Colin Scharf is known in Mankato for his music, but he also has another talent: photography.
Scharf said that while he is not a photographer, he enjoys the art of photography. In 2020, he got ahold of his mother’s old Polaroid camera and started snapping pictures of anything and everything.
These captivating photos, part of Scharf’s “Ghost Dreams” collection, will be on display at the Rural American Contemporary Art Gallery for a limited time starting Saturday and lasting two weeks. The title “Ghost Dreams” was inspired by a conversation with Brian Frink, the owner of RACA in rural Mankato, who also assisted Scharf in printing these unique pictures.
“I view these pictures themselves as closer to a dream or memory than to an actual presentation of what had been seen,” Scharf said. “The ghost element … It’s not like somebody’s dead or that sort of thing; the photos have a ghostliness to them in that they almost seem like they’re from another ethereal plane.”
One image shows 10 to 12 bison standing by a body of water in Mount Princeton, Colorado, where he and his wife stayed for a vacation.
“It was hot that day; I remember we were driving through the park and the first time we’d go out to see the bison, they were just in the water. Then the next time we went out there, we never saw any of them. So this photo kind of captured a little magic at the park.”
Frink helped Scharf print the photos using his large-format printer, which he bought a couple of years ago.
“He had these tiny Polaroid photos, which are about 4 inches square or something — they’re really small. We scanned them and printed them out at about 42 inches wide, making them much bigger,” Frink said.
One thing both Frink and Scharf discovered when blowing up these small photos is the imperfections from the camera. Because of their size, imperfections aren’t typically seen on Polaroids. Blown up to 10 times their original size, they come to light.
“When you blow something up tiny like that, like all kinds of weird little imperfections come out. Bits of dust from the scan, little scratches on the film, or chemical blips,” Frink said. “When you look at the little photo, you hardly see them. But then, when you blow them up, they’re really interesting forms that are abstract and interesting and unpredictable.”
Scharf said he hopes people get a lot out of his photographs.
“I hope they can see themselves and be reflected in the images, and that’s the hope with any work of art. I hope that they don’t feel too personal, too abstract or too mundane,” Scharf said. “I hope that people can look at these pictures and say, ‘Those colors pull something out of me and make me feel in this in this sort of similar way.’”