art beat / By Bob Doran

The image collector — Kim Sallaway’s perfect moments

(Aug. 2, 2007)  SoHum photographer Kim Sallaway is one of those people who carries a camera at all times — just in case. He always wants to be ready should some image present itself, some magic moment that cries out for capture. For the last couple of months he’s been sorting through thousands of images he’s collected over the years, selecting a few dozen for a one-man exhibition opening this weekend at Piante Gallery in Old Town, a show he calls “Perfect Moments.”

Funny thing: Sallaway has been hanging a collection of his photos the first weekend in August for years. He was the official staff photographer for Reggae on the River for as long as I can remember — that’s where I first got to know him, in the photo pit in front of the stage. Every summer he arranged dozens of his artists-in-action portraits documenting the history of the show behind large pieces of glass for a backstage exhibit. However, since Reggae Rising supplanted Reggae on the River this year, he won’t mount that display this time out. And his show in Eureka does not include any of his concert photos.

“Young Americans” by Kim Sallaway

GALLERY >

As he puts it in the artist’s statement accompanying the show, “There are perfect moments everywhere for me. I find my ‘moments’ in the nature around me, in the kid hitting a homer, or in the objects we tend to overlook because we have seen them so many times before.”

As someone who is on Sallaway’s e-mail list, I’ve experienced a fair number of the photographer’s “moments.” For four years and counting, Kim has sent out daily digital missives, subject line “potd,” short for “photo of the day.”

On one level, it’s an assignment he’s made for himself to enforce self-discipline. “I want my work to be better this year than last year; to be better tomorrow than it is today,” he says. “And looking across the collection I can see a refinement over time.” So, it’s worked.

The potd also serves another purpose. “It’s like a diary. Some people blog, some write in a journal, I make pictures. Some people can tell you what they did with their day; I try to show you some part of my day.”

He tends to mix things up day-to-day, sometimes offering a record of what he’s up to; this week, a few images showed progress onsite at Reggae. Before that there was a series shot at the Oregon Country Fair (he’s a regular). He’s attracted to events where the crowd becomes part of the show: Earthdance, Burning Man and San Francisco’s Gay Pride Parade are on his circuit, along with things like local rodeos and any sort of SoHum gathering.

For the last year or so, he’s periodically focused his lens on the birds that show up outside his living room window. With patience and perseverance, he managed to capture particularly striking images of hummingbirds in flight. The Rufous, caught in a blur of motion, shows up in the exhibit.

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