Artist Will Connally started making home movies with his dad’s old VHS camcorder as a kid in the early ‘90s. That led to experimenting with still images using a 35mm camera when he got a little older.
Having gone back and forth between creative writing and image making his entire life, Connally was always attracted to visual storytelling that suggests a larger narrative. “My eye is drawn to still frames or single images that allude to much more going on outside the frame,” he explains. “I’ve never really separated this practice from drawing, writing, and painting. They’re all related.”
“Signs and Spirits of Lake Elster,” Connally’s solo exhibition at Reynolds Gallery, showcases his photographs based on an elaborate narrative derived from the fictional Lake Elster, purportedly a rural Northeastern lake. Before staging the photographs, Connally developed a series of short stories, sketches, fabricated props and a detailed timeline spanning over 370 years beginning with the European discovery of the lake. Just don’t expect facts or a storyline. The works purposefully disguise narrative elements, encouraging viewers to imagine the untold pieces.
Growing up in the Northeast, Connally recalls a childhood full of strange legends and folklore involving witches and ghosts. Taking inspiration from the history of Lake Champlain in New York, he began writing about the legends surrounding a lake in New Hampshire, dating back to its settlement in the late 1640s by French fur trappers and Jesuit Priests.
His visual inspiration comes from what he calls “weird old movies from the ‘40s and ‘50s,” as well as theater design, especially small-budget local productions. Rather than collaged afterwards in post-production, all elements of the scenes are photographed together in camera using a Japanese medium-format camera called a Mamiya RB67.
“I love handmade movie and stage effects, so I use painted props, matte-painting on glass, and rear-projection techniques in my series,” he says. “All the visuals have to happen in camera and appear on the same film negative.”
The inclusion of flat, stage-like painted elements in each scene emphasizes the fictional nature of the narrative and calls into question the veracity of the photographs. A viewer might understandably wonder how a framed painting ended up on the rocks of Lake Elster in “Torn Portrait,” despite it clearly having been photographed there.
Setting up for one of Connally’s photographs starts with sketches and writing. He storyboards the images and writes about the characters leading up to each scene. The characters are often off camera, so their personal belongings or significant objects stand in for them in the photographs, but there’s always a trace of someone there.
Depending on the scene, he either builds interior sets or alters existing locations to bring them into his world. “A lot of stage painting and prop fabrication lead up to the final image and ultimately, I have to see all the elements line up through the camera’s viewfinder,” he says. “I have to believe it if I expect anyone else to.”
Documenting a fictional lake using multiple bodies of water, Connally has photographed bodies of water in the U.S., Canada, Finland and western Ireland so far, is not without its challenges. Because he shoots the exteriors in public places with multiple tripods, external lights, props, power cords, and various elements, the setups are often decidedly conspicuous. “It can be hard to secretly photograph a large-scale, fur-lined coffin in a river and look like I have everything under control,” he acknowledges. “Also, I’m not super prolific, so each scene can take several months to get right from the sketch to the final printed photograph.”
The exhibition at Reynolds Gallery allows the viewer into Connally’s richly imagined surroundings through staged scenes full of fabricated elements and symbolic objects such as “Drift Glass Arm.” It’s a world absent of definitively formed figures while suggesting characters who never fully appear.
The unsettling quality of the photographs is rooted in the folklore, stories, and myths that inspire him. “They can be weird, scary, and wonderful, but not always pleasant,” he says. “I like having a looming sense in each image, like something is just about to happen or we’re stepping into the scene a moment after an event occurred. There should be some sense of mystery.”
Currently an assistant professor in the Art Foundation program at VCUarts, Connally has been working on the Lake Elster series since 2011. Accordingly, he advises his students to persevere.
“Do a little bit every day, even if it’s a quick sketch or writing a line, and don’t be afraid of a project stretching out over a long period of time,” he says. “Also, your outside interests can really enrich your project. I found a way to incorporate sketching, set painting, and fiction writing into my photography.”
All of which combine to form the psychologically complex world of Lake Elster.
“Signs and Spirits of Lake Elster,” through Aug. 22 at Reynolds Gallery, 1514 West Main Street. Artist talk and reception on July 30, 5-7 p.m., reynoldsgallery.com
