- Juan de Santa Anna photography - Juan de Santa Anna photography
Juan de Santa Anna fully immerses himself in the active cultural and scenic life of Montana. His artistic and photographical influences, whether direct or oblique, absorb old ideas in the artistic milieu of photography and at the same time perfect their own distinct contributions to Big Sky life.
Juan de Santa Anna Photography
From cars in Granite County, burdened by accumulated snow, wedged between stout mining drums, to diesel trucks parked in the fields around Fort Benton, stationary and inconsequential beneath the gray grumble of inauspicious skies, to the tumbled homesteads that dot the empty prairies of Winnett, de Santa Anna’s photography enhances familiar imagery with uncommon tincture.
“Film captures light in a way that’s very different from how our eyes do,” says de Santa Anna (interview with author). “And I try to print my photography the same way as how I saw it when I shot it. Eyes and film see light differently, and by overexposing or darkening, I can bring out what I see, which isn’t always what the camera sees. Being able to interpret the picture later, is the part that I like most.”
De Santa Anna's emphasis is on pictures captured in time, and his compositions are shaped by efforts to immortalize those everyday scenes, objects and moments that inspire the fruitful elegance of eclecticism.
In one photo, “Rainforest Rest Home,”de Santa Anna presents a raggedy bronze truck – perhaps it’s a Chrysler, maybe it’s a Dodge – in an unusual light, finding something to please the eye where the viewer might least expect it.
There is nothing necessarily fresh about a heavy hunk of metal decomposing in the Oregon rainforest – no spontaneous gestures or vivacious visceral thrills. Rather, the aesthetic attraction of tone and texture, pattern and perspective, structure and abstraction, is what makes us re-appreciate this familiar object with new eyes. Beauty reigns supreme in the most unexpected places: old trucks, granaries, cardboard mills, silos, and ramshackle cabins.
Montana Photography
“I do my art everyday,” says de Santa Anna. “There is a real process to it. I’ve seen an improvement as to how many usable shots I now take. The process begins with a vision. It’s not just point, shoot, and take it to Wal-Mart. There’s a clear presentation of vision. A vision that just helps you say what you like about the photo in one simple sentence – lighting, composition, subject matter.”
De Santa Anna was born in Venezuela. His biological dad died when he was 4 days old. His mother remarried when he was two, and, as a child, he lived in many different parts of the United States and Canada.
"The Andes Mountains are very similar to the Rocky Mountain Front, says De Santa Anna, "and the eastern central part of Venezuela has a lot of farmland, lakes and rivers. Ovando looks a lot like the places I’ve lived in Venezuela, a lot of riparian land, but more humid.”
Photography is what brought de Santa Anna to Missoula in 2001, and photography is what has kept him in Montana.
“In 1999, the father who raised me died of cancer. He died two weeks before I was coming out to take a summer session at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography. When I was done with the course, I realized I needed a change. I quit my job and started working at a photo lab, until the next year, when the school hired me to work in their black & white darkroom. By the end of that summer, I realized I was done with California.”
After four years of working at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography – a place where the setting of science and technology fitted his fascination with photography – he felt it was time for a change of venue and vocation once again.
Not surprisingly, it hasn’t taken de Santa Anna very long to fall in love with Montana’s legendary mystique, spirited disposition, and venerable institutions; recent escapades have taken him and his camera to the rollicking Helmville rodeo as well as to the teeming wheat fields of Dutton.
“I love shooting the extreme mud and dust of the rodeo. It’s a culture and a way of life, and I love being able to document it. Photographing John Deere tractors all day in Dutton was incredible.”
De Santa Anna often keys is in on the rusty emblems and insignias of cars, tractors, and trucks. This compartmentalization and examination is part of a genre known as rustscape art.
“For me, hitting my 50th year, the Chevy reminds me of my youth. I went to high school living in my 57’ Chevy pickup truck, and I was a Chevy man. Now I drive a Toyota. We move, we evolve, and we change. But it’s still a part of me. Old trucks rusting in a field, or looking pristine driving down the road, it’s still the good old days to me.”
Through photography, de Santa Anna not only keeps the past present but also aims to capture the creative energy and excitement of anything and everything between the borders of Montana, from free-roaming wildlife and dusty Chinook winds, to lowly gulches and gorgeous granite peaks, to plain old smoke-belching mills and factories.
"Photography," he says,"is all part of keeping the soul of it alive.”
Ultimately, the beauty of art is the beauty of sharing expression, discovering common ground, sharing the iconic nature of artistic and creative ambition, and letting the world in on those things our own eyes adore, hearts envy, and minds wish to make permanent. Valid expression triumphs and towers over the vapidity of economics.
“I would rather have my art hanging in more places and be poor,” says de Santa Anna, “than just have a few pieces up somewhere and be rich.”
Brian D'Ambrosio - Brian D'Ambrosio is the author of more than 500 published articles and seven books, including From Haikus to Hatmaking: A Year in the Life ...
