50-Year Vision Quest Brings Once In a Lifetime Photography Experience to the Gorge
John Chao moving his megaphotgraphs into the gallery space on Thursday. The sheer size of the photographs presented a challenge in transporting them to the gallery.
John Chao has invited the public to share a once-in-a-lifetime book signing and photo gallery experience at MoonMountain Highway in Bingen on September 25th, from 6-9 p.m. Chao will display a series of his mega-photographs for the first time ever and will give a talk about his new book 50-Year Vision Quest, a penned memoir composed of 500 photographs taken over his 50 year adventure with the camera.
The show and book signing will be a one-day-only event that promises to be a unique visual experience, a life’s work celebration, and a beautiful opportunity for community connection.
“His book documents this with personal narrative along with the photos that invoke connection to humanity and nature from the inside out,” said Sara Mains, owner of MoonMountain Highway “Every time I open the pages I can feel my heart moving with emotion, I feel like this book is so much more than looking at pictures it is relating to another human story.”
Pictured: Sara Maines reads from her copy of 50-Year Vision Quest.
About John Chao
Pictured: Double Sixteen Team in Grand Teton, Wyoming, 1974 John Chao (just back from South America), Jim Canon, Bill Koechling, and Walter Danylack. Source.
John Chao is a giant of the photography world.
Born in Taiwan, he grew up in Brazil and Peru before arriving in the United States at the age of eleven.
“I basically had to transition through five different cultures by the time I was eleven,” said Chao.
On his 50-year vision quest he’s traveled the world, photographed world leaders, prostitutes, protests, wildlife, national parks, and military bases.
His work has graced the cover of magazines such as Time, Life, American Windsurfer, Geo, Fortune, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Reader’s Digest, Smithsonian, and more. He’s been published in newspapers like The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Eugene Register-Guard.
Chao has photographed many windsurfers including Senator John Kerry.
He’s lived every aspiring world photographer’s dream...but if you ask him about it, he’ll tell you he’s lived an ordinary life. Nevertheless, he did have some advice for fellow adventurers seeking to fulfill their life passions.
“The worst thing you can have in life is expectations,” said Chao “Because then you’re chasing expectations, so you end up- at best- meeting your expectations. How do you experience life beyond expectation? Stay in the moment, let life make decisions and you uncover this amazing life beyond your expectations.”
A photo of John Chao holding his memoir. Photo Credit: Robbie Chao.
He moved to Mosier after falling in love with windsurfing, and...a woman.
“Obviously I came here because of a girl who keeps breaking my heart,” said Chao “And because of her thirty dogs, I ended up buying the last of the great properties before the whole boom. And every day I wake up and give thanks to her because if it wasn’t for her who broke my heart ten times I wouldn’t be here. So everything just worked out beautifully.”
Chao said he was content to call Mosier home.
“When I’m here I don’t want to go anywhere,” said Chao.
Pictured: John Chao has also captured imagery of local indigenous leaders and landscapes.
About the Gallery Experience
Chao’s one-evening-only exhibit and book signing experience is truly something that hasn’t been seen in the Gorge before.
“Most photography exhibits you go to have just little small pictures on the wall, but this one, you walk in and you have an instant visual experience because you don’t see photographs of this size anywhere. I don’t think there’s ever been a show of big photographs like this,” said Chao
The large size of the photos gives the viewer the experience of being in the moment captured in each photograph.
“You feel like you can walk into the photo,” said Chao “People who come will be blown away by it because they’ve never seen something like this before and that’s the whole point of the experience. It just blows you away, it’s just a whole different experience. When you blow up a photo this size in a quality way it’s majestic, it’s a- I don’t want to say my photography is religious, but it is almost a religious experience. It’s experiencing a moment frozen in time.”
The megaphotos are indeed huge.
With the largest being four feet tall and eight feet long. Each enormous photograph is housed in an archival quality custom-built frame handcrafted by Chao himself. The sheer size of each megaphoto only further showcases the mind-blowing quality of Chao’s pre-digital and post-digital work. The displayed photographs are a limited edition making them an attractive addition to any art collection. There are only ten prints of each photograph available.
One of the common consequences of blowing up photographs to a large size is that any imperfections in the photograph become magnified. However, Chao’s work is of such quality that the large size only serves to further cement the flawlessness of this display of Chao’s pre-digital and post-digital work.
Pictured: John Chao gives a sneak peak of one of the photographs in his one-day only show.
“This one is my favorite,” said Chao “It’s not in the book.”
The image shows a monkey sitting on a post.
“He’s just got beat up by somebody,” said Chao “and he’s sitting in the rain. You can see the raindrops. It’s just amazing the mood that he’s in.”
See more of Chao’s work at JohnChao.com.
About 50-Year Vision Quest
Pictured: John Chao’s new book, 50-Year Vision Quest. Source.
Over 50 years Chao has accumulated an enormous catalog of work, but he’s never done something quite like this book signing and gallery exhibit experience.
“I resisted publishing a book or exhibiting my photographs,” said Chao “And then covid gave me time to do a book...because I had nothing else to do. It basically forced me to reckon with my past and sort through all these amazing images and my experiences”
Chao’s new book 50-Year Vision Quest is full of beautiful imagery and transformation with themes of mindfulness, spirituality, and gratitude woven throughout all seven chapters. The book showcases Chao’s 50-year journey with a camera from an unknown rookie to a highly regarded Chinese-American photojournalist.
