Frozen Moments: Photographer Bill Gillette

Article by Rayna Bailey

Local Artists – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

GIVE AN AVERAGE PERSON a Nikon and a roll of film and they usually snap average pictures of family and friends that eventually end up in a photo album or shoe box on a closet shelf.

Put that camera in the hands of photographer Bill Gillette, and he creates masterpieces that are framed and hung on display in a home — eventually to become family heirlooms.

[Bill Gillette at camera (Rayna Bailey)]

Whether working on location capturing the “Faces of Yatzachi” in the remote Zapotec village in Oaxaca, Mexico, or working in his Westcliffe studio preserving images of contemporary Americans for future generations, Gillette puts to good use the photographic skills he has spent a lifetime developing.

“I have been a photographer all my life since I was in high school,” Gillette says.

Although reluctant to divulge his age, Gillette laughs and notes that as he traces his photographic training back to its early years, how old he is and how long he has been a photographer isn’t too hard to figure out.

Gillette was trained in aerial photography while in the United States Air Force stationed at Lowery Air Force Base in Denver. During the Korean Conflict, he found himself airborne over Korea.

“I also was a gunner. I could operate the guns but I shot film,” Gillette says. “I did aerial reconnaissance before, during and after bomb strikes over Korea.” Gillette adds that he participated in similar activities over Russia and China.

In the 1960s, after earning an undergraduate degree in history from New York State University in Albany, Gillette says he headed back out west: More specifically, to Nucla, Colorado.

“I worked in the uranium mines and taught high school in Nucla. It was wild country,” he says.

Gillette soon was back in the classroom as a student rather than a teacher. He earned a master’s degree in journalism and history from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Gillette continued his studies at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where he earned a doctorate in communications and natural resources. While at CSU, he taught technical writing and he also kept his cameras close at hand.

“I left CSU after getting my doctorate and went to Arizona,” Gillette says. “I taught at Northern Arizona University and worked as a freelance photographer out of Flagstaff.”

Among Gillette’s long-term photographic assignments was producing an audio-visual series for publisher Prentice-Hall and other work for Burbank, Calif.-based QED. By 1972, Gillette was in the Midwest, teaching journalism at Iowa State University and continuing his freelance photography work.

[Portrait of Jack Slater (Bill Gillette)]

“I did a lot of photography work at Iowa State because they supported it,” Gillette says. “In the 1970s I traveled the world for the World Food Project and for Energy Natural Resources, and I did one or two projects a month for Time, Newsweek, and Business Week.”

In 1983, an aerial shot Gillette snapped from a helicopter of a house being carried away by the Mississippi River during the Midwest’s flooding that year was named an “Image of the Year” by Time magazine.

A picture of child laborers working in Mexico’s fields and others of a corn harvest in Iowa were picked up by the National Geographic News Service, which is syndicated through the New York Times for newspapers, and were published in National Geographic Traveler magazine.

Photographs by Gillette also are on permanent display at the Colorado Historical Society Museum in Denver in a mining exhibit titled, “Silver Light,” and at the Corcoran Museum in Washington, D.C., in a collection of photographs shot for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Gillette taught at Iowa State, achieving the status professor emeritus, until 1997, when he moved back “out West” to rural Westcliffe, where he lives and works today.

Since moving to Westcliffe, Gillette has spent time capturing images of the Wet Mountain Valley and surrounding areas. “It really is a beautiful place,” he says. He also opened a portrait studio in Westcliffe.

“I do scenics, although they are not my thing,” Gillette says. “I really enjoy working with people. I worked in a portrait studio when I got out of the service and I did a lot of executive portraits for Newsweek.”

Despite a well-equipped studio, housed in the lower level of the Wet Mountain Trading Co. building next to the Raven Woods gallery in Westcliffe, Gillette says 90 percent of his “portraits” are done on location. “And that’s where they should be here because this is such a beautiful area.”

During a recent photo session at a client’s mountain cabin, “four ptarmigans just walked right up to us,” Gillette says, adding that the plump birds seemed oblivious to the people and one ptarmigan lingered to be captured on film in the family portrait.

Noting the technological changes in photography that makes his “on location” work possible Gillette says, “Photography has changed pretty dramatically. Not in content and style, but technologically. Digitizing is expensive, but for a young person starting out it’s the way to go. Instead of film you have electrons, instead of a darkroom you have computers. But when you freeze that 125th second in time, it’s the same. You’re framing a segment of reality and you’re choosing what reality you want to show. It freezes time.”

Sounding like the educator he is — and perhaps wanting to pass his skills on to the next generation just as he preserves the scenes and people they capture for the future — Gillette says, “I would like to find a high school student to work with me as an assistant in exchange for learning photography.”

To contact Gillette for information about his portrait photography or to talk to him about being an apprentice, call 719-783-9746. Gillette’s photography is on display in his studio at the Wet Mountain Trading Co., 59000 N. Highway 69 in Westcliffe.

When she’s not free-lancing for Colorado Central and other magazines, Rayna Bailey writes for the Wet Mountain Tribune in Westcliffe, where she also serves on the school board..