from paintings and written accounts. Later, photos attracted people to the parks. Now, they serve as a baseline to see the changes to the landscape over the last 100 years.

Riley's predecessors are a long and distinguished list. They include William Henry Jackson, geological survey photographer; Francois Emile Matthes, photographer, geologist and expert in climate change; Morton Elrod, first naturalist in Glacier Park; R. E. "Ted" Marble, who worked for the Great Northern Railway taking photos for advertising campaigns; Edward Curtis, who documented the life and culture of the Blackfoot Nation; T.J. Hileman, worked for the Great Northern Railway taking photos for advertising campaigns; Ansel Adams, commissioned by the Park Service; Mel Ruder, Hungry Horse News photographer who captured scenes of ordinary people doing normal activities in the Park; and Lisa McKeon, contemporary physical scientist and repeat photographer. McKeon is part of the repeat photography project that takes photos in the same locations as artists a century ago in order to track the retreat of glaciers.

Riley makes landscape photographs in the Ansel Adams tradition, with high resolution film and a large depth of field. Adam's created a zone exposure system that removed the guesswork. It created a "pathway" to creativity rather than the camera being a "barrier," Riley said. Riley said he owes his photography skill to Adams.

But, he didn't always do landscapes.

He started by creating photos of people with a painterly quality, called pictorialism. His influences are Belgian pictorialist Leonard Misonne and English photographer Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. Yet, Riley didn't learn of these artists until he started making his own images. He never took a photography class. He always had the desire, but didn't have the money to pay for film. He was interested in photography because it captures a single moment in time.

"It's sort of like time travel, if you think about it. Every picture is a look back on time and I've always been fascinated by that possibility," Riley said.

One Christmas as a child, Riley got a Polaroid instant camera and two packages of film.

"I remember taking the pictures and the chemicals burning my fingers," he said. After finishing the two packages, he didn't take any other photos until after college. He was a professional musician for a while. It was an easy transition to photography because it was a way for him to create, and not depend on other people.

He bought his first 35mm camera for $100. That started a 35-year-long journey working with film.

"And now I'm stuck with this thing. Some days I want to throw it in the Pacific Ocean," Riley said. He used to hike with this camera along with the tripod, negatives and several lenses, that weigh about 70 pounds total.

He continues to carry around his camera because he wants to be remembered, he wants immortality, he said.

When people look at his photographs, he hopes that they will remember the man who was behind the camera.

Photography is the "ultimate proof of life," he said. Riley views photos of ordinary people in the 1800s and knows they had a life.

But he will die before he stops using film. Digital photography is a "crime," he said.

"It has inflicted serious injury on traditional photography," he claimed.

Riley calls it "digitography," something that can be easily manipulated in editing programs. He said that it is pervasive, because it is convenient.

"My problem with it is that it's not honest," he said. "The challenge and the joy is to get it (film photography) right on the film and on the paper."