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Saturday, May. 09, 2009

Mike Tharp: 'Transitions' -- UC Merced seniors have grown up

How did you change from when you were 17 or 18 to when you were 21 or 22?

Luckily for UC Merced and our community, local photographer Roger Wyan has helped answer that question for some 100 seniors in the university's first graduating class. He photographed them freshman year, 2005-06, then made their pictures again during their final year.

The result: a vibrant exhibition of those photographs displayed in the Kolligian Library. He also got the students to describe how they themselves thought they had changed during their years on campus. The first-person quotes, as captions, accompany the portraits on the third-floor walls.

You can view them at:

http://www.facebook.com -- search for Roger J. Wyan

Together, they provide a memorable glimpse into how these young people progressed from mumbling, stumbling teenagers into confident young adults.

Shot in stark black and white, first with film, later digitally, the portraits leave us with a graphic sense of wonder at the students' metamorphosis.

Wyan, who attended New York's School of Visual Arts, was a Sun-Star photographer from 1986-96, then spent two years at the Modesto Bee.

His images have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Newsweek, Time, the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and the Associated Press. He has taught at Merced College and now at UC Merced.

His main influences have been Richard Avedon, a famous fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, and Brian Lanker, subject of this column last month.

The idea for "Transitions," as he calls the exhibition, was inspired some 20 years ago, he says, when he photographed for the Sun-Star local high school students lobbying for the newest UC campus to come to Merced.

"What struck me was that none of those students would directly benefit from the Merced campus being here," he recalls. "The children of those same students now could come here."

His approach to the project was informal.

He and assistant Scotty Hermanson hung out by the freshmen dorms, the dining commons, the library. They'd ask a passing student if he or she wanted a picture made for the project.

Eventually, some 200 said yes. He shot them at a portable studio right on campus.

"I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do with it," he admits. "I just knew that this was a totally important opportunity to be in at the ground level of a new time. How often do they build a university?"

As he examined the contact sheets from his Mamiya BR-67 camera, he experienced "a certain unreal or fantasy aspect of photography that comes through working a three-dimensional object into two dimensions. You change the appearance of the person right away."

The initial 200 subjects dwindled through attrition to the 100 or so now gracing the walls. Phase II was shot with a Canon 5D camera.

Soon it became more than a project.

"These pictures are my children," he says. "I know all their names. I've lived with these pictures for the last four years. I feel like I've been living with these kids."

Not only the students changed. So did the shooter.

"They were filled with optimism and hope. The way I think after dealing with these students -- they've taught me to be more positive and optimistic."

Take a look at Justin Duckman, shot Jan. 27, 2006, and then Feb. 10 of this year.

"When I first came to Merced, I was a disheveled, goofy-looking, highly caffeinated wannabe pseudo-intellectual," he writes. Now I'm a disheveled, goofy-looking, highly caffeinated wannabe pseudo-intellectual with a B.A. Success! I think I'm going to miss this place."