Last Wednesday, October 21, a warm reception was held for former Art and Design Department Chair and photography professor, Monte Gerlach. Over the course of the night, the small gallery became packed with alumni, acquaintances, friends and family of the professor’s who had come not only to celebrate his career, but to reflect on his influence on his past students. It was also an opportunity to commemorate Gerlach’s impending retirement after over four decades of teaching.
Before coming to Saint Xavier in the late 1980s, Gerlach taught photography classes at a private school in upstate New York. What he saw there were kids who were talented, smart, and were rich enough to afford expensive equipment. But because they were privileged, they didn’t have the best work ethic, and so he demanded a lot from them.
“When I came here and I tried to teach the same class, it wouldn’t work. I realized these students were different, not inferior in any way, they just didn’t have the advantages that the other kids did, and I simply toned down what I expected. I’m thrilled with the students here, they’re just wonderful people…All my students seem to support and get along with each other. I just found it a great place to teach and so I stayed. My wife said, ‘you need to get a better school, something that had prestige’ and, you know, I said this is the place, they’ve got heart here. And it just made a difference,” Gerlach said of his fateful decision to remain at SXU.
Gerlach came to Chicago with the intention of studying with photographer Garry Winogrand, but unfortunately, he had left for the University of Houston Texas just as Gerlach had arrived. Even still, Gerlach was thrilled to be in Chicago. For him, it was a playground, a great place to live, and a place that fit his work.
“I looked at myself as a street photographer. I made gritty stuff that galleries would show, but that wouldn’t sell. It didn’t bother me; I just kept making the work. Now, I have moved more to landscapes because I found going out into the wild by myself, taking pictures was really wonderful–I don’t want to get syrupy here–but almost spiritual. I just enjoyed the peace of being out there. I love people, but I was sort of a stalker. I would see people on the street and I would go photograph them whether they wanted me to or not.”
Winograd wasn’t his only inspiration. Of course, he says he had great teachers at the Institute of Design, and being a bit of a dinosaur he was around long enough to have personally met American photographer Ansel Adams, who did landscapes as well.
He considers himself a student of the field, and an intricate and tech based occupation like photography is constantly evolving. Change is a difficult thing for people to wrap their minds around, but if anyone can do it it’s a man as passionate and as dedicated to the craft as Gerlach.
“I respect the old traditions, I grew up in them and doing what it takes to make film, but I was spending my life in the dark room–now I spend my life in front of the computer,” Gerlach joked.
In lessons with him, you learn that it’s not about the price tag of the camera–although, truthfully, a nice camera wouldn’t hurt–it’s about what you do with it. He carries 
around a pricey point and shoot camera along with his iPhone.
“The best camera is the one you have with you,” is his mantra of sorts. Refusing to play the part of the grumpy old man, he also talked about millennial technology and entitlement with careful reflection, understanding and a hint of bemusement.
“People say, ‘Oh, the old ways are lost, and all these people think they’re hot shot photographers when they’re not.’ There’s a certain amount of dedication to the craft that even now, you still have to do. The photographer that’s going to be successful has to know lighting and basically how to get along with people if you’re going to do people things. It’s just not “click–I got it.”
For him, the accessibility of the field for everyone now is a great prospect.
“Before, you had to be somewhat of a chemist because you had to work in the darkroom mixing chemicals…you had to learn that whole craft of printing. Now you don’t have to do that. You can make a good picture, you have to work really hard to make a bad picture with these new cameras. They made it pretty easy, but they also made it so that no one will pay you because anybody can make a picture now. So, if you’re going into commercial photography it’s really not the most lucrative field anymore,” Gerlach conceded.
Despite this, he finds the volume of images uploaded online–he estimates a quarter of a billion–fascinating. At this point, we are essentially communicating through images with the frequency in which we share photos of ourselves with friends and family on social media, and tag people in funny memes.
