On the Road with Neal Rantoul | Part 2

When I first started coming to Washington State in the mid nineties, I wouldn't see anyone else photographing here. Now, there are workshops and groups that meet here to photograph. Clearly the place has caught on with photographers. As I've come here almost every year since then, this has become a very familiar place. Yet it never fails to be a wonderful experience to be making pictures here.

In the earlier years I worked with an 8 x 10 inch view camera in black and white and by the late nineties I started shooting with color film. For the past five years or so it has been all digital. Throughout my long career, I have used places that I return to as a constant in a rapidly changing world. Martha's Vineyard was like that for me until it was transformed in the 80's and 90's by development into a different kind of place, more frenzied in the summer, over crowded and less familiar.

The Palouse has remained very much the same. Not built up, not over run by tourists and not "discovered"(except perhaps by photographers). I feel sometimes that it is a little like going back in time to come here, for the pace is slower and people will talk to you from a place that is genuine and real. Clearly this one of my favorite places in the world.

On the Road with Neal Rantoul

It's always nice to hear from your artists when they are out in the world making photographs. Neal Rantoul and I are usually in good contact with each other. As a gallery owner, I've been living vicariously through their adventures.

In the SE corner of Washington State, lies an area called the Palouse. Neal Rantoul recently flew out west to capture a few more images before his sabbatical was over. He'll be heading back to Northeastern University this fall where he is the head of the photography program.

Rantoul, feeling the effects of jet lag was up bright and early today capturing this amazing vista at about 6:30 this morning, from the top of a hill near Colfax, WA. He told me, "It's harvest time here, so the fields are either cut or soon will be. Before they turn the field under for new planting, they leave these tracks from when they cut the wheat. Every season that I come out here, these remarkable fields take on a totally different look and feel based upon where they are in the growing season. It blows me away!"

I'll be certain to post more images and stories as they come in……Stay Tuned!

Dog Date Afternoon | Boston Globe

Fun things happen when doggies dates happen!

(article courtesy of The Boston Globe - August 27, 2010)

At the Panopticon Gallery at the Hotel Commonwealth, an exhibit titled “William Wegman: Inside | Outside’’ collects some of the Massachusetts-bred photographer and dog lover’s playful images of Weimaraners. The gallery, like the hotel, is open to pets.

“This is one of the bigger shows that the gallery and the hotel has seen in a long time,’’ says Jason Landry, owner and gallery director. “Bill is a local boy. He grew up in Massachusetts, went to the Massachusetts College of Art back in the late ’60s. He is one of the most recognized living photographers in world today.’’

Among the photos is a series called “Untitled (Flying Dog)’’ that depict Wegman’s dogs seemingly floating through the air. They’ve proved to be a big hit with art and dog lovers alike, says Landry. “Every single day I have one or two people come in and say, ‘Oh, here’s the flying dogs.’ ’’

“William Wegman: Inside | Outside’’, through Sept. 7 at the Panopticon Gallery, 502c Commonwealth Ave., Boston. 617-267-8929. www.panopticongallery.com

Roger Farrington | A Double Fantasy

On August 7th 1980, Roger Farrington was the first authorized photographer hand selected to document the recording sessions for John Lennon & Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy album at The Hit Factory in New York City. These photographs are a document to one of our culture's most recognized and popular musicians. 2010 happens to mark the 30th anniversary of the recording sessions for this album and Lennon's untimely passing.

This fall, VH1 and Gallery Books will be releasing Starting Over: The Making of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy by Ken Sharp. This book will feature many of Farrington's images from the recording sessions.

Eva Timothy | Picture of the Day

Eva Timothy is a Media/Communications graduate with a B.A. from the University of Utah and studied at Oxford School of Photography in the U.K. She holds a Licentiate Certification from the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain and is currently an instructor at the Newburyport Art Association.

Her monograph, Lost in Learning was awarded First Place, People's Choice at the Px3 Competition and was a finalist for the Julia Margaret Cameron Award. Her work is held in numerous national and international collections.

To see more of her work, visit: Panopticon Gallery.

PRESS RELEASE | Vittorio Sella

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

HEIGHTS OF OBSERVATION
The Photographs of Vittorio Sella (1859 – 1943)
September 9 – November 8, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 16th from 5:30-7:30pm


Vittorio Sella began his photographic career in 1879 walking out his front door to climb and photograph the nearby Alps. His home was in Biella, Italy, and his camera was an 11x14 large-format field camera through which he captured his earliest images onto wet plate collodion glass negatives.

