Floating photographers featured in new exhibit

Historic Arkansas Museum's new "Hugo & Gayne Preller's House of Light" exhibit shows river life in early-day Arkansas through pictures taken by the adventurous couple.

The Prellers set off in a houseboat turned photo studio, capturing the people and times they witnessed along the Mississippi and White rivers from about 1895 into the 1950s.

They clicked thousands of photos -- mostly Gayne did, mostly portraits, while Hugo made their way by hunting and fishing, and fixing guns and clocks and fiddles. Also, he painted landscapes and portraits on the pearly insides of mussel shells, showing a fine hand for brushwork.

Several other museums around the state have featured "House of Light" exhibits as conceived by Bentonville-based photographer and naturalist Chris Engholm. But the show in Little Rock offers a different look -- "not the same show," museum spokesman Chris Hancock says.

Museum curator Carey Voss describes this latest exhibit as "based on Chris Engholm's original curatorial vision, but it has undergone a partial redesign and expansion for our gallery space."

Along with 60 photos, including enlargements from the pictures' original snapshot size, the show features nine of Hugo's painted mussel shells and 80 photo brooches (tiny photos worn as jewelry) of black Americans.

"We focus on showing original objects," Voss says, "because we believe they make the best storytellers."

Engholm shaped the exhibit from an array of old glass-plate negatives and other belongings that passed down to the Prellers' granddaughter, Gayne Preller Schmidt of Augusta.

"To a resident of Arkansas I'd say this exhibit features a state treasure that simply can't be missed," Engholm says. "To outlanders, I'd say it's the finest collection of Delta art and photography to surface in a very long time, and the most significant body of work by an American floating photographer ever exhibited."

A challenge in assembling the display is that proper historians want names, dates and places, and the Prellers kept few records to document their pictures.

They photographed nattily dressed town leaders and bare-footed river boys all with the same care, the same naturally lit, spontaneous snap at a time when most photos made people look stiff. Not only what they did, but sometimes how they did it -- who knows?

Gayne was a store owner's daughter in dinky Columbus, Ky., 16 years old when she met Hugo. He was 10 years older, a German immigrant with, so it seems, the charm to make dangerous travel look like just what she wanted. And off they sailed, not a care, not a fear in the world -- tall-tale or true?

The museum's show centers on the facts as documented so far. Meantime, Engholm continues to research the Prellers' story, and expects the Historic Arkansas Museum's showing will be a high-water mark in the exhibit's travels.

Engholm is poised with a book about the exhibit, and a documentary screenplay about the Prellers. And "as this new show brings their work to a wider audience," he says, "we have high hopes of locating a partner to help fund a film."

Also, "my arrangement with [the museum] allows me to take the new show to other venues after its stay in Little Rock," he says. "I'm in talks with museums in Atlanta, New Orleans, Nashville and St. Louis."

"House of Light" debuted at Old Independence Regional Museum in Batesville in 2014, and has been featured at Lower White River Museum State Park at Des Arc, Jacksonport State Park at Newport and the Delta Cultural Center in Helena-West Helena.

The title, "House of Light," plays off the Prellers' home in the river town of Augusta, northeast of Searcy, where they finally settled to open a combination photo studio and variety store. They built their house from a Sears and Roebuck kit that showed how to make the whole place out of doors, and called it the "House of Doors."

The museum's description of the exhibit notes: "From the moment they met, Hugo and Gayne were kindred spirits; both yearned for adventure, and river life offered glimpses of the flourishing American frontier.

"Many people are moved by the story of the couple's bond and their unconventional lives as wandering artists, but the photographs they produced are equally compelling.

"Over the course of their lifetimes, Hugo and Gayne Preller made more than 2,400 photographs, artworks, and artifacts. Historic Arkansas Museum is delighted to display a portion of the Preller Collection, and to share an authentic glimpse into life in the Delta around the turn of the century."

Style on 04/10/2016