Photographers go digital and old school

Four photographers give a small sample of the varied approaches digital tools allow the art form.

“Digital Visions 2.0” is a follow-up of sorts to a show held at Montana Art and Framing in 2009.

Indeed, local artists Chris Autio, Chris Chapman, Bob Hawkins, Peter Keefer and John Salisbury don’t have much in common but their medium.

“It’s just interesting to see the range, from Bob Hawkins’ really traditional color photography capturing a nice composition and beautiful colors to Peter Keefer, who takes the photo and turns it into a different kind of art,” said Don Mundt, owner the shop that opened in 2008.

Keefer, a longtime printmaker who studied painting under the iconic American artist Richard Diebenkorn, uses Photoshop to push his images into the realm of graphic design.

Mundt plans to hang a few of the original photographs along with the final result to show how deeply Keefer draws on his background in printmaking – manipulating separate layers of color and shape to create a frenetic result.

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Salisbury, meanwhile, favors natural settings familiar to any fly fisher, only his camera and eye produce crisp scenes of stream beds that elude the iPhone amateurs.

“You’re walking and see the creek and you take a picture of water, that’s what you want to capture, and for some reason he’s able to capture it,” Mundt said.

In one photograph, “Tail Feathers,” Salisbury has zoomed in so far that the colorful rocks, and distortion from the water create a completely abstract arrangement of color and shape.

In contrast, Chris Autio’s black-and-white prints of swirling water have the smooth, silvery ripples associated with film.

Chapman, who prints his own black-and-white photographs, has a small selection of outdoor scenes and architectural structures, including two images taken at the old Stimson mill in 2012. One documents the complex forms of piping, while the other looks down upon a narrow building.

“Digital Visions 2.0” will be up through April at Montana Art and Framing, located at 709 Ronan St. on the east side of Russell Street. There will be a reception on First Friday from 5 to 9 p.m. For more information, call (406) 541-7100 or go to montanaart.com.

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Over at the Dark Room Gallery, 135 N. Higgins Ave., photographer Lee Silliman goes in the opposite direction – using the old-school methods favored by his idol, Ansel Adams.

This series of 20 8-by-10-inch contact prints titled “Bannack: Before the Flood,” documents the historic ghost town 10 months before it was hit by a flash flood in 2013.

The photos will be up through the end of April, with a reception on First Friday.