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Local Photographer Captures Own Reality by Bill Fark, Staff Writer North County Times (San Diego, Ca.) 12/19/97 Photographer Michael Seewald knows that it’s impossible to capture reality.
"Ghost of Florence,'89" Winner 'Best of Show', San Diego Museum of Photographic Art, '91"	"I photograph things that aren’t there" thus master photographer Michael Seewald describes the technique that has made his prints collector items.
"Reality never stops," he said. "The camera catches an instant of time, part of what’s happening. But it is an image. Static. Actually unrelated to the context." Seewald was surrounded by examples of his work as he stood at the center of the Valerie E. Wong Gallery. There, two dozen of his most recent photographs are on expedition, along with about the same number for sale. The collector editions are limited edition prints, after which the negatives are destroyed. Seewald started a sponsorship program 10 years ago, and after 30 sponsored photo-taking trips now has a waiting list of collectors eager to sponsor him, and he is booked two years in advance. The trips have changed, Seewald said. "I used to hitchhike with a back pack and a budget of $5 or $6 dollars a day, including food. I slept in parks, abandoned buildings, underpasses. The first thing I'd do in a new town was to find a bar where I could leave my backpack. While I was working, I’d look for a place to sleep that night." Nowadays, Seewald travels by rental car but he sill works the same way. " I look and look, and wait and wait. Some days I don't shoot anything; others I’m busy all day. On average I shoot about 1 ½ finished pictures a day." Caesarea, Israel/ Xian, China Although the locales are foreign, Seewald’s images are universal. An ultramodern structure appears as a background for an ancient statue. A composed young pianist's eyes betray his nervousness in competition. The red blur of a moving bus outlines two men in silhouette. Like all art, Seewald’s photos increase in value with time. Images from his first sponsored trip - to Iceland - now sell for almost ten times what the sponsor contributed. Reaching this point in his career has taken almost thirty years, Seewald said. "I actually took my first picture when I was ten years old, when I got a brownie box camera for my birthday. I became the family photographer, taking pictures of vacations and holiday celebrations. (I took photos) any time I could get a roll of film and stand still." At the beginning, photography was an extension of painting, which Seewald had been doing for four or five years. "I began with one of those paint by number kits. But that was too confining. I wanted to do my own drawings." Oahu, Kauai, Maui, Hawaii That independence paid off. Seewald won a prize, a U.S. savings bond, for a painting he submitted for a Halloween competition at the age of 10. And he’s been winning ever since. The exhibition and the gallery collection include several of Seewald’s prize-winning photos. The most recent are those that took first place in the San Diego Art Institute's Midwinter Awards Exhibition and best of show on the Del Mar Fair’s heavily contested International Photographic Competition. Seewald has also taken top honors in the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts’ annual competition. And after "Bridge Undercarriage, Budapest" won a competition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, a curator declared it as one of the top pieces of art in the world. Seewald has said he was hooked on photography from the beginning. "I studied all the images in LIFE Magazine, and when I got to High School " Much of his photo training has been self-taught, Seewald said. He attended Southwestern College where he studied photo-journalism and after two years transferred to San Diego State University. "My registration priority (at Southwestern) was so low that all the photo classes were filled. But I had friends who would sneak me into the darkroom. I learned to do my own developing and printing. I knew there was magic in the darkroom. Within 10 months, I was winning awards." After college, Seewald sold newspapers, furniture and advertising and tended bar in a place where he could hang his photos. When patrons began buying the images, he got the idea to open his own gallery.

Local Photographer Captures Own Reality