A Third Act

When Steve Wallace bought his first camera, a 35 mm Pentax MX, he wasn’t dreaming of an armed village in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, a young woman guarding the tribe’s flowering sorghum fields with a slingshot, scattering hungry birds beneath an ashen sky. He wasn’t imagining a Chinese fisherman casting a net from a bamboo raft, two black cormorants waiting by his side, an eerie fog hanging above the Li River and shrouding the karst mountains — like stubby fingers bursting through a grave — behind them. He wasn’t picturing a barefoot Indonesian shaman wrapped in a purple shawl, face lit by his bamboo torch, the Bromo volcano of Java island belching smoke in the sunset, the whole stunning panorama awash in a purple haze.

No, Wallace, then a pharmacist and first-year medical student at the University of Missouri, thought maybe his dog would do just fine. Maybe a tree in the backyard. “Nothing in particular,” he says. But within two months, he was converting his spare bedroom into a darkroom, processing his own film. And go figure: When he entered a local contest — submitting a silhouette of a praying mantis — he won. The Missouri native who graduated top of his class at University of Missouri-Kansas City pharmacy school, who was now flourishing in medical school and who would later earn a law degree, too, just to better the hospital attorneys, was also a natural photographer.

“He’s a craftsman, not just a guy snapping pictures,” says Scott Kelby, president and CEO of KelbyOne, an online educational community for photographers. “You take a great composition, add interesting subjects, in a fascinating place, with great color — there’s Steve’s shot. It all comes together.”

After a prosperous career in both medicine and law, Wallace — now technically retired — travels the globe with a camera in his hand: Myanmar, Italy, Peru, Egypt, India, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Indonesia and more — way more. He captures moments of intense joy and sorrow, of pain and contemplation. Portraits of life in every shade. He pays his own way, hires a local fixer, offers his work pro bono to various nongovernmental organizations, from Asia Partners to Saving Moses and others. And go figure: It’s good — very good. His work has been chosen for book covers and traveling exhibitions, magazines and donor campaigns, and in 2018, Smithsonian Magazine named him a finalist in its 16th annual photo contest, chosen from more than 48,000 entries.

“I think all this is primarily to maintain my sanity in retirement,” he says, eschewing the spotlight. “I’ve always had a nagging feeling I should be doing something productive.”

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