ART 30 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY OCTOBER 2-8, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com Arthur Tress is a cosmos, its own separate galaxy. It contains one man with a camera, an outsized inner world and 2 million photographs—documentary works, haunting portraits, personal narrative expressions, his own fables and fairy tales. There is Arthur Tress of the big city, submerged in the New York school of photography and the eccentric portraits he makes for magazines. There is Arthur Tress running from the Vietnam War, instead doing sociological photography in Japan, Mexico and China—the power of ritual. Then there’s Arthur Tress of the West Coast, who spent 25 years living in Cambria and now resides in San Francisco, taking daily photographic trips to nearby towns or capturing The Life Cycle of The Orange Rubber Traffic Cone, as one of his recent photo books is titled. Tress first gained attention in the 1970s with his photo book, The Dream Collector, where he illustrated children’s dreams, being chased by monsters and such. For the last 20 years, Tress has been working in black and white. “The graphic quality of black and white is very strong,” he says, “and the color could be a little distracting.” Recently, Stephen Berkeley Lewis made a feature-length documentary on Tress, titled Arthur Tress: Water’s Edge, the first film on the 85-year-old photographer. The film will be shown in Monterey, while a pop-up exhibit of Tress’ most recent works taken in Silicon Valley will be on display in Carmel. It is also a chance to meet Tress in person and be surprised by his humor and kindness. Weekly: With a career in New York, what possessed you to move to the Central Coast? Tress: New York’s a little difficult during the summer. I had a brother living in Los Angeles and a sister in San Francisco. So I was driving from between the two and stayed overnight in Cambria. I stayed for 25 years in a house on the water—4,000 square feet with a hot tub, compared to my 400-square-foot apartment in New York City. It was a whole new world, being more in nature, a shift in my work. Yet you moved again. My sister passed away and left me her house in San Francisco. It was exciting to go back to an urban subject matter, and I began a small project on the ferry boats. One day I took a ferry to the end of the line, which was Mare Island with an abandoned nuclear submarine naval station and factory. And that’s where the film begins. These days I drive down to places like San Jose, Santa Clara, Redwood City, taking pictures of the old neighborhoods, the abandoned business parks and the new corporate campuses, like Google and Apple. I put myself into a dream state, a little bit like in James Joyce’s Ulysses. I call those trips walkabouts. With a documentary film on you, you agreed to become subject matter. Stephen Lewis, the filmmaker, had a very sensitive insight to the way I work and my quiet sense of humor about things. So we had a nice rapport in making the film. At my age, I wanted to share my creative process. When I’m doing my walkabouts, my head is always full of interesting ideas. My style now is kind of combining the accidental with the preconceived, and in the film you can see these miraculous things, these coincidences happening. They’re really not coincidences; as a photographer I can have a very strong vision. The photographer imposes on the world, and the world kind of bends itself to him or his ideas. It’s a strange occurrence when that happens. I thought people would be interested in seeing that. You call your subject matter, the objects you photograph, “your minions.” Yet, you also show compassion to your subject matter, such as the orange traffic cones. Photography—especially digital, and now with AI—has gotten so elaborate. I just wanted to bring it back for myself to the simple act of seeing, but seeing it transformed by the imagination. We’re all involved in this kind of cycle of beginnings and endings, going from birth to old age and falling apart. For The Life Cycle of The Orange Rubber Traffic Cone, I took thousands of pictures of traffic cones. They are going to be on display at the Harvey Milk terminal at the SFO Airport in 2027, as part of the Bay Area Triennial. You seem very relatable in the film. You know, there are so many documentaries about movie actors. It makes them into kind of superhuman people. I have a lot of freedom because I don’t take myself too seriously. It’s a nice balance between being kind of modest and shy. In addition to the 18 new photographs from Silicon Valley, you will bring something special and different to the pop-up exhibit. Around 1999, in Cambria, I began doing elaborate sculptures made of photographs that I hand painted and cut up. There’ll be one on display. I’ve always kept them kind of secret. Arthur Tress, Selections ia a pop-up exhibit at the Center for Photographic Art, San Carlos and 9th, Carmel. Opening reception: 4-6pm Saturday, Oct. 11. Free. (831) 625-5181, photography.org. Arthur Tress: Water’s Edge documentary screening with Q&A takes place at 7pm Friday, Oct. 10. Stanton Center, 5 Custom House Plaza, Monterey. $20; $10/MHAA and CFPA members. (831) 372-2608, montereyhistory. org/stanton-center. Image Maker Photographic artist Arthur Tress brings his vision to film and his work to Monterey County. By Agata Popęda Above: Arthur Tress captures a self portrait. Below: Tress cropped some of his images into tilted frames, including the diamond framing of the “Pointers” and “Morro Rock” collections. ARTHUR TRESS ARTHUR TRESS
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