For several years now, Michael Garlington has watched his majestic photo sculptures go up in flames at the end of the weeklong Burning Man festival while tens of thousands of artists, hipsters and dreamers looked on in awe.
His latest work, stationed outside Toby’s Feed Barn, will not be set ablaze. And with proper love and care, it should withstand the elements for at least a couple years—an eon in Burning Man time.
This spring, Mr. Garlington, who is 47, began installing a 200-foot-long photo collage that knits together black-and-white portraits of some of the most familiar figures in Point Reyes Station, from the proprietors of businesses to local fixtures like Flyn Nichol, the dancing, rapping, community philosopher who never runs out of fuel. In his portrait, Mr. Nichol, as effusive as ever, is captured wearing his trademark backwards baseball cap and a pair of rabbit ears, making the peace sign with both hands.
The photographs are bordered with silver-hued, oval frames that Mr. Garlington weaves around the images using Photoshop. They are made with pieces of succulents, rocks and shells—whatever materials catch Mr. Garlington’s eye at the Petaluma ranch where he lives with his artistic and life partner, Natalia Bertotti. The frames give the photos an old-timey feel, while adding depth—it almost seems like the subjects have stepped inside them.
Among the familiar figures on display are Stephen Sparks of Point Reyes Books, Jane Quattlander of the Old Western Saloon and Vicki Leeds of Cabaline.
Mr. Sparks stands before a backdrop of books, behind the shop counter, looking every inch the amiable, youthful intellectual. Ms. Quattlander, who pours drinks and lines up live music at the saloon, leans against the front door frame in a cowboy hat. And Ms. Leeds, the casually elegant equestrian, stands alongside the life-sized sculpture of the horse’s head that adorns the front of her store.
Mr. Garlington has a knack for putting subjects at ease and capturing their emotional essence. Gazing directly into the lens, nary a one appears uncomfortable in their own skin.
He uses black-and-white film, shooting with a cloth draped over his head to keep out extraneous light. Using a tripod, he carefully sets up the shot before pressing the shutter on his 4×5 Grafflex, an old-time press camera with a bellows—the sort of contraption that might have been used to shoot a daguerreotype, with the lens extended out front, accordion style.
There are dozens of photos stretched along the wall, blown up to poster size and glued to the plywood fence. The mural extends nearly the entire distance from Highway 1 to Mesa Road, stretching along the yard next to the parking lot.
The idea for the mural emerged after Mr. Garlington had an exhibition of his work at Toby’s last fall that featured a collection of his portraiture. The show captured the imagination of Nick Giacomini, aka M.C. Yogi, whose grandfather established Toby’s and lent the enterprise his name. (Nick and his wife, Amanda, run the yoga studio in the feed barn.)
When Nick suggested the photo mural, Mr. Garlington was all in. “Nick is a ray of light,” he said. “Some people just shine.”
In a conversation with the Light this week, Nick—whose alias refers both to his yoga training and his hip-hop performance art—shared his take on various people whose images are captured on the wall.
On Mr. Nichol: “Flyn is a whispering wizard who’s always sharing his poetry and his wonderful energy and has great electricity and joy. He represents the spirit of Point Reyes.”
On Oscar Gamez, a jack-of-all-trades at Toby’s who is pictured riding a forklift: “He’s been working here forever, and he represents the heart and soul of Toby’s. He’s a local hero.”
On his father, Chris Giacomini, the owner of Toby’s, who was photographed alongside Nick: “He’s a pillar, a lighthouse, a great presence in the community. Wherever he goes, he makes everything more beautiful.”
Mr. Garlington spends lots of time in Point Reyes Station, where he has many friends and connections, including William Barrett, an Inverness real estate agent who suggested that Chris exhibit Mr. Garlington’s work at his gallery last fall.
Mr. Barrett met Mr. Garlington through a friend who was cataloguing the photographer’s negatives. They became friends on Facebook, where Mr. Barrett posts many pictures of himself and his husband, Gary Martin, and the many meals they enjoy together. After several years of requests from a dogged Mr. Garlington, who appreciated the joy they took in eating, the couple agreed to sit for a portrait last year.
“It was like a Mad Hatter’s tea party,” Mr. Barrett said. “He had this whole set piece in which we were placed like characters in a storybook.”
Mr. Garlington had laid out their favorite dishes on a banquet table: spaghetti and meatballs, shrimp cocktail, strawberry shortcake. The men look dapper in dressy hats, suit jackets and bowties. Mr. Garlington has added dabs of color to a handful of the photographs, and the strawberries in this portrait are crimson.
One of the first subjects Mr. Garlington photographed for the wall was Madeline Nieto Hope, the former director of the teen center and waste coordinator for the county. She was passing by when the Giacominis were sitting side by side for a father-son portrait next to the Grandi building. The M.C. is as garrulous as his father is soft-spoken, but in the portrait, they clearly have something fundamental in common: love.
In her portrait, Ms. Hope wears a wide-brimmed hat and a big smile and looks directly into the lens. She had no idea where the portrait was going until several months later, when a friend told her: “You’re on the wall! You’re on the wall!”
What wall, she wondered.
When she saw it, Ms. Hope was pleased. “He’s done something special for our community,” she said. “He’s seen something in us that we couldn’t have articulated about ourselves.”
Mr. Garlington got his start in photography as a teenager, working in his mother and stepfather’s fine art printing studio in San Francisco. He developed film and began decorating the darkroom with quirky portraits of his friends.
In his early 20s, he plastered a Volkswagen Jetta with portraits of ordinary folks he shot on a cross-country trip to Manhattan, where he miraculously managed to find a parking spot directly in front of the Guggenheim.
His knack for photo cars, as he calls them, won him notice at Burning Man, the weeklong rave and art fest in the Nevada desert. There, he adorned some of the vans with portraits of the carnies who assembled the sculptures and built the infrastructure for the event. Before long, a fleet of seven vans comprising the Burning Man D.P.W. had been kitted out as photo vans, calling attention to his talents and earning him his first Burning Man commission—a giant sculpture spelling out the word “ego.”
That 2012 piece was the first of several displayed at Burning Man, including the Chapel of Babel, his piece de la resistance, a massive 60-foot-tall photo sculpture composed of thousands of portraits he had taken over the course of his career.
He watched it burn without a trace of regret. “These things come, they go,” he said. “It’s a great metaphor for life. I don’t want to keep anything.”
Mr. Garlington appreciates the intimate feel of Toby’s and Point Reyes Station. “I’ve shown at the Smithsonian, but I was just as happy to show at Toby’s,” he said. “There’s just something special about this place and this community.”
It’s become something of an honor to be included in the show, and some folks who didn’t happen to pass by on the days Mr. Garlington was shooting have expressed disgruntlement about not making it in. He intends to add a new section to the wall and find innovative ways to make more space—perhaps even a lighthouse sculpture plastered with still more portraits.
Several of his mural subjects are pictured sitting in the red chairs on the front porch at Toby’s, including Jason Wonders of Chileno Valley, who has sparkling blue eyes and a bushy white beard and settles into a rocker each day with a cup of coffee and a newspaper, this one headlined: “A right to be free.”
He’s pleased to be in the mural. “It’s better than being on a wanted poster,” he said.