Seeing...In Black and White

by Bella Erakko

Tim Schroll strolled into the Key West camera shop one day in the early 1970s to pick up his color slides. “You know,” the store employee said, handing him the box, “I see what you are doing but you don’t need color.” At the time, color slides were all the rage, but Tim’s images explored the world in terms of shape, shadow, and light—ideal for black-and-white. Color detracted from the essence-of-image he sought.

As a natural-born minimalist, he wisely put aside the 35 mm camera, and migrated to a 4”x5” large format camera and trusty tripod, and threw them into the car … for the next forty-and-counting years. He is still shooting film for all of his work.

He is sparing with the camera click, but wildly expansive in his exploration. A friend traveling West proclaimed he had taken about 10,000 photos; Tim, heading in the same direction, netted about 20, and he was not even sure about that as he wouldn’t actually see them until he hit his darkroom at home.

Most of his images are found within a hundred miles of his home in Illinois. His technique? “I drive along and I see something. I stop. For the past 45 years, that is the key. Stop.” He gets out, walks around looking. “I will see an angle of light that strikes me. But more times than not, a telephone pole or fence or wire will make me walk away.”

His father, a professional photographer who supported the family on weddings and family events, put a camera in each of his children’s hands. The others said, “Yeah, cool, Dad,” and pretty much forgot about it. But the camera landed in Tim’s hands—and it stayed, with one personal condition. “The day I set up the tripod thinking, ‘Boy, I can sell this,’ THAT is the day I walk away.” For him, always and ever, photography would be his passionate hobby.

One day about 25 years ago, a woman asked him, “Do you see in black and white?” He thought about that for a while and said, Yes, I think I do.” Color “clothes” the image, dressing and overlaying it in a myriad of hues. Schroll searches for, and studies, the structural underlying beauty of nature—a nakedness dressed only in its season.

One morning he happened upon a maple leaf on his patio, that perfectly captured the essence of “maple”: a graceful stem, a flawlessly formed leaf, the whirlybird seeds forming a balancing arc against the leaf. He brought it into the house. Natural lighting poured in the south window; a black background eliminated shadows. Click … one of two or three indoor still lifes he’d take that year, all in his living room with only the light from the window.

Meanwhile, his wife Marilyn adores the rambling drives with him, often saying, “Let’s GO, Tim!” And the locals have been known to place one-dollar bets on where he lugged out his camera to capture an image. One in particular befuddled them. It looked like wind-swept dunes in alp-like country, dusted with snow. It could have been a cold day in Morocco or the foothills of the Alps. But in reality, it was six miles away.

And perhaps that is the essence of Tim Schroll’s photography. He sees.

Schroll’s work will be on exhibit at the Alliance Art Gallery in Hannibal, MO during the month of February. An Open House featuring this work will take place on Saturday, March 13, 2021 from 1 until 6:00.

Central Range

Frozen Falls

Smokey Mountain

This Old House