Rangefinder Magazine
January 2005

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Profile: Tom Millea by Lou Jacobs Jr.
Visions in Black and White

Some of the most fascinating images you may encounter are made by Tom Millea. On his web site, www.tommillea.com, are sample landscapes, figures (nudes), portfolios and more. Listed also are his Platinum Workshops—Tom is a dedicated printer in platinum, which offers an exacting rendition of black- and-white artistry practiced by a small group of esoterics.

Of his background he says, “In college I knew I wanted to be an artist, but I had no idea in what discipline. I tried drama, writing, painting, sculpture and the lot. I really wanted to be on stage, but the faculty at Western Connecticut State University discouraged me. After leaving the English department, the professor saw a photograph I did and sent me to another professor who happened to be a friend of Paul Strand’s. He looked at my photographs, encouraged me, and I began working at camera stores and anywhere I could learn. One camera store customer who saw my photographs on display happened to be Paul Caponigro, and I ended up studying with him from 1967 to 1973 when I moved to California.”

Before Caponigro, Tom worked for inventor Robert Fulton (descendent of Thomas Edison and the Robert Fulton of steam engine fame) who sent Tom to shoot experimental educational films. “No one told me what to do, they just gave me a movie camera and sent me out into the world. I made a film of a farm with cattle waving their tails to classical music, and a film of single framed pages of books to test viewer’s attention to subliminal information. During this time I realized I wanted to be a still photographer. Pictures I could hang and study had more power for me.

“After my association with Paul, I was director of photography at a photographic workshop in Connecticut, but I had no following as a photographer. I left that job to move to Carmel, CA, because I heard it was a photographic art center and a small beautiful town. I was completely out of money, but I stayed because Carmel was an incredibly active place at the time.” Tom realized he was in the right milieu.

He was acquainted with Minor White, Wynn Bullock, Edward Steichen and Ansel Adams. He had met them and others in photography when he directed The Underground Gallery in New York City.

Occasionally major photographers showed up including André Kertész, Garry Winogrand, Ralph Gibson, Lee Witkin (the famous photography dealer), John Szarkowski (then photography curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art) and many more. Through a mélange of visual and verbal experiences, Tom became the creator of images that inspire wonder and slow exploration. One knowledgeable viewer said of his photographs, “His platinum-palladium prints demand full participation from the viewer, and they repay this attention a hundredfold.”

Many of the images you see on Tom’s web site are haunting. Such as ethereal landscapes, portraits of women who may seem detached, and sensual nudes, all in glowing black and white. “All of my work,” he tells me, “is done as an artist. Some women do not like the moody images I make of them, and I became tired of people being unhappy with my work and decided to make portraits for myself and galleries only. In 40 years I have done only three commissions, but that was enough to teach me that making photographs for other people was not for me. I do love to photograph women, and I have only recently begun to photograph men.”

Tom has been called a hermit, a mystic and a genius. When queried about these evaluations he says, “I have called myself a hermit because I’ve mostly lived alone in my life. I didn’t want it that way; it just turned out that way. I am not terribly social but I’m not antisocial either.”

When you review “figures” on Tom’s web site you will understand that his interpretive approach gives the work striking individuality. He recently made a trip to France for a project and says, “It was a great gift, a commission, to photograph one woman for two solid weeks. It was a unique experience to have that amount of time to work with one person. We explored many facets of her personality, and I was able to make photographs unlike I had done before.”

Tom also interprets the landscape. Of his approach to landscapes, as well as women, he says, “Rather than doing anything elaborate with landscapes, I tend to understate them. I prefer the unadorned. To look at a woman’s face is to look into a complete universe. There is no greater privilege. To make an image of the ocean, horizon and sky is to strip bare landscape of everything but the essentials. Like Rothko’s last paintings, can emotion be shown with such limited elements?”

Tom’s nude images show particularly intriguing drama. His sense of design, posing and lighting involve viewer emotions. They are beautiful nudes but completely opposite of what you see in Playboy. He sculpts women, often on black backgrounds, with visual plasticity like a modern Rodin. Asked about his style, he responds, “It’s a complicated subject. My work and views have changed drastically over the years.”

Of his print mediums, Tom explains, “There is a substantive difference between silver, platinum and palladium prints. Platinum is a generic term for both. The major difference is that platinum is rather blue and palladium prints are a warmer brown. Silver prints deal with surface. They look at me but do not try to enter me—saying, ‘Stay away and look.’ Platinum prints invite the viewer to enter the picture space and delve below the surface.”

The making of both types, platinum and palladium, is a contact-printing process. Hand-coated paper is dried, placed in a printing frame with the negative, and exposed to sunlight. After a period of time, often hours, the paper is developed in a potassium oxalate bath and then cleared in three separate acid baths where all the ferrous materials wash out and leave only platinum and palladium. After washing, these prints are the longest lasting of any photographic process.

Tom has done limited work in color. Color film work didn’t attract him, but digital color does, and he shoots it occasionally. However, he shows only the black-and-white prints, saying, “Collectors tend to become confused when I do anything outside platinum, so the color prints I make are just for myself.”

Tom’s inner feelings also come out in his writings, which are mainly in unpublished books noted on his web site. When asked if his photographs explore death, loneliness, alienation and separation, he asks me why I didn’t mention redemption, and then says he doesn’t wish to talk about my list. “Look at the photographs, and feel what you must,” he advises, and adds, “Recently several people have said my photographs are a marriage of vision and craft, and that the final image goes beyond seeing and into poetry. It’s up to others to decide what is true for them.”

Later he mentioned that in each of his unpublished essays “Is a powerful statement of duende. Federico García Lorca spoke about duende along with Edward Hirsch in his terrific book, The Demon and the Angel. This I discovered when I downloaded a detailed essay on the duende by García Lorca.

Separately I found duende (a term that comes from southern Spain) described as ‘inspiration, magic, fire, a ghost, a demon, a spirit, charm and magnetism.’ I also read that duende ‘is a power and not a behavior; it is a struggle and not a concept.’”

Tom professes, “My work is about life and death, how we live and die. How death follows us and allows life to be lived fully because death is always present, palatable, always seeking to embrace, if not take. To go to the edge is always terrifying. To be embraced by angels is as terrifying as seeing one’s own death. But Lorca’s obsession with death is not something negative. It is a cry for life and love. We live to love, to connect with others and share the highest forces… of art… everything. The only truth in an image is the truth the artist brings to it.”

Tom is a charming ascetic, which means to me, austere, sometimes severe, always involving. His philosophy of living and photographing is unlike most, but it is rewardingly consistent in his imagery. Of it he says, “I have devoted 40 years of my life to art and hope what I have learned and accomplished are worthy of the people viewing the images.”

Tom Millea’s pictures are on exhibition at Palomar College, San Diego, January 23 to February 26, 2005; reception January 29.

Lou Jacobs Jr. is the author of 28 how-to photography books, the latest of which is Studio Lighting (Amherst Media). He has taught at UCLA and Brooks. His photographs and stories have been published in numerous magazines. He is a longtime member of ASMP and enjoys shooting stock during his travels in the U.S. and abroad, which is leased through several agencies.