Joanne Gellerman says she’s not so different from other people.

Thursday, December 02, 1999

Joanne Gellerman says she’s not so different from other people.

Lots of folks list their greatest floral pleasure as those first wildflowers of spring. And many enjoy nature photography.

However, not many spend years collecting shots of trees to visually demonstrate the words of a favored passage written by Jean-Paul Sartre. Now Gellerman has put that passage – 18 lines she discovered once in the midst of a novel by the existentialist philosopher – together with her own pictures to create a photo essay.

"Sartre didn’t write much fiction, but I found this passage by the main character where he’s describing his feelings," Gellerman said. "I thought those 18 lines were a great description of existentialism, using trees as a simile. Over the years I kept taking pictures of broken trees to go with the passage."

What Gellerman did was combine some of the key phrases of the Sartre passage with more than 30 of her own photos, after providing the text in full on the first page of the photo essay. There are the shots of broken down trees in various poses, as well as those of trees bursting with fall color, shedding their bark or covered with winter ice. Some are silhouetted against a vibrant blue sky, others placed only in their earthbound surroundings.

"The trees floated," the passage begins. "Gushing towards the sky? Or rather a collapse; at any instant I expected to see the tree trunks shrivel like weary wands, crumple up, fall on the ground in a soft, folded, black heap. They did not want to exist…"

Friday Gellerman will be at the Little Professor Bookstore (at the Sterling Shopping Center) signing copies of both "Sartre’s Trees", as she titled her photo essay, as well as a previous book of poems and photos named "Reflections from Nature." Each book will be available for purchase for $15 including tax. Gellerman self published the books with Mower House Color Graphics, a company highly regarded by the poet/photographer for their excellent work.

She’s pleased and pleasantly surprised by the response to both books, which are currently available at Little Professor and People’s Publishing and directly from their maker, phone 433-6727.

"I was surprised at how popular ‘Sartre’s Trees’ has been in the month it’s been out," Gellerman said. "I think it’s a little different, but it makes for a good Christmas gift – something little, but different from what you might buy in a store."

The former Hormel Institute biochemist said photography was a long-time, not-too-serious hobby, poetry as well.

"For me, poems and nature photography go together," Gellerman said.

"Like haiku and that particular kind of watercolor … They just ring a bell with each other."

Gellerman hasn’t limited herself to books and brochures either. She and fellow poet Betty Benner do slide shows too. One expands on the theme of poems and nature photography; the other on wildflowers.

So, hoisting her heavy Nikon – bearing the first macro lens that Nikon put out – Gellerman sets out in all kinds of weather, to all kinds of places, ready to take pictures of any wild plant she finds in her path.

Forget wild animals though -they don’t have the patience that plants do.

"I get much of my joy from composing the photograph," she explained. "I try to get a different angle, or bring out what is hidden in the subject. I can’t do anything that moves, because it often will take me 30 minutes to set the shot up. By that time an animal might be in the next county."

Blocking out Gellerman’s carefully composed images is no easy task – it is just as the character in the Sartre novel said: "I leaned back and closed my eyes. But the images, forewarned, immediately leaped up and filled my closed eyes with existences: existence is a fullness which man can never abandon."

Gellerman will be at the Little Professor’s Bookstore from 3-5 p.m. Friday.