Photographer Tom Millea, 71, died Feb. 16 at his Salinas home following a long illness.
Known for being an early revivalist of platinum printing, he photographed landscapes, abstracts and architecture, but he was maybe best known locally for his photographs of nude women in artistic and sometimes provocative permutations. That, he told the Weekly in an interview last year, ostracized him from the local photography community. He complained that despite showing at places like the Smithsonian and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, he couldn't get shown here except at a handful of galleries like Winfield and Russ Levin.
Rich Brimer and Carol Henry, co-owners of Carmel Visual Arts in the Barnyard, in January of 2014, exhibited Tom Millea - A Sense of Place.
"I had been working with him the last few months to put a series of books together—themed collections," says Brimer, a friend of Millea's. "We worked through the fifth book four to five days ago. There was Yosemite, Cypress Point at Point Lobos. Really cool is The Book of Endings, one he really wanted to have finished before he passed. He knew he was dying. He was fearful he wouldn't do before he left the earth."
Proofs of those books are expensive to print—about $500, Brimer says. But books seemed to be Millea's focus, his legacy, toward the end of his life when pulmonary disease necessitated the use of an oxygen tank to breathe. He considered The Book of Palms, a book of palm trees and palm fronds, his magnum opus.
Maria Lindley and Millea had recently moved to Salinas, but they had lived in Carmel and Carmel Valley most of their lives. They met in 1971 in Connecticut and moved to the West Coast the next year lured by Ansel Adams' presence, and have been together, off and on, as "lifelong loves and friends" ever since.
"[Spirituality] was his passion. That's what he was trying to photograph always," Lindley says. "That's what drove him. He lived it. Not an easy man to be with. He had very high standards. He didn't compromise a whole lot. He was not a good salesman of his own work. He pulled out of galleries and tried to do it on his own, with help by people like Rich Brimer."
That quest for the spiritual—one that could be reflected in photographs—is shared by many artists, says Carol Henry, photography director of Carmel Visual Arts.
"I think all photographers reflect all kinds of exploration in their own stages of life," she says. "In his last few years, he wasn't as mobile and didn't go out into the landscape as much. He'd been ill for quite a while. He reflected inward in the latter part of his life. He had one banana palm that he spent a lot of time meditating and looking at. It's a different stage of awareness."
Henry also admits that Millea had a reputation for having a "big personality," one that she says seems to have put people off. His platinum print photography work is showing at the Phoenix Art Museum's Doris and John Norton Gallery for the Center for Creative Photography in the show All That Glitters is Not Gold. But Millea said his erotic work caused contention within Carmel's Center for Photographic Art and they wouldn't show him, despite his having exhibited there when it was the Friends of Photography in Ansel Adams' day.
"Tom lived locally but his work placed him as an international talent," Henry says. "There's no venue or publication worldwide that wouldn't have an appreciation for his photographic vision."
Millea believed that he was seeking a higher plane in his work. He told the Weekly last year: "People are looking to believe in something greater than themselves. I've been fortunate to have experiences that have shown me there are things greater than ourselves."
The evidence, he claimed, is in the body of work he's left behind.
A public memorial is in the works; check the Alta Vista Mortuary website or email LindleyAna@aol.com for updates.
(Editor's note: An earlier version of this story stated Tom Millea died at CHOMP. He was released from CHOMP on Friday and died at his home.)