Even after he leaves SXU, he still has photography to keep him busy–which is almost unfitting to say as it is obviously not just busy work for him, he never even considered it a job.
“It’s not work if you like it. I haven’t worked since my sophomore year in college when I discovered photography. It’s always been there, it’s always informed me, it’s always given me a spiritual release, artistic release and it’s fed me, put my kids through college. I feel incredibly blessed because I’ve never worked since I was 20. I got lucky because I found something that I loved to do, and the idea that it was work never occurred to me; if I could find someone to pay me great,”
Way back yonder when he was a young boy in journalism school, Gerlach recounts that everything changed when he took a photo class. Since then, he has had no intention to put the camera down.
“So you see, I’m only retiring from teaching. Teaching is only a part of my life–it’s a big part, but I wouldn’t have done it for 40 years if I didn’t enjoy it so much. But I’m also a photographer, and I’m never going to retire from that, they’ll have to peel that camera away from my cold dead hands. I’m going to be making pictures, and I’ve got no excuses now like, ‘Aw I’m too busy, I have to do a lecture’. No, I’m going to get more involved in my own work, and I’m looking forward to that. I’ve got a lot of plans to do some serious work, I hope it happens,” he said.
He currently has three books published (The Ballet of Violence, The Flash of Recognition, and Street Portraits), and hopes to squeeze one more out once he’s officially left the building. At the end of the semester, he’s headed for wide mountain ranges and sunny skies; moving to Tuscon, Arizona for six weeks during the winter.
Whether he will get anything accomplished during that stint he can only hope, but that it is only half of his concern, it seems. Retirement is an entirely foreign thing to him in itself. However, in preparation for it, he said it helps that he has a smart wife.
“I don’t know the implications of this new thing. I’m still getting my teaching fix once a week, which helps. I don’t know how much I’m going to miss it, you never do,” said Gerlach. At this point, he can only imagine what it will be like to be finished with such a long and involved period of his life. Of whether he believed he was retiring too early or too late, he had this to say:
“I feel that I’m letting my department down by retiring because they aren’t going to be able to replace me for a while. It’s not because they can’t find anybody better or as good– it’s just that they are not financially able to replace me. So feel like I’m hurting my department, and that makes me sad.”
While it may pain him to leave, it’s cathartic, in a way, to reflect on some of the experiences he has had teaching at SXU.
“I have had some great students, which makes it wonderful, but some of the things that I remember are the students who were struggling, especially pulling a personal project out–which they have to do for a year long senior seminar–and reaching out to those students and helping them find their vision, find their way. Not telling them, of course, because you can’t do that, but being there as a sounding board, as a participant in their journey. Yeah, some of them were very weak students, but they ended up making some very strong art, and they always graduated. That was very rewarding to me.”
“Some of them were in this show. That’s what the show was about for me; it was saying I had a hand in this no matter how minor it is. These are wonderful people that touched my life, and somehow I may have touched theirs. I’ve had 2000 students, more or less, over 40 years and it’s hard to keep track of them all.”
“Honestly, I’ve lost a lot of them, especially the early ones. I only had three people from Northern Illinois, where I taught for five years, I contacted four and three of them sent me images from that era.”
“And when I moved to Ithaca and taught there for five years, I had about 20 people send me images…They all had great careers. And I’m proud of them, I was just honored that they sent me stuff. I asked about 60 students from Saint Xavier and I got about 40 of them to send me work. I was thrilled.”
Near the end of the interview, Jeanne, the office manager, walked in with a guitar autographed with the signatures of all the faculty from the VAC as a going away present. Instead of giving in a rocking chair, as is their tradition for retirees, they presented him with the “rockin’ chair”.
“Monte is a very important man, well loved, well respected, he will be missed greatly,” said Jeanne.
“Legacy of Monte Gerlach”, which displays a number of brilliant visual works from his former students, will be open until November 16. The Visual Arts Center is located at 10435 S. Spaulding Avenue.
Zhana Johnson
Senior Features Editor
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