Koe: Photographers like Ansel Adams turned landscape photography into art of a high order, but these days it seems clichéd for the most part. Why did you choose this genre?

Frank Grisdale: The greatest joy in life comes from being all you can be, which is a whopper of a cliché, but clichés are well worn because they resonate truth. I knew I had to develop an unrelenting focus and stay with it for a very long time in order to be ’successful’ – which I define as being happy with what I have achieved. It’s the 10,000-hour rule. Put in that amount of time and you can’t help but become very good, even world class at whatever it is you are doing. Having said that, I am no where near 10,000 hours – but I aim to be there by age 90, which is when I anticipate I will peak artistically.

So I knew when I decided to pursue photography for the last half of my productive life that I had to choose a genre that I could ‘live with’ for a long stretch. And getting up ridiculously early and being out there in the perfect setting at just the right time was something I knew I could do, consistently, over time. I had been doing it naturally since I was a kid working at our family farm in the summers. Being forced out of bed so regularly and so early by my father to go check the cattle with him imbedded the glory of early morning light in my brain.

K: How do you avoid cliché and sentimentalism?

FG: There was a long period of time between when I was deep into photography during university and my re-start in photography when I turned 45. So even though I didn’t have a camera with me for that 20 year period, I was constantly thinking about photography, reading about it and framing scenes in my head, just because I enjoyed visualizing imagery and viewing images. I bought every book published about photography worth buying. So by the time I started shooting seriously I had a very strong foundation of knowledge about what had been done. Like everyone though, in the first period of developing my work, I had to shoot what others had shot before me—a la Ansel Adams—just to get it out of my system and of course just to get technically proficient by shooting a lot. But I quickly found that shooting what I knew had been done before was unrewarding, uninspiring, and the only people who thought it was great stuff were people who didn’t know much about photography’s history and were seeing something new in what I knew was old.

So the challenge for me after getting my chops down was to shoot landscape the way I had been seeing it in my mind all those years when I was not carrying a camera. Those mind shots are impressionistic, like all day dreams, so I began to try to shoot images that recalled that zen-like state of mind. I hadn’t seen anyone doing that kind of imagery in all my reading so I guess that is how I managed to avoid cliché and sentimentalism—by trying hard to shoot in a style and with a feel that I hadn’t seen in any of the hundreds of books and magazines that I had studied.

K: Your pictures share some qualities with abstract impressionism. Was this conscious or simply a result of your technique?

FG: I can’t say I set out with a goal to be an impressionist. I do recall thinking early on that the detail of an Ansel Adams shot was boring to me—almost too technically perfect to be interesting. That kind of work is the goal of most landscape photographers, so the number of competing images is ridiculous, and they all end up looking like each other. I wanted to be able to enter a landscape with a different goal—that of interpretation rather than duplication.

K: How have painters and their techniques informed your work?

FG: Obviously I like color so Rothko’s fields of color appeal to me, as does the atmosphere of William Turner. For photographers I should mention that I think the work of Ernst Haas and his motion photography stuck in my head for a long time, as did the intimate nature studies of Eliot Porter. Today I am stunned and inspired by the work of Jack Spencer.

K: Are there any Japanese photographers, or landscape artists, for that matter, whom you admire?

FG: Hiroshi Sugimoto’s legendary seascapes are captivating. Yukikazu Ito has a similar aesthetic but a bit more eerie. He’s an emerging talent.

In his ripe middle-age, it seems Frank Grisdale, too, is an emerging talent. His work is available from a number of international galleries.

I was approached by Stewart Mungeam, General Manager for Europe. After sending him my files, I thought afterwards that perhaps I should be asking some tough questions! Here’s a short but tough Q and A:

FG: Gallery Stock is how old now? What is the background of the founder(s)?

SM: Gallery Stock has been around for 5 years, it was originally created by Bill Charles, to house the Bill Charles photographers archives. It changed into the entity you see now over the last 3 years. Bill had the foresight to see there was a real potential for Gallery Stock to house the best artists in the world. He was joined by Howard Berstein some 3 years ago as a 50/50 partner in Gallery Stock.

FG: How do you choose photographers? Your offering of talent appears to be very high end – were these shooters missing out on media licensing because of their focus on other areas?

SM: We approach the photographers on an ad hoc basis. Anyone that’s been involved in recent photography exhibits, auctions, new books published etc. I can’t speak for my photographers, but stock does open up another revenue stream. Gallery Stock is also a tool to help promote photographers on another level.

FG: Will you limit the amount of photographers you represent, or will the collection grow endlessly?

SM: There are only so many great photographers out there so at some point we will stop. We won’t be taking on any amateur photographers. Gallery Stock really is a collection of the most elite photographers you can find and their very best images.

FG: How do you market the site/work?

SM: The site is marketed globally through press, online one sites such as PDN, Creative Review etc. There is also a brochure of work produced once a year that show cases the amazing talent.

Age-old subject matters get a fresh twist in a photography show hosted at the Peter Robertson Gallery. Frank Grisdale’s 22-image landscape show splits the difference between photography and painting. The established Alberta photographer documents familiar Prairie and Rocky Mountain vistas, but specifically edges his landscape photographs away from the easy realism of postcard and calendar shots into the realm of semi-abstracted impressionism.

“I am trying to show what hasn’t been seen before, as do all serious photographers ” says Grisdale, 54. “The creative effort includes what I do during the exposure, after, and then finally the substrate on which I print. For some of these works, I soften details with motion during the exposure followed by combining different images post exposure. At other times I’ll paint directly on to a print and then re-photograph the photo. The goal is to produce distinctive work with visual staying power. Work that really holds a viewer isn’t processed quickly.”

Showing at: Peter Robertson Gallery, 12304 Jasper Ave., Edmonton Alberta until Dec. 20, 2008

The spare compositions and rich colour of the photographs of Frank Grisdale are inscribed with this aesthetic and are come by honestly after years of experience and a clear intent. Views of the land; the faces of people; enigmatic photographs of only water, only sky – all contain, within the frame, the promise of the threshold: the very real possibility that one can crossover into a heightened reality.

Frank Grisdale’s work is beautiful, beautifully made and presents a point-of-view that is an antithesis to the irony of our age.

Heather Hamel, Art Gallery of Alberta

I was delighted to be hunted down by AARP this week. They want to use a photo of mine for an article due January and February of 2009.

AARP stands for the Association of American Retired People, and is based out of Washington DC.

They have the highest confirmed magazine circulation in the world at 40 million.

The image is Cowboy Trail Looking South.