Photographer Has Fix On Town

She’s studied in Paris. She’s participated in an artist’s residency program. She’s received a cinematography grant. But Shauna Hillman said she won the best award of her life last month, when the Wallace Elks named her Citizen of the Year.

“It’s important. If you’re going to be in business you have to be part of the community,” said Hillman, 42, who now owns a photography studio, Indelible Tidbits.

She’s an unusual person to find operating a small-town storefront. At Idaho State University, Hillman majored in cinematography and studied photography with visiting professor Bret Weston, whose father, Edward Weston, was a contemporary of Ansel Adams and among the early giants of modern photography.

“He did great black and white abstracts. That’s where I learned archival printing, and the technique that makes me most unusual - printing by the zone system.”

In the late ‘70s she made several documentary films for public broadcasting in southeastern Idaho. In 1980, she married and moved to Wallace, but the transition didn’t slow her down.

After participating in an artist’s residency program in Illinois in 1987, Hillman took out a loan and in 1989 traveled to Europe to study with Ben Fernandez, a photographer best known for his portraits of Allen Ginsberg and the Martin Luther King family.

In 1992, she opened her shop, “Shauna Hillman’s Indelible Tidbits.”

Hillman said she works “80 hours a week just like anyone else.” And she’s proved to be a tireless community supporter as well. She chairs the annual downtown spring cleanup. She gives her all to merchant-sponsored activities from ad campaigns to festivals.

“Something like Crazy Days doesn’t do much for my business, which is more of a service. But if I don’t support my fellow merchants, I lose,” Hillman said. “They’re my teammates. If the team wins, I still get the glory of the play.”

Hillman also serves on the board of the Historic Wallace Preservation Society, spearheading an effort to create an archival negative collection to document the lively history of the Silver Valley.

“It’s built by donated photos. Actually, people keep their pictures. I make negatives from the old pictures. The negatives are what stay in the collection,” she explained. “The idea is to create it and keep it here, to enrich this community.”

Archival copy work constitutes the bulk of Hillman’s business, together with commercial work for catalogs and brochures, and the occasional portrait.

“It’s a different kind of creativity. It’s OK - it still requires the same technique, the same zone system. It’s more regimented than the work I used to do, but it pays the bills.”

She tries to bring something unusual to everything she does.

“I don’t want to charge you for a photo you could get at photomat,” she said, bringing out a portrait of two young girls. One twists her head to look at the other with a look of pure, spontaneous mischief. Hillman points to another portrait, this one of a businesswoman whose elegantly groomed head is topped off with - a cowboy hat.

Hillman will admit, when pressed, that she misses being able to take a day off to shoot. Now that she’s chained to her store, those days are rare.

She also said she misses going away to study.

“Some day I’ll go back to school and get my master’s degree - in another life. But I can’t leave now. I’ve created a monster!”

After a half-beat pause, Hillman takes the statement back.

“Actually, I wouldn’t give the place up for anything. My goal is to be an eccentric old lady of 90. I have no desire to go back. I’m going forward now.”

, DataTimes MEMO: Bekka Rauve is a freelance writer who lives in the Silver Valley. Panhandle Pieces appears every Saturday. The column is shared among several North Idaho writers.