James Galanos admits he was at a complete loss when he retired from the fashion scene in 1998.
"I didn't know what to do," the 82-year-old recalls. "When I was younger, I always liked to take photographs. I thought, Well, maybe I should go back to that."
And so the designer, whose most famous client was Nancy Reagan, replaced pencil and sketchbook with a 35-millimeter Nikon 100 camera. Based in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs, Calif., Galanos likes to take snapshots of such landscapes as the Indian Canyons and their boulders, waterfalls and cactus trees. He also spends much time in his kitchen sculpting abstract paper constellations, which he hand-paints and then photographs.
"Photography as an art is more important today than ever, and it has taken the place of painting," Galanos says. "You know the great photographers in fashion. It's a new world of pictures and a commentary on today."
This month, the Serge Sorokko Gallery in San Francisco is staging James Galanos: Photographs, an assembly of the designer's work over the last eight years. Galanos met the socially prominent
Sorokko couple through his friend Ralph Rucci. When they heard about his photography, they immediately traveled to Los Angeles to see it and asked the designer for permission to stage the exhibition. The main focus will be abstractions in vivid colors.
"I work instinctively," Galanos says. "These are things in my mind. It always has to do with space, proportion, color and objects that I put together."
Nor is the spotlight on Galanos shining only on the West Coast. On Nov. 16, the designer is being inducted into the Philadelphia Fashion Hall of Fame, organized by Drexel University and its director of fashion career development Emil de John. Philadelphia happens to be Galanos' birthplace, so the induction is a homecoming of sorts. But despite the accolade, Galanos has no plans to stage a comeback, not even as a fashion photographer. "I have divorced myself totally from fashion," he says. "I don't look back."