A pioneer's view from the top | Boston Globe review

"Vittorio Sella’s father wrote the first book in Italian about photography. Sella’s uncle founded the Italian Alpine Club. So it would seem all but genetically determined that Sella (1859-1943) should become the foremost mountaineering photographer of his time. What wasn’t determined, genetically or otherwise, was his being such a fine photographer, period."

To read more of Mark Feeney's review of the Vittorio Sella exhibition, visit www.boston.com

Portfolios now available at Panopticon Gallery

Recently Panopticon Gallery teamed up with the PRC, our favorite local non-profit photography center, to offer their portfolios for sale through our gallery. A majority of the proceeds from each sale will go directly to the PRC so that they can continue to provide our community with exhibitions and vital educational programs.

We also just added the John Lennon 30th Anniversary Portfolio by photographer Roger Farrington to our inventory. You will be able to see this portfolio and the PRC Portfolio in an exhibition this November at Panopticon Gallery.

Ernest Withers | Civil Rights Photographer in the News

Ernest C. Withers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. resting in the Lorraine Motel
following the March Against Fear, Memphis, TN, 1966, reading the Memphis
Press-Scimitar. Headline reads, King Takes Over For Meredith; Suspect Jailed
- $25,000 Bond.

If you haven't heard of Ernest C. Withers before today, you will now. This week, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis published the results of a two-year investigation that showed Mr. Withers had been an F.B.I informant in the late 1960's. This week numerous news outlets have contacted both Panopticon Gallery and the Decaneas Archive about Withers. It has become a world-wide news story.

You can read the New York Times article here.


Ernest C. Withers lived and photographed in Memphis, TN, a crossroad for the Civil Rights Movement. Withers also documented the music scene on Beale Street, the Negro Baseball League and black social life in Memphis.

Withers played a key roll in the Civil Rights Movement as a result of his photographic document of the Emmett Till trial. He was witness to key Civil Rights moments including: the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Medgar Evers Funeral, the Integration of Little Rock High School, the March Against Fear, the Memphis Sanitation Workers' Strike and the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination and funeral.

Keith Johnson | Photo of the Day

Keith Johnson, Mac Music, Chicago, IL, 2010

New Works by Keith Johnson are currently on display in the private room at Panopticon Gallery through November 8th.

Ellen Rennard | The Downs at Albuquerque

Ellen Rennard, Whiskers, from the series The Downs at Albuquerque, Portfolio I

I recently returned from three weeks of photographing for my book project on The Downs at Albuquerque, a quarter horse and thoroughbred racetrack in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I first photographed there in 2003 and have returned for part of every summer beginning in 2007. I’ve gotten to know many of the people who work on the backside. Among them is “Whiskers,” who was the subject of one of my first portraits at the track.

Every morning I would wake up at 5:40 a.m. After grabbing coffee at the closest Starbucks, I’d drive to the Downs, park in the infield, change from flip flops to tennies, and head for the backside. I’d stop at an old picnic table next to the trailer that serves as the Racing Secretary’s office, where Whiskers and I would usually catch up on racetrack news. Then, as the sun neared the crest of the Sandia Mountains in the east, he’d head off to deliver newspapers, and I’d start walking up and down the shed rows with my camera to see what I would see.

When I wasn’t photographing or just walking, I was visiting with people at the track: trainers, grooms, owners, officials, veterinarians, horse shoers, exercise riders, and jockeys. (At a small track like the Downs, these roles are often combined.) Some of the time I’d stand along the rail with the trainers, listening to them talk, my senses wide open, listening to conversations, the clip clop of hooves on asphalt, the outbursts of song and talk from exercise riders, the whinny and snort of horses, the outpouring of all kinds of music from boom boxes along the shed rows.

This summer I also had the good fortune to meet and photograph Chip Woolley, the trainer of Mine That Bird, the 2009 Kentucky Derby Winner, and Shawn Davis, a three time world saddle bronc riding champion. They typify the blending of cowboy and racing culture that is part of the fabric of western horseracing. (One morning in the corner of the backside, a rider was practicing moves for barrel racing, and a jockey I photographed after a race was heading straight to a rodeo competition in the nearby state fairgrounds coliseum.)


I’d take a break mid-day, and on racing days (Friday through Monday) would head back to watch the races, hang out with my racetrack friends, and photograph. Sometimes I’d return to the backside in the evenings. Of course, the people who work with horses there also get up early and work late (often with a mid-day siesta), seven days a week, and by following their rhythms during the time I’m there, I become more a part of the fabric of this community.

Photograph by David Bram

On the Road with Neal Rantoul | Part 3

"In 1996, I photographed this same little tree. It's part of the Oakesdale Cemetery series that appears in my monograph American Series. I have been back to visit this tree every time I've come back to the Palouse to photograph. The photographs have been shown many times since then, but they still hold a special place in my heart. In American Series, we included the full set of images as thumbnails to show the importance of the whole series to the final meaning of the pictures. We also put this tree and the three others on the cover.

When I first encountered this tree it looked almost dead but, although it has grown very little over the 14 years, it is greener and has more foliage on it now than it did then. Prescribing significance to this ordinary tree, loading it with importance based upon the connection I made back in 1996 to it and my friend who was dying of cancer is something photography can do very well as it has a basis from reality and therefore is believable. Of course, painters have been doing the same thing for a very long time. Take Monet's haystack paintings as a classic example."

Images from this series and others will be included in Neal Rantoul | Twenty Five Years (1980-2005) coming this November to Panopticon Gallery.