Ocean Point
Gunnar Plake Photographs

Gunnar Plake was born in St. Louis, Missouri but grew up on the east coast. He graduated from The University of California at Berkeley and has an MBA from American University.

Gunnar began his love affair with the camera at 12. Self-taught, Gunnar used black and white film for many years but switched to color when he realized that he much preferred to work in the "light". His photography is almost exclusively interpretative landscapes.

Underlying Gunnar's art is his heightened awareness of the passage of time. This preoccupation with the lack of enough time has been the common theme in his photography for the past 25 years. He travels extensively to America's soaring west and to the oceans worldwide always in search of the elusive combination of light and vista to which he adds his own sense of time.

Plake endeavors, "to imbue my images with the optimal quantity of time to try and create the perception of motion within a single frame." Using a panoramic camera, he moves it ever so slightly during the film's exposure. "This enables me to include more information in the image than if the camera were held still. The 'piling on' of data makes it possible for me to expand the expressive possibilities of the photographic medium. Colors can be stretched and blended; out of the raw material of the landscape, textures can be perceived then amplified." Plake does not just freeze time but manipulates, shapes and tames it.

The unique color panoramic prints are laminated and mounted on anodized aluminum. There is no glass to distort the image and the light seems to come from within the photograph.

Plake resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work has been the subject of many recent shows throughout the U.S. and is in the collections of The Brooklyn Museum, The Denver Art Museum, The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and The Huntington Galleries.