Born on Nantucket in 1979, educated at Stanford (BA, Visual Art) and Columbia (MFA, Visual Art), Michael Gaillard has become known for his landscape photography while also using that practice as a catalyst for questions about the narratives we construct, the images we produce, and the marks we leave behind. Engaging with the landscape as both subject and metaphor, Michael employs the technical precision of his camera and experienced eye to isolate and represent symbols rich with contradictions, bending the space between the real and the represented, the screen and the projection, while emphasizing the tension between human influence and nature’s resilience. His approach considers photography not just as a means of representation but as a framing device — an act of selection and omission that both constructs and questions meaning. See the world through the lens of Michael in today’s Maker Monday.
Michael Gaillard: That’s a question that gets thrown around as an opener to conversations, and for me, the premise is a bit skewed. I don’t think there was ever a moment or period when I decided to become an artist. I was an artist before I made anything. I think being an artist is a way of being in the world, regardless of what manifests from that basic nature.
Although I can’t speak for anyone else, I don’t think I’m alone in this opinion. Artists see beyond surfaces, take nothing at face value, draw their own conclusions from observation and instinct, reject binary thinking, embrace nuance, find beauty in the mundane and the transcendent alike, and never stop looking, thinking, growing. As a result of these traits, we are also never satisfied and never entirely certain of our place in the world or the value we bring to it. But we keep trying regardless. Because it is how we are and what we do.
AJ: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received as an artist?
MG: In a time of great anxiety upon my graduation from graduate school (Columbia MFA ’10), I was offered a solo show with a gallery in the Lower East Side that misunderstood the role my more traditional landscape practice played in relation to the work that I made in school and would exhibit with them. This was probably more my fault than theirs, as I didn’t understand how they were connected. To assuage any reluctance by the gallerist and keep a clear, if arbitrary, line between practices, I decided to assume an alias and live a life as two artists. My professor and esteemed artist, Kara Walker, responded to my request for her opinion by insisting that such a move would prove to be a soul-damning decision. I thought that was a bit dramatic at the time, but it proved prescient. I spent 12 years wresting myself out of that unnatural binary. In the past three years, through deep reflection and self-analysis, I now see my practice for what it is and has always been: a broad, interdependent spectrum where everything is interconnected and interdependent.
MG: The culminating period came after the passing of my father and the ensuing meditation during a residency in a small, mystical eastern town in Iceland. I decided to prioritize an integration of my being, my practice, and my relationship to my medium, my art practice, and the world around me. I decided to no longer concern myself with external limits and categories. I came to embrace my multitudes and understand how they all contributed to the spectrum that defines who I am and what I do.
I now see that my time in the landscape making the expansive and atmospheric landscapes exemplified in the images included in this feature allows me to hone my technical skills and the ability to translate my initial instinct into something meaningful and lasting. These developments—coupled with the extended solitary time in the landscape my private commissions allow—enable me to employ these technical and formal tools across the full spectrum of my creative vision without compromise.
AJ: How do the landscape works shown here relate to your broader practice, particularly when experienced in situ?
MG: While these images originate in specific places, my aim is not to describe those locations so much as to distill the feeling of being within them. I am interested in producing an object rather than a picture, something that carries atmosphere, duration, and presence into the space it occupies. When the work functions this way, it becomes less about representing a finite moment elsewhere and more about entering into a relationship with the viewer’s lived environment, folding into daily life rather than remaining tethered to its point of origin.
AJ: Favorite Cocktail?
MG: To start a fun night with friends, a paper plane. At a classic bistro with a summer breeze, a gin martini. But a great small-batch bourbon with one big rock is my standard fare.
MG: The freedom to make choices and follow my instincts throughout my life. And this freedom, with the realizations noted above, is expanding into its fullest expression in all aspects of my life and career.
To have the world around as a subject is endlessly fascinating and challenging, and, when I’m at my best, I feel part of something infinitely larger than myself, simultaneously empowered and freed from ego. But that freedom also makes me woefully incapable of managing a calendar, which can be quite frustrating for my wife and children.
AJ: Best advice you’d give your teenage self?
MG: Don’t let your ego guide you. It’ll lead you astray. You never know what someone else is going through, and whatever you perceive probably has little to do with you. Lead with compassion and trust your instincts above all else.
AJ: How do you stay creative and inspired?
MG: By never being satisfied. Aspiring to be better. Looking back only to better understand myself, our moment, and the approaching horizon.