It’s the moment of magic.
When inspiration turns into artwork.
That is the moment when light, in its infinite iterations and shape, starts to skip back and forth on the print placed on darkroom table, and the artist, mesmerized by its presence and its rhythm, succumbs his hands to its pace, sharpens his eye to its form and embraces everything that happens right there, and only there, and only in that moment, with his full being.
Shannon Graham, co-owner of S&C Design Studios, calls that moment “dancing with the light.” He scribbled it on the wall leading to the darkroom as a reminder, but if you ask him to elaborate, that’s all the insight you would get from him. Images are his expressive means, not words. Besides, as he says, he doesn’t like “to get philosophical.”
Colleen Graham, the other half of the business, an artist equally conversant with both images and words, explains the moment of creation like this.
“Photography is all about capturing light,” she says. “Sometimes, you just got to dance with it.”
The husband-and-wife team are seasoned storytellers who work with images, words and light to capture life’s precious moments. And they have made it their mission to keep going.
Like many closely bonded artists, the Grahams straddle the practical world of everyday living, and the esoteric world of art making.
They have found a way to function in many aspects of mundaneness, like running a household, balancing the ledger, playing with their pups, Irma and Wyatt, shooting archery to relax after a long day, or sitting, sometimes in silence, in their living room at the end of an intense day, watching the incredible sunsets they say one can see here every season.
Living as working artists in Iowa is not a commercial mantra for the Grahams. It is their destiny, one they have purposely chosen and one that they carry as part of who they are and what they live for.
The bargain goes something like this: We love the fine art of film and photography. If just some people really value what we stand for, what we do as artists, historians and practitioners of the art of photography, that’s ok. We love it and it loves us back.
Kindred spirits blend in fine art
They met in 1997, at Hawkeye Community College, where they studied commercial art photography. It didn’t take them long to realize they were kindred spirits. They married in the woods of Newton Hills, a State Park in South Dakota, on June 5, 1999, and have since shared life and art and all the joys and burdens they bring along.
After college, they did a stint in Maine and New Hampshire, where they worked for prominent photographers.
Shannon had “big dreams” about becoming a photography historian for the Library of Congress, and later, about being a photographer for NASA, but when neither panned out, the Grahams started thinking about opening their own studio.
“We are more down-to-earth people,” Shannon said.
So they returned to Iowa, lived in Cedar Falls and six years ago bought a house in Bremer County, where their farmer neighbors greeted them warmly.
Shannon, who prides himself on his exploration of traditional and alternative photographic processes, has taught college courses in analog photography and also for various groups and organizations. He is the studio manager, the lead photographer, and a skilled artist in film photography, among other things. His work has been published in art magazines. In his 40 years of experience as an exhibiting artist and darkroom printer, he has learned a lot. His talent has won recognition at art festivals in Nebraska, Minnesota and Iowa and his pieces have been exhibited in fine arts galleries and at the Hearst Arts Center in Cedar Falls.
For her part, in addition to her photographic work, Colleen is the lead editor for a popular blog called TheMom100.com. Since 2006, she has written articles about food and drink for The Spruce Eats, a site dedicated to food and drink, now owned by Dotdash Meredith. For some of these assignments, Colleen, who is on the editorial team for the site as an author and mixologist, has had to turn the family kitchen into a photoshoot set to create an appealing dirty martini or a sample of crostini with roasted red peppers.
Among other things, for Colleen, this work eventually led to five books about drinks. The latest one, “Free Spirited: 60 no/low cocktail recipes for the sober curious,” published by HarperCollins UK, was released last week.
The Grahams love working in the studio.
It is their safe space and their creative universe.
But they also enjoy the energy they get back from people who visit their booth at art shows. The conversations that happen there, in just a few minutes about a particular piece can have a lasting impact on the artists. This is often how Shannon and Colleen learn exactly how their work has touched the heart of a stranger they had never met.
At a recent show, a man came back a couple of times before he bought a piece and each time, he felt more connected to the work, an added bonus for the artists’ spirit.
Living their passion for art, the Grahams have also found peace and acceptance in the fact that sometimes the long hours of getting ready for a show, of producing and packing their best work and driving to a metro area for a chance to reach an appreciative audience may not turn out as hoped.
It happens and by now, they know how to deal with it – they go right back to the studio and return to the work that awaits them there.
Time is their companion and their judge. There’s never enough of it to get everything done. They try to capture it in the capsule of their imagery, but it takes a lot of it – sometimes weeks or months – to get the black-and-white print just right.
In moments like these, the artists are sustained by their creativity, their bond to each other and their commitment to be true to what they stand for.
To make the numbers work, the Grahams have evolved, networked, pushed the boundaries between art and commercial photography. They pursue their dreams with inexhaustible energy, but when things fall apart, as they did during the pandemic, for instance, ultimately, they still find a way out.
What’s unique about them is that as a team, they work in a shared space daily, both as artists and business partners, but they have maintained their artistic identity.
I asked what their favorite picture of themselves is, and got this answer from Colleen:
“It was on one of our 35 millimeter cameras and I took a photograph of him, and then for some reason, the film didn’t advance so later, who knows how long, he took a photo of me on the same camera, on the same negative, so we’re like overlaid on each other.”
Added Shannon:
“I didn’t know there was already an image on it. That’s us,” he explained as he showed me the image.
Visiting the studio
I met the Grahams about 20 years ago, when they had a shingle on Main Street in Cedar Falls and reconnected with them during this fall’s Artapalooza. Learning that they now live in Bremer County, I wanted to know more, so on a recent dry and sunny October Saturday, Rick and I drove up north to see them. An avid photographer, Rick felt at home in their studio, relishing a tour of the darkroom, a nostalgic nod to his old stomping ground in photography. He could not conceal his fascination with their collection of vintage cameras and his interest in their process of making fine art prints only piqued with the tour of their work space.
Our conversation in the studio could have been purely academic if it were not taking place at the very spot where the two artists create individually and together what has become their signature original work at the intersection of film-based photography and art.
Seeing the Grahams for the first time in their element in this intensely private space where they pour their souls into creative imagery gave me pause as I know the inner sanctum of creativity is reserved only for trusted visitors with inquiring minds.
On the outside, the art studio looks like a well kept shed, much like the ones one would spot from the gravel road as it meanders through the fields.
The interior, however, looks more like a stage where things are expected to happen once the curtain is lifted.
In one area of the studio, a set features dried flowers on a table next to a cup of coarsely ground coffee and a diary. Eventually, Colleen will take pictures of the arrangement and finesse the print until it tells the story of love lost.
The studio looks like a museum where the history of photography is treasured and preserved not just on the shelves and sorted in the steel cabinets, but also where it is re-enacted daily in the darkroom. There, photo prints come to life under the magic of chemicals, until the eye of the beholder is satisfied with the exposure and says it’s ready.
“Our Photoshop is an ink and brush,” Shannon said succinctly, explaining the process for a lay audience.
Part of the uniqueness of Shannon’s work comes from the fact that he mixes his own chemistry and developers by hand. Notes with formulas posted on the wall and elsewhere stand in testimony that the process is tried and tested over and over, until the optimum result is reached.
“In my later years, I’ve been getting more into the science,” Shannon says. “I’m making my own formulas that no one has ever made before, so that makes my images look different than anybody else’s.”
What lies ahead for the couple is getting ready for an upcoming art show.
Then back to the studio. Exactly how they recharge remains part of their secret sauce, which Shannon summed up like this:
“Keeping your head in the clouds while keeping your feet on the ground,” he says.