Lives depend on the work of search and rescue organizations like Mountain Rescue Aspen. Its members, all volunteers, respond when a climber falls, a hiker is missing, or when there’s an avalanche.
As a 27+ year volunteer with the team and a photographer, Sallie Dean Shatz ’88 has been documenting the organization’s intense every-five-year project of reaccreditation since 2007.
She’s bringing the resulting photographs to UVM’s Colburn Gallery in Williams Hall for a show opening on March 16.
“I hope that students and other visitors will see the show and learn that there's something amazing about giving back to your community, about being part of your community on a very deep level.”.
Finding Herself with Mountain Rescue
Sallie has been part of the work of Mountain Rescue Aspen since 1992. Her initial interest came after she was caught in a “little” avalanche. When she got to the bottom of the ski area, she spotted a poster advertising a community avalanche class, and she found herself in the class, and before she knew it, in a ropes rigging class, then getting her EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) certification.
She loved everything about Mountain Rescue, “They're my family. There's a bond that happens when you are trusting a group of people with your life on a rescue. These are truly incredible bonds and friendships that have been formed over decades.”
She finds meaning and connection on the team, while providing a critical service for the larger Aspen community, though she lives half time in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Even from that distance, she still works on rescues by reviewing aerial imagery from drones, helicopters and planes to try to find people who have gone missing.)
In 2012, she proposed the concept of documenting the recertification process for The New York Times. She had to get the approval of the organization’s board of directors, which she said was made possible by the trust and relationships she had built over decades.
It was equal parts creative challenge and an expression of how much she cared about and wanted to use her skills to support the mission of the team.
“Mountain Rescue sent me a list of their requirements for how I was to approach photographing, saying that all members should be represented equally, every image has to have at least three people and no face shots,” she recalled. The work paid off: the story ran on June 12 of that year, with a gallery of dramatic images attached to the article of members of the team solving different scenarios under the careful watch of the evaluators.
“You’ll see by some of the images, which are from recertifications from 2007-2024, that I am in the middle of the scenario, photographing over the edge and there isn't a person around me who's worried about it because they know that I won't affect the outcome of the test.”
She hopes that photojournalism students can see through the exhibit to what it takes to earn access into a situation that they want to photograph.
“When you photograph someone, or a community, you're asking them to trust you with their image, with how they're perceived, how they're experienced, you're in people's lives and you're asking them to open up to you.”
“With Mountain Rescue, I went in as a mountaineer, and it was years before I brought my camera in because it wasn't appropriate.“For me, as a photojournalist, I think that anything you go into, you need to approach with respect, with honesty about what you're doing. For instance, I don't sneak photos. If I'm photographing someone, they know it. I'm in their face. But with Mountain Rescue Aspen, they don't necessarily notice I'm there because they're so used to me being there and they're focused on what they're doing.”
“You have to earn your way into a situation like that.”
Her show will be in the Williams Hall Colburn Gallery (named for Francis Colburn '34) from March 16 - March 26, 2026.
The Great Salt Lake
"Mountain Rescue Aspen Images by Sallie Dean Shatz" is one of two Burlington exhibits in which Sallie is participating this spring.
She’s also part of the group “Human Impact: Contemporary Art and Our Environment” show at Burlington City Arts March 13 — June 20, 2026.
She describes the chosen images as “kind of a Great Salt Lake 101.”
It’s an important time to engage people in the conversation about the very special place she calls home, she says.
“The Great Salt Lake is drying up. Unless we do something right now - within the next two years - the lake’s ecosystem will collapse. This year, for instance, the snowpack is 65% below average. Salt Lake City will struggle to be habitable. Two-thirds of the lake has dried up, and the lakebed has all these mineral deposits, things like arsenic and all sorts of other fun stuff. When windstorms come and it all becomes airborne over Salt Lake City, it’s problematic,” she says plainly.
Because the lake is a tremendously important stop for birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway, these problems will affect millions of birds and other species, along with humans.
Her contribution to the show is five aerial images of the Great Salt Lake itself made with the support of EcoFlight, and one last image of a flock of birds that lifted out of the lake all at once, in a rainstorm, as she was on site with her camera at the ready.
Having done work on such serious topics as conflict zones and rescue efforts through her career, bird photography was not on her short list of ambitions.
She laughed, remembering, “It's been a big joke with my friends, I love it when I have to check my own judgments. I had always thought, ‘oh, bird photography, you know, isn't that sweet?’ And then to tell this story with the lake I have had to figure out how to photograph birds. It was the most humbling, hilarious experience to try and figure out how to photograph these small things that move so quickly with a massive lens.
“I definitely wouldn't call myself a bird photographer now, but I've gotten lucky by continuing to show up, attempting to make some decent photos,” she noted in what we might suggest is something of an understatement.
Reflecting on Thriving at UVM, Thanks to Family, Friends and Faculty
As she’s prepared for these exhibits and reconnected with campus, she’s been thinking back to her undergraduate years.
One of her clear memories was the moment she stepped onto campus the summer of her junior year of high school, and knowing she had found her place.
She and her father were on a road trip touring colleges that had started in New York’s Hudson Valley.
