A boy stands shocked, captured in the silent wood face to face with a giant buck that has risen from the earth. They make eye contact and it is as if they inhabit another place and time, a reality superimposed over this one. More than fifty years later that boy still looks out through Randall Tosh’s eyes, seeking and trying to recreate that magical and life defining moment through his art.

“The deer is kind of my spirit animal and always has been. It actually kind of dates back to when I was a kid,” Tosh said. “I grew up on a farm in west Tennessee and one fall I was out roaming the woods, you know, roaming the fields. I was walking along, and suddenly I felt the ground give way underneath me and I thought that I had stepped in a well, because there had been a house there.

“I thought that I’d stepped in this well and the next thing I know, I’m face to face with a deer. That’s like this close, literally six inches from my face, because what I stepped on was not a well, but a deer.

“To confront nature like that is something that doesn’t happen very often in your life, and you’re privileged, I think, to have that experience, and it sort of changed my relationship with deer from that point. I realized at that point I had a deeper relationship with these as my animals. All that kind of works in with what I do.”

It has influenced Tosh’s work since college. Its influence can be seen in Souvenirs of Imaginary Places: Photographs by Randall Tosh, which is on exhibit through Jan. 11, 2025, at Level 2 Gallery in the Salem Convention Center.

Tosh, 71, has continued to have an active and prolific presence in the art photography community since 1976, and has been featured in numerous publications. A native of Tennessee, he earned his Master’s of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa and his bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College. He is the former city attorney of the City of Salem, and continues to call Salem his home.

He combines a mix of new technology and old, using an iPhone to shoot his images and create digital negatives that he uses to make salt prints with photography equipment that is often more than a hundred years old. By blending analog and digital he succeeds in creating a thoughtful approach to the medium.

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Tosh’s work is informed by his encounter with the deer. It is a juxtaposition of Jungian psychology, the archetype mythos, and a journey of self-awareness taken through his subconscious. He strives to throw the viewer off, to rip away expectations and create uneasiness and alienation by playing with viewers’ perceptions and their understanding of their own reality.

“I think primarily, I’m looking for me, but the world is always in the background,” he says. “And what I’m looking for are things that create a sense that the world is magical. Photography, unlike any other art form, can transport you to these altered states.

“It has to do with this inherent quality of photography: There’s an object, there’s a lens, there’s a viewer, and everyone places a lot of credence on the fact that there’s this object there that was in the real world. And so if you can somehow enchant that object visualization process, you’re going to transport your viewer.”

Tosh’s subject matter and process are grounded in magical realism and propose that magic is a normal part of everyday life if only the viewer is willing to see past the veil into that aspect of reality. The dreamlike quality of the images, in part a product of Tosh’s printing process, challenges viewers. Are they ready to shed the known for the unknown to step into a world of magic?

“I like to try to put the viewer slightly off-balance when they’re looking at the image,” he says. “What am I looking at? Or what’s really going on here? So I would say, in terms of objective, that’s really kind of my objective as an artist, to make them question reality a little bit, or to experience reality in a little bit different way.”

Walking from right to left through the series, the viewer becomes voyeur, looking into and at the dreamer, who is subject and narrator, in initial images.

“The sequence is part of the whole, because it really is a piece, and so it goes right to left, because we are conditioned to go left to right. So the idea is you start by throwing a viewer a little bit unconsciously off-balance, by orienting opposites, whether we experience narrative. So, the whole sequence is a dream narrative, and it starts with me, right?” Tosh says, explaining the narrative.

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“And the title Sleeper, Awake is ambiguous because of the comma. It could have several different meanings. It could say that the sleeper is awake. It could be ‘sleeper wake up’. So, you start with this, with the sleeper, and then they enter the land, the landscape. And the landscape, ultimately the sleeper’s given access through the Chatelaine (the second image).”

As you move further into the series the Chatelaine, who is a supernatural guide, seems to extend its invitation to you as well as the dreamer. You become a passive participant, the observer. You are assailed with images which at first appear to be unconnected: a clown, a boy and an alligator, antlers, pyramids, mannequins with their noses touching, an empty canoe, a Christmas window display, a top hat, and a man rowing about down the river.

The images reflect ancient myths such as Horus and Osiris, a Buddhist Mandala, Charon and his boat; cultural images such as an undertaker’s top hat or Goya’s aquatint print The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters; or ideas such as how finite man is.

The ending of the dream, and the series, implies the end of the long journey, life. The mountain appears to be an island afloat and shrouded, rising up out of the fog, isolated and alone. The viewer is given no clue of habitation or of civilization. The image implies that at the journey’s end, one is alone.

“I didn’t set out to create a Death narrative; that’s kind of how I work,” Tosh says. “I had this, this body of, you know, stuff that I’ve studied and thought about for 50 years now, and it informs how I photograph. And, you know, I probably unconsciously look for things that draw off of that narrative.

“And, you know, like most, well, like a lot of artists my age … Jung was important in my early artistic development, because, everyone read Marx and Jung, right? Oh, yeah. And Jung had a lot more staying power. And plus, you know, I read … The Golden Bough, and I was still interested in myth-making and the structures that we have in the world that give us meaning, and all those things, you know, like the gods, show up in this series.”

After earning an MFA in photography Tosh returned to school to study law, a strategic move to make sure he had enough money to support himself while pursuing his art. After getting his law degree he began teaching in the legal writing program at the University of Oregon. From there he moved to the coast, where he practiced as an attorney before moving to Salem, where he was employed as the City Attorney until he retired in 2014.

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He lives in Salem with his partner, Alex Benenson. They travel in their free time.

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The exhibit, which is free and open to the public, will be on display at the Level 2 Gallery in the Salem Convention Center until Jan. 11, 2025. The gallery is on the second floor of the center, at 200 Commercial St. S.E. in Salem. It is open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays or by appointment. For more information, call (503) 589-1700.

A companion exhibit is on display in the Art Hall at the Salem Library. These images were taken in a Mannerist Garden near Bomarzo, Italy, which dates back to the 16^th century. The library is at 585 Liberty St. S.E., Salem; hours are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. For more information, call (503) 588-6315 or send email to library@cityofsalem.net.

Both shows are put on by the Oregon Artists Series Foundation, (OASF), a nonprofit created in 2008 “to foster the exhibition of art in public spaces in Salem.” The organization provides the community opportunities to view area artists. It also encourages and provides opportunities for the city to purchase art for its public art collection.

Tosh’s work is available to view and purchase on his website.