Brian Taylor was a surprise – he just wasn’t what I was expecting. I did my research before our first meeting – I knew he was a professor at San Jose State (28 years and counting) with a very impressive resume (three advanced degrees in photography). I knew he was considered a master of alternative processing techniques (the kind they used in the 1800’s), and I knew his photographs hung in some of the finest photography collections in the world. So, given all of that, I was expecting an older, scholarly gentleman, a little on the intimidating side, who would put me through my paces as we walked through his latest exhibition. I couldn’t have been more off base. Brian Taylor is not old, not portly, not intimidating, and although I’m sure he is scholarly, he had the graciousness to make me feel I was in his intellectual league. That was the first impression. The real surprise, though, unfolded as we talked and talked and talked about photography, life, art, kids, family and more photography. Not the kind of high falutin’ talk that gives you a headache, but rather the kind that really gets you thinking. Just like his art, Taylor’s life is an open book. His photographs are an invitation to come on in, sit yourself down and start reading.

Taylor is a photographer by profession, but he is also part set designer, scriptwriter, poet, and director. While most photographers capture a moment in time, Taylor is capturing, or more precisely, recreating scenes out of his own imagination. In fact, most of his ideas come to him in the middle of the night. “I’ll wake up out of a dead sleep and know exactly what I want to do,” he says. His night visions are so clear he has to write down details to make sure he remembers everything. Every one of Taylor’s photographs is manipulated in some way – from the elaborate set up, to processing, to presentation – all of it is molded by the artist. Even a shot as simple as a country stream is altered by the addition of paper boats and the use of an old-fashioned processing technique that gives the final piece a lyrical, timeless incongruity. Other photographs are more “in your face” tough. Circus is a collage of gritty gray images depicting the dark isolation of modern life. People walking aimlessly on a highway overpass are eerily reminiscent of New Orleans after Katrina. The ominous city skyline with its tall towers reaching to the sky may remind many of 9/11, and originally Taylor had a plane flying straight toward those buildings. Thinking it was too grim, he covered up the plane at the last minute, but here’s the really creepy part – Taylor finished this piece in 1994, seven years before that fateful September day. A lot of his pieces are prophetic. Fear of Flying shows a flight attendant looking stunned sitting next to an open cockpit door. Done after 9/11 it might seem trite and exploitive, but Taylor created Fear of Flying in the 1980’s, many years before it would take on the aura of sadness and loss the viewer sees today. “I don’t think I’m psychic,” says Taylor, “but I do think artists can sometimes be super sensitive to the currents around them, and it shows up in their art.”

I met Brian Taylor at the Triton Museum, a nifty little showplace in Santa Clara just south of San Francisco, for a walk-through of his latest exhibit. It’s fun to see a show with the artist as your guide – without all the trappings of an official “opening.” When it’s just you and the artist it’s kind of like a skip through their psyche – a Vulcan mind meld of sorts. Working clockwise we start with Circus – a powerful piece, for sure. We move on, turning the corner and confronting some of his newer work – photographs of natural scenes: trees, leaves, forests and streams. Now, to be clear, they are still vintage Brian Taylor in that the processing gives them all an old world feel, but they are distinctly softer, more romantic, than some of his earlier work. “I think having kids changed everything for me,” Taylor says. “I just started to see the world differently.” That is not to say his art has lost its edge or its message – its just gotten a whole lot more personal.

Getting married and having kids did change everything, but Taylor is not shy about expressing the ambiguity he sometimes feels. He met his wife at school – he was the professor and she was his student. The attraction was instant, but acting on it was not. “I was young enough to worry about a scandal,” he says. “I waited until she graduated. Fortunately for me she was in her last semester.” They were married within a year. Patty quickly became one of his favorite models. She provides the hands and the diamond ring that casts a shadow and a chip on the shoulder of a silhouetted man in Hand Shadows and she is the muse in Christina’s New World – a new take on a very famous Andrew Wyeth painting. In Christina’s New World, Apple (as in iPOD) Headquarters loom on the horizon. Crippled by technology? A slave to corporate America? What exactly is the artist trying to say? Whatever the message, Steve Jobs’ wife liked it. She bought the photograph for her husband’s private collection. Patty also stars in the Good Wife, a photograph staged and taken at Lake Tahoe. “There’s a great story to that picture,” Taylor laughs. “We were shooting right at the shoreline. Obviously, Patty is topless and just as we were finishing, a tour boat came around the bend. They got quite an unexpected treat!”

Taylor loves to tell stories, and as we move through his exhibit, I realize that’s what he is doing with every piece, and many are even presented in book form. It is an unusual presentation – hard cover hand-made books, open to a two-page folio spread and framed in a shadow box behind Plexiglas. Behind the two main images are real pages. “I like the mystery. I like the texture. What lies underneath gives the piece some history,” he says. He’s also taken to adding words to some of his pieces – just a few – as if the full text were ripped away just leaving enough to give the viewer a hint of the artist’s intent. “I’ll probably get into trouble for saying this, but for me, I question the power of a single photograph. I put a lot of work into building an intricate piece because I want to make art that has a long lifespan,” he says. And then there are the poems. They look like giant avant-garde greeting cards – an image on one side and a poem on the other. “Yeah, that was a risk,” he admits. ” I could have been laughed out of town on those, but people seem to like them.” A poem about fish dreams is funny and lighthearted, while a poem about old men is full of poignancy and sweetness. That’s one of the great things about Brian Taylor’s work – he has a lot to say, but it never comes across as preachy and he never takes himself too seriously.

Taylor is a master of what is known as alternative processing techniques. In layman’s terms, he does it the old-fashioned way. “I like things made by hand. I’m not against digital photography. In fact I think it would be a disservice to my students not to teach them about it because it is the future, but for me there is still something important about doing it the old way. I like the beauty and texture.” The “old way” involves a good deal of good ol’ sunshine. Taylor uses what’s called the Gum Bichromate Cyanotype printing process, developed in the 1800’s. He starts with hand-coated watercolor paper and through several different chemical exposures to the sun over several days he achieves the color, balance and texture he is looking for. It often takes many attempts before he gets the right combination of light exposure and chemical exposure. One corner of his studio is filled with “rejects” – prints that for one reason or another just didn’t make the cut. He keeps them, though, to use as underlying pages in his books. It gives the books “history” he says. The whole process is a lot harder, tedious and time-consuming than it sounds, but it makes every photograph unique.

My personal tour is coming to an end, and I realize that Taylor has taken me on a roller coaster ride of emotions from the maximum impact of his early work to the poetry of his latest pieces. All art is a reflection of the artist to some extent, but Taylor takes the notion to a new level. His art is intensely personal. Looking around the gallery, taking in all of Brian Taylor’s art, is like looking into that deep place inside the artist where fear, anxiety, and uncertainly share space with hope, faith and ultimately love. Taylor is one of those people you have to get to know before you can really understand where he’s coming from. He is so nice, so gracious, and so easy-going, you might miss the undercurrent – but to do so would be like missing the punch line. He may be an open book, but just like his photo-folios, what you don’t see is perhaps just as important as what you do.

Written by: Erin Clark
ARTWORKS Magazine – Winter 2007