Esoteric Art
American artist Peter Miller abandoned a successful corporate career to pursue an obscure form of printmaking.
From Kamakura Station, go past the Alter Stadt sausage factory, take a right at 1,300-year-old Sugimoto Temple and corkscrew up to a white hilltop house partly concealed by a manicured pomelo tree.
In the front room of the house, photogravure artist Peter Miller, 72, stands amid boxes and sumi-e paintings. He is preparing to relocate his workshop to a larger studio nearby.
Gray-haired and charcoal-sweatered, he points to an equally monochrome print of a mist-shrouded Mount Asama on the wall. Titled “Beyond the Sunset,” it is named after a passage from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem, “Ulysses.”
“It’s about Ulysses being old but still having enough energy to go on one more voyage,” says Miller, who exhibits his art at the Frederick Harris Gallery this month. “I guess I’m old enough to take the last voyage.”
His work, which begins as a photograph and ends as an ink print on washi paper, has received acclaim in Paris, Moscow and New York, and is on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institute.
“[Miller’s photogravure] provides us with visual experiences like no other,” says Yumiko Sai, chair of the Frederick Harris Gallery Committee.
The 19th-century technique is a meticulous one that only a few dozen artists practice worldwide. In this form of intaglio printing, a copper plate is coated with a gelatin tissue that has been exposed to light in contact with a film positive and then etched through a series of chemical baths. Ink is applied to the plate and finally pressed to washi paper.
“I’m not trying to recover some lost past,” says Miller, standing next to an Ettan printmaking press from California. “I am using this technique because I think it’s the best way to express the images that I want to show.”
Miller’s first camera was a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye he used to snap images in postwar Pittsburgh. At age 13, he built a darkroom in his family’s third-floor bathroom.
He studied English literature at Columbia University, where his photo of Vietnam War protestors landed on the cover of The Columbia Review. After earning a doctorate in sociology at Berkeley, Miller was recruited by a Japanese automaker.
During his frequent visits to Japan, he fell in love with the country and relocated in 1981. When not forging a career in Japan’s booming semiconductor industry, he devoted himself to alpine photography.
At an exhibition on the origins of photography, Miller was reintroduced to his childhood idol, Ansel Adams, as well as Peter Henry Emerson and Henry Fox Talbot, the early progenitors of photography and photogravure.
Miller was captivated by the possibilities of combining photography with printmaking. In 1991, he built his Kamakura workshop, dove into 19th-century photogravure textbooks and began experimenting.
“For me, it was an easy decision,” says Miller. “Our income went down to zero and our expenses went through the roof. For some reason, I didn’t worry about it.”
A year later, he displayed 12 prints at his first exhibition in an abandoned store in Kamakura. He earned enough to cover the cost of the materials. His reputation began to grow.
Whether depicting dried konbu seaweed, snow-clad peaks or remote Nepalese hamlets, Miller says he attempts to evoke the same message as the 12th-century Chinese artists who portrayed human insignificance amidst the immensity
of nature.
Photos for his recent fishnet series were taken at coastal villages around Japan. Others were shot while hiking in the Himalayas, exploring glaciers in Norway and visiting rural Russia where “they put milk in the refrigerator to keep it warm.”
Miller, who now uses a digital Nikon D800 camera, believes art is more relevant in a world where modern media is competing for viewers’ attention.
“I look at the artwork as a way to immerse yourself in the moment,” he says, thumbing through sheets of copper plate he custom orders from an industrial metal provider. “To be fully aware of the enjoyment of the moment, it’s one of the most difficult things to do.”
Gallery Exhibition
Feb 27–Mar 19
Gallery Reception
Feb 27
Words: Nick Narigon
Image: Kayo Yamawaki