Evan’s utopian community in the interior of British Columbia attracted a collection of fierce individualists. Each member had a unique vision of the ideal society, which made it hard to cooperate. Evan’s girlfriend Joannie wanted an ever-expanding farm, a scientific multiplication of their goat herd, a milk and cheese business, and more equipment. Evan thought it would be nice to subsist and have time left over for creative work. Joannie thought art was a waste of time and took up with a man who agreed. In the end, Evan left his dream of community behind and headed alone to Vancouver.
The bones of a photograph are the limitations imposed on the photographer by nature. There is always a framework of what is seen, what is given by life and the eye. But there is also the inner eye and what it sees, which is not the same as the outer eye or the camera lens. This is what makes photography an art. Evan’s father Morris understood this, although he wanted Evan to come back to New York and join his dental practice. After Evan left the community, Morris shipped to Evan his own 1939 Leica and four lenses, along with an enlarger.
In 1967, living alone above the Asian grocery on Fourth Avenue in Vancouver, surrounded by hippies, Evan started his photographic experiments. His first abstract was made by opening the lens to turn a ceiling light into a comet streaking through the room. He also combined images in the darkroom. One showed a tiny human form glowing with a weird light among the immense trees of the interior rain forest.
Evan also made sculptures by melting glass with a torch. The glass sculptures were then put inside the enlarger in place of film, their images projected onto photographic paper. Some of these images became angels, human-like forms with the face of a lion or eagle. Other glass melted into steep, stony mountains with ruins and twisted trees, like the fruit trees Evan planted for the community whose fruit he never tasted.
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