She remembers, “I told him, ‘I'm going here.’ I just knew with every bit of me. I had gone to a very small high school, maybe 120 students, and I loved the idea that at UVM I could explore, see what life was like with a little bit of anonymity.
“And I loved that it was a school in a neat town and there was this gorgeous lake and mountains and Stowe, you know, with the single chairs and the blankets and skiing on unbelievably cold days -- and I was instantly in love and I knew that was where I was going to be.”
When she started her first year, she was heading for a pre-law and political science major. But she was diagnosed with dyslexia the spring of her senior year of high school and was learning how to navigate complex studies with the realities of a learning disability.
She almost flunked her first semester, but her stepmother and father were at the ready, realizing that something wasn’t adding up for someone to be so engaged, working so hard, and getting Ds for grades. It was incredibly frustrating, but the family learned that, at the time, UVM was one of the top schools for working with students with learning disabilities.
So through careful interventions through the UVM’s Counseling and Testing Center, she was evaluated and then made the recipient of unlimited tutoring, books on tape and the support of cadre of passionate faculty and staff members. She especially remembers counselor Susan Krasnow as the one who would get her through frustrations and roadblocks.
“I tried all sorts of things like hypnosis and relaxation classes that the team offered, on top of the traditional academic support. It was an amazing program and I owe my degree to them!” Professor Steve Berkowitz, for whom she was a TA, even convinced me to go see a specialist in Canada. I truly felt like everyone wanted me to succeed and they invested their energy in me," she said.
UVM's newspaper was another enormous part of her campus experience.
“The Cynic was everything. I remember when I found them, my roommates sat me down to say they were worried about me as I was never home and never slept,” she shared over email.
“I LIVED at the Cynic, I would pull all-nighters on the nights it was not used for the paper and the photo editor would have me teach people to use the darkroom as I was so particular about the chemicals and the process. A lot of my closest friends were from The Cynic photo circles.
“Going through this paper I had kept brought back a lot of memories of those friendships. We had an intense crew. Eric Lipton ’87 was editor of the paper and set a high bar. He went on to win three Pulitzer Prizes, starting with the one that lauded his reporting on the Hubble telescope failure in 1992.
“There were some really good photographers that I learned from, like Jeff Lamoureux '90 and John Chaisson '91, who inspired me to do better. I remember spending the week between exams and graduation mostly in the darkroom (when I was not at Tuckerman’s Ravine) printing my portfolio.
“Outside the Cynic, I had two close photo friends, Rhonda Lindle '88 and Viviana Figueres '88. We're still close today. They've also opened doors for me throughout my career," she said. Looking back on her time on campus and her career to this point, she "encourages students to critique each other’s work, build critiquing circles and continue them after you graduate, They will remain a touchstone when the world seems big and crazy.”
She encourages today’s UVM photographers to think about long-term projects as part of their undergraduate experience, "because that's where you learn a lot about a subject and yourself over time, and it all starts with just one photo. Think about what could happen if you take a photo every day of the same place for a week, month, year or many years. You would see changes in hairstyles, changes in fashion, how people interact with each other. A long-term project can become like a friendship, the longer you know someone, the deeper it is.”
Helping Today’s Art Students as an Alumna
Having been the grateful recipient of caring and expertise at UVM, she's deeply passionate about giving back.
“For me, I was lucky. I found photography when I was a student and I knew that would become my life. But I also think about how cool it would have been if we had had classes like there are now, like How to Get a Job in the Arts.”
“To be coming back as part of the School of the Arts Advisory Board, now to be speaking about how to get a job in the arts is exciting. I’ve assembled a list of life advice and have accumulated advice from friends of what we all wish someone had told us as students, things as simple as take an accounting class, take a business management class, take a marketing class, take a QuickBooks class, a public speaking class, and take a class on investing.
"The world is changing quickly, so how one would build a career now is different from when I graduated, but some things are constant, start small and add to your successes, learn from your failures, build a reputation, build a network of friends and allies and keep putting your work out there.
"I’m honestly thrilled to be part of UVM, being a part of the community helping today’s students. I mean, is there anything cooler than being able to give back to a version of a younger you?
An important postscript:
"I work on very serious, very hard topics and it's so important to play and find joy in life too," Sallie shared - and she also shared these images of she and her friend Beth celebrating her 61st birthday with cake on top of Solitude Ski Area (left); honoring the Great Salt Lake Institute's tradition of kissing the "Emotional Support Chicken" while collecting data in the field (center), and on a recent night time skin, with tutu (right). In hard times, delight still matters. All images courtesy Sallie Dean Shatz.
Learn More
UVM Alumni are living rich lives, engaged in inspirational and impactful work in many fields, in communities around Vermont, across the US, and around the world. Here are just a few of the stories we've gotten to share recently:
Highlights from the 2025 George V. Kidder Lecture with Allan Strong '83
Cami Davis '76 on Art, Ecology and UVM Campus Life in the 70s
Class Notes, as shared by hundreds of alumni for inclusion in the Fall 2025 University of Vermont Magazine,
Learn more about the School of the Arts' Board of Advisors
Sallie Dean Shatz '88: Creativity, Passion and Service
Cheryl Carmi
Mar 9, 2026