“Gratitude.” “Love.” “Passion.” “People.” These words create the motifs running throughout the comments of Lopez photographer (and carver, teacher, parent, toolmaker, mentor, and community documentarian), Gregg Blomberg.

During the interview, Blomberg, at one point leaning so far forward in his chair it looks like he’s going to pitch to the floor, as if even sitting cannot be achieved at a half-measure, says, “If you don’t get anything else, I want people to know the passion I have for photography, the extraordinary privilege I feel that people allow me to photograph them and the events and rituals that enrich and define their lives.”

It’s impossible to miss Blomberg’s passion. So consumed is he by his subject, whether he’s talking about his teaching, his children, his toolmaking, his carving, or his obsession with the faces and the movements of the people who illuminate his photography, that his coffee slops from his cup as he speaks and he is always up and down, rummaging for a picture, a poster, an example of what he’s discussing at the moment. “I like a photograph that makes you look, really look. My idea is to stack a photo so something is happening on top of something else that is happening on top of something else. It’s how we live, man.”

This addresses, in part, a question posed to him as to why Blomberg is so successful when it comes to capturing people during candid moments, times when, seemingly unaware of the camera, the person is, as ee cummings once wrote, a “human merely being.”

The other part of the answer as to his ability to shoot stunning and revealing candids is technical. “When I got my first 24mm lens, I discovered I could shoot from hip level instead of eye level and get a totally different perspective on people. The same change happens when I kneel down to photograph children, or, sometimes, shoot them from above, straight down, even using a wide angle lens occasionally to make their feet as much a part of the photo’s story as their faces.”

Blomberg, who has no real formal schooling as a photographer, was influenced by his father, an avid photographer, but especially his mother, a fine artist, who died when he was thirteen. “She loved all art, from paintings to great music. I also get so much inspiration from my daughters’ work.” (Both Cedar Bough Saeji and Summer Moon Scriver are talented photographers whose work is widely known.)

“Steve Horn is incredibly important to me,” he adds. “His photos are totally natural and he’s been such a good friend to me, always being particularly patient with my questions about photography. The Mexican photographer, Graciela Iturbide, has inspired me to look for the person behind the cliché. For example, she doesn’t just shoot a peasant, she forces you to look at the raw and gutsy way this individual lives.”

After almost reverently talking about his influences, however, Blomberg’s voice rises into room-shaking laughter and says, “Mainly, I learned to shoot pictures by buying and burning a lot of film.”

Also known for posters based on his photos and created as Posterboy Productions, he’s advertised such events as the annual Thanksgiving Dinner, the Barter Fair, and the Community Shakespeare Company. Additionally, his work has also been displayed at the Lopez Library, in Mount Vernon, and has documented the Seattle Folklife Festival.

Blomberg welcomes photographic work on commission and can be reached at 468.2103 or his email address, kestrel@rockisland.com.

Near the end of our interview, Blomberg says that if he were twenty-two again, he’d pursue photojournalism. People who know his work will find that comment ironic, because his years on Lopez have been spent chronicling the faces, lives, and rituals of Lopezians. A long-time friend calls Blomberg “That amazing person who has been the very center of the second settlement of Lopez by non-native people, the one that happened in the 1970’s, not the 1870’s.” Blomberg, through his extraordinary catalogue of this period, has created a body of work that documents with fidelity and passion the heart of an extraordinary time and people.