Turn a globe-trotting, New York-based photographer loose in the West with a fly rod and a camera and what you end up with is Charles Lindsay's photography exhibit at the Boise Art Museum.

"Upstream: Fly Fishing in the American West" is 25 of the 55 photographs featured in Lindsay's book of the same name. Both the book and exhibit also feature essays by writer, fly angler and Montana resident Thomas McGuane.

Lindsay, who is a part-time Ketchum resident, spent five years bumming around the West fishing and shooting for the project. Many of the photos were taken in Idaho.

Being a photo geek and a part-time fish bum, I couldn't resist seeing what he came up with, so I made my first foray into the Boise Art Museum.

I can best describe Lindsay's work as anti fish porn. There are no tarted-up, hyper-colored, center-fold fish, and no panoramic landscape glory shots of world-famous fishing spots.

All the photos are black and white, and they take the fly fishing experience down to its most basic elements, fish, rod and reel, water, land and sky.

Lindsay explains: "The impulse to create these photographs came from the desire to express at a gut level what I have enjoyed since childhood about being out, usually by myself, trout fishing. Primitive, mysterious surroundings, somehow connected to the predator via the act of concentration."

But what's missing is the other side of a fly fishing adventure, he says.

"The one thing that is under represented in my story is the humor and humility that comes from lost fish, slipping and falling on your butt, being chased by moose, or getting fatally entangled just when the hatch is peaking," he said.

So be prepared to throw away all your stereotypes of an angst-ridden, New York artist and see some great, large format photos that represent the confluence of a talented photographer and fly fisherman with the places fly anglers love to experience.

I traded e-mails with Lindsay earlier this week, and got his insights into his work.

Q: Why does fly fishing so commonly cross over into art? We don't see the same thing with bass fishing or catfish fishing.

A: I actually think that all fishing lends itself well to the arts, as nature does, but that fly fishing has been the most explored because it is largely the pursuit of the aristocracy or upper class, which is also where an interest in art is cultivated.

I would love to see art from bass fishing or catfish fishing, and I predict it will arrive. Hopefully in technicolor, and I don't mean the Velvet Elvis corner at Cabela's.

There is a lot of work produced and sold in the name of fly fishing which is just crap. I can only hope my work rises above that.

Q: What's harder, getting fishing photos into an art gallery or fly fishermen into an art gallery to see them?

A: I will tell you that very few art people in New York ever opened the book because fishing was in the subtitle, even though a very prominent establishment (Aperture) produced the book.

It is not pop culture, and the subject is just the beginning. But when you think a squirrel in Central Park is wildlife, well.... you see where I'm going.

I am of course grateful to have the photographs shown in the Boise Art Museum, which is its ninth museum venue.

The show as it is in Boise is as complete a look at a chapter in my life as I could hope. It was a great chapter, living in the back of my pickup truck and investigating what it was that I loved so much about fly fishing.

One of the things that true art may do (yes, this is highfalutin idealism) is to allow us to see something we think we already know in a new way.

It may be surprising, an invention, the evolution toward better understanding. The artist gets to experience the "ah ha" moment, and that is the real reward.

I hope that some of those who love the work get a chance to see the museum show. But I'd hate for any of them to miss a hatch on my account.

Q: Both photography and fly fishing take a lot of concentration. How do you overcome the challenge of trying to do them both at once?

A: My approach in "Upstream" was to reduce my equipment as much as possible. I used a 1961 twin lens Rolleiflex which has a fantastic German lens, a fixed standard lens, no zoom, no wide, just normal focal length, plus no batteries, and which you compose and focus through via a top viewer - so the camera isn't brought up to your nose.

This way, I was able to concentrate completely and equally on both pursuits. For that five-year period, they actually melded together, no division, fishing was photography and vice versa.

Years after completing the book, at which time I stopped photographing fishing, I went out with the camera again and could not believe I made those shots. It was as though somebody else did that work. I must have been in the zone at the time.

Q: For every shot of a leaping fish you got, how many did you miss?

A: The leaping fish shots were great surprises every time I developed the film. Those fish were all on my rod! Unlike the digital world of today, I didn't know what I had until two months after the trip when I eventually saw the film back in New York.

The cover shot (for the book) I never did see through the camera because my eyes were on the fish jumping when I pushed the shutter! When you look at the composition in that image, it's staggering, a tribute to the Fish God.

That image was on the very first roll of film I shot when I was developing the concept for the work. It really suggested where I could go, the decisive moment that I didn't even see though the camera.

Roger Phillips: 373-6615