It sounds fairly simple; it was anything but. The hikes from his home to Alpine peaks took hours, the camera was big and cumbersome, and the glass plates were both heavy and fragile. He designed his own backpack to carry camera, plates and chemicals. In the early years, he had to set up a darkroom tent on the mountain so that he could coat the plates with light sensitive emulsion just prior to exposure. The earliest ascended peaks were fairly direct; gradually the peaks that Sella sought out became more and more difficult to climb, with numerous hazards, including weather and visibility, adding to the challenge of photographing them.

Sella’s photography demanded that he be a world-class mountaineer, which he was. Predecessors within his family offered him training – both photographic and Alpine – enabling Vittorio to accomplish what he set out to photograph. His father had written the first treatise on photography in Italy. His grandfather, uncles and father were all skilled alpinists. Vittorio Sella took these skills to new levels and pursued his photographic passions.

The Duke of The Abruzzi, one of the great turn of the century explorer/adventurers recognized Sella's talents and hired him to document many of the expeditions he organized. By the turn of the 20th century, Vittorio Sella had climbed major mountains all over the world in Europe, the Caucasus, Karakoram, Sikkim, Africa, and North America, many of them first ascents. While accompanying the Duke on his unsuccessful attempt to summit K2 in 1909, the Duke’s team set an altitude record of 24,500 feet on nearby Mt. Chogolisa – a record that would stand until 1922.

This exhibition, curated by Tony Decaneas, highlights a selection of photographs taken by Vittorio Sella and serves as a prelude to a major traveling exhibition. Sella was a consummate photographer who photographed the mountains he climbed as well as the flora, fauna, people and architecture that he encountered along the way. The scope of his vision was unlimited. His photographic record has been largely preserved in his hometown of Biella, Italy.

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Stephen Sheffield | Panopticon Gallery

We would like to welcome Stephen Sheffield to our roster of artists at Panopticon Gallery. Sheffield’s pieces range from large mixed media installations that are heavily stylized and intricate and often includes found images to intimate black & white prints. Through his various projects, Sheffield is able to find balance in the commercial and fine art worlds.

Sheffield is based in Boston, Massachusetts. He received a B.F.A. from Cornell University and a M.F.A. from the California College of Arts & Crafts, in Oakland/San Francisco. His photographs have been exhibited locally and nationally and a number of his large-scale commissions have been featured in many national & international publications and acquired by numerous corporations and businesses. You can see some of them first hand throughout Eastern Standard in Kenmore Square.

Stephen is a professor of advanced fine art photography at the New England School of Photography(NESOP) in Boston and for the past 16 years has maintained a studio in Boston’s Fort Point Channel District.

Brian Kaplan|Panopticon Gallery Artist

Panopticon Gallery is pleased to welcome a new artist to our group of photographers. Brian Kaplan, an avid large format photographer, has been working simultaneously on a few different projects including, Blank Billboards, Fort Hill and Nauset Marsh.

Kaplan, who started his photography career as an assistant to a Boston Globe photojournalist, has experienced the world and our natural environment alike through the ground glass. With his own work, he has diversely set out to explore the complexities of the world around us.

In his series, Blank Billboards, Kaplan’s imagery subtly explores the stark and somber reality of America’s consumption-driven culture, and the hollow and beautiful aftermath of it’s bi-products. These night scenes reflect the paradox of these empty advertisement spaces, as well as the state (and sometimes, decay) of the communities that they appear in.

Blank Billboard, #5b

In what appears to be contrast, the artist has taken to making color imagery of Fort Hill, Massachusetts. The intricate and beautiful landscapes of overtaking brush and vegetation seem to balance with a calm, if not cold reality. The natural cycle of growth and decay is beautifully illustrated in these hyper detailed photographs.

Oriental bittersweet engulfing trees near mouth of Penniman Trail, Fort Hill, January 2010

Please take a look at Brian Kaplan’s web gallery, and be sure to stop into the gallery to see prints soon.

Brian Kaplan’s photographs have been exhibited locally and nationally including the Danforth Museum of Art, Griffin Museum of Photography, Provincetown Art Museum, Houston Center for Photography and the Schoolhouse Gallery.

NPR Picture Show | Vittorio Sella

Our friends over at NPR's Picture Show blog did this great write up on our upcoming exhibition Height of Observations: The Photographs of Vittorio Sella.

Photo of the Day | 122 years ago today

Vittorio Sella, Highest peak of the Rouies as seen from Chardon Glacier, August 3rd, 1888.

This photograph will be featured in the upcoming exhibition,
HEIGHTS OF OBSERVATION
The Photographs of Vittorio Sella (1859 - 1943)
September 9 - November 8, 2010