“I do feel that my experience can help somebody,” said Chao “I came from Chinese heritage, and I had to transition through five different cultures before the age of 11. I didn’t come from a wealthy family. But it shows that if you have faith and have a passion for something it can be transformative.”
It also shares the stories of countless individuals from around the globe.
The book begins and ends with the stories of indigenous cultures. Chapter 1 Genesis takes the reader on a visual journey through a secluded Indigenous village in Panama and the final chapter, Tree of Life, details Chao’s experience of the Standing Rock protests.
Pictured: John Chao’s Water is Life Poster. Source.
Proceeds from the book and from the sale of his Water is Life prints go towards helping those currently still imprisoned for their participation in the 2016 protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline which was slated to transport crude oil through indigenous burial grounds and threatened the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The construction of the pipeline was finished in 2017, however, many civil suits surrounding the pipeline are still under review.
Chao shared what ‘water is life’ means to him.
“Water is life, we’re all coming to grips with that right now. How could anybody not be cognitive of the fact that if you don’t have water you don’t live? And why do these people have to fight for the water?” said Chao. “The reason the last chapter (the seventh chapter) is about Standing Rock is that Crazy Horse had a vision about the seventh generation, the current generation, in which all the people of all colors would come together and gather under the tree of life and learn from the Native Americans about the value of nature and water. So the last chapter is sort of a celebration of that vision.
“We have to make sure we are being custodians of what we have,” added Chao.
His journey to Standing Rock started with seeing the protests on Thanksgiving Day in 2016.
“I remember I was in LA having a great thanksgiving and these poor people were being sprayed with water and being attacked and I really felt empathy and a need to do something for the cause,” said Chao “These people gave up everything they own just to be there and to protest and defend the sacredness of water. It was very humbling.”
So Chao loaded up his panel van with firewood and propane and started his journey to Standing Rock.
“It took me a week to get there because of the snowstorm and I had a flat tire and I had thousands of pounds of wood in the van,” said Chao “And so it was a real drama adventure to try and get there.”
Chao hadn’t intended to photograph the protest, just to show up and support with much-needed supplies.
“By the time I got there, the snowstorm had passed, all the veterans who had come to support had left, so there was nothing to photograph really. So I gave out the wood and all that, and then...that picture happened,” said Chao, referring to his iconic Water is Life poster print of some 2,000 protestors in tents and teepees and RV’s camped in the snow.
“There was such a small window of opportunity for that photo because the sun had come out of the clouds, and the snowstorm had just passed, and if it wasn't for the blanket of snow it would have looked completely different,” said Chao “And I realized that everything that happened on that trip was meant to happen so that I could arrive at that moment. And I had this gratitude for everything that had delayed me to bring me to that moment.”
Chao said that moment exemplifies what 50-Year Vision Quest is all about: a quest for those magical moments, when out of chaos came a sense of order followed by a moment of affirmation that he was on the right path and that all things, even the most seemingly random or inconvenient had lined up to bring him and everyone to the present moment.
“A photograph can see something beyond what you saw (with your own eyes), it can see what you didn’t see because it captures a slice of time, it freezes a moment in time, and then out of the chaos of that moment comes order,” said Chao.
Chao donated one thousand copies of his book to protestors, and he said that truly, the book was for them.
“It was pretty much the whole reason I did the book, and many of them couldn’t afford a $120 book and they’re the ones who were going to cherish it because the names of their parents are in there,” said Chao.
50-Year Vision Quest has been hailed by critics as:
“A brilliant new genre in the picture book..full of poetic and transformational prose… a treasure treatise!” by Bruce Winwberg, Publishing Consultant to the Metropolitan Museum.
“I’ve done a couple of books. I know how difficult they are. This isn’t a book, it is a ‘Masterpiece’.” said Larry Hatteberg: Edward R Murrow and Emmy Award Winner, and past President of the National Press Photographers Association.
However, despite the high praise he’s received, Chao is a humble individual.
And when Sara Mains, the owner of MoonMountain Highway suggested that he do a book signing, he felt lukewarm about being the center of attention.
Pictured: John Chao unveils one of his favorite photographs.
“I was lukewarm about it,” said Chao “I haven’t promoted the book. The whole commercial side turns me off. But I thought about it and I said ‘we’ve got to give them something more than just an autograph, we need to give them an experience.”
Which is how he decided to create a once-in-a-lifetime experience for viewers by having a one day only gallery show and book signing in a Columbia River Gorge magic shop.
“Life has so many synchronicities,” said Chao “I don’t like to do things the normal way. Who would do all this work to show for one day? It’s an experience for the people who seize it. It’s not a commercial venture. For me, I just want to experience it and move on.”
About MoonMountain Highway
The space in which John Chao will showcase his work will act as a canvas for the community to connect on Sept 25th but this unique gallery location also has magic filled story of it’s own.
Pictured: Sara Maines
“MoonMountain Highway was a fire that I would carry and feel from time to time,” said Sara Mains, owner of MoonMountain Highway “the message was "the Gorge needs a magic shop! Magic is connection to nature and the elements, magic is embodiment and sovereignty, it is community and connection, it is intention.”
“I also very much wanted to have a space where the 5Rhythms® had a permanent home in the Gorge,” said Mains “When I saw 113 W. Steuben for lease last November I took a leap of faith and now we have both a mercantile and studio space. Our mission is to be a place where people can gather and remember their connection to nature, a place to find beautiful things made by hands, to learn, inspire and simply be.”
