Grunts: the G.I. Experience

“Grunts” is military vernacular for United States Army or Marine foot soldiers, the mass of devoted men and women who make up the bulk of the armed services.

Commemorating the 70^th anniversary of the bombing at Pearl Harbor, Panopticon Gallery presents Grunts: The G.I. Experience curated by Jim Fitts.

Fitts met a number of grunts while living in Hawaii in the early 90's, which piqued his interest in the subject. A boxing fan, he regularly attended matches at the Scofield Barracks at Fort Shafter where he befriended several Marines. It was then that he realized his impression of what their lives were like was rather different from reality. 

ACME Photo, Righting the Battleship Oklahoma, Pearl Harbor, May 24, 1943.

“Over the years, I have rarely seen what I would consider an unfiltered, real life photographic portrayal of military personnel ”...scenes of everyday life, says Fitts. “This exhibition will come as close to the reality of the grunt experience as I have ever seen.”

Harold Feinstein, Rack in Barracks, 1952

Harold Feinstein’s friendship with the New York Photo League founder, Sid Grossman, resulted in him not being ranked as an official armed serviced photographer. Therefore, he documented from the viewpoint of a fellow G.I. serving in Korea. Photographs show draftees being inducted, and soldiers on troopships, reading, sleeping and marching. The body of work also contains images of the historical integration of the armed services. 

Robert Capa, Saludos Amigos, Palermo, Italy, 1943
(image courtesy: Lee Gallery)

A selection of vintage photographs by Robert Capa and numerous press photographs from WWII compliment Feinstein’s work. The pictures are memoirs of the common American soldier during WWII. The majority focus on the happenings between battles, though some illustrate combat. 

ACME Photo, Yanks Learn Fast, France, 1944

Images in Grunts, on display December 7 – January 10, 2012, are not repeatedly produced heroic propaganda. They are “personal and very human,” says Fitts, who hopes viewers will gain a better understanding and appreciation of the courageous soldiers.

An opening reception will be held on Wednesday, December 7 from 5:30 – 7:30PM at Panopticon Gallery.

-Marianne Salza, Panopticon Gallery Intern

 

360 Degrees of Neal Rantoul

Northeastern University exhibits retiring professor’s work in the Gallery 360

A shadow is cast from a frothy cumulus cloud gliding over a hill; the sun beams exposing a ravine; eyes comfortably loop as they follow the crests and troughs of the earth’s curves. Ribbons of ploughed furrows are rhythmically entrancing.  The colors of the land are vibrant and create high contrasting figures that contour and expand infinitely.

Neal Rantoul has been traveling to the fields of Palouse in the southeastern corner of Washington State for the past 15 years. He first passed this agriculturally rich region in 1993, made a note of it and returned in 1996. Full days are spent on his week-long projects as he traverses dirt-paved roads on a maze of paths. The dramatic changes in appearance from one season to the other mesmerize him, from the lush greens of May and June to the yellows and golds of late August.

With an 8x10 inch view camera, the Northeastern University photography professor captures minute details of the landscape right down to a blade of grass tilting in the wind and the shadow it casts. Rantoul shoots in the morning when the passing light sculpts the grounds. Sometimes photographs are taken from an airplane while others are photographed from elevated terrain. This technique produces a skewed point of view, making perspective and scale difficult to discern. The abstractions are most notable when his compositions lack horizon lines.

Rantoul’s Wheat series is one of over 50 distinct projects he has created in the past 35 years. He started working in “series” in the 1980s to help organize his work. This allowed him to make images that spoke about a place or concept in its entirety through a group of photographs that would form a narrative.  His immersion in the Washington plains illustrates respite and sustenance, shifting light and the continual season changes that occur in the Palouse fields.

“It’s all about the picture,” a saying Rantoul picked up as an early student of Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan. This quote is something he embraces while working, a guiding mantra as he moves within a landscape. His images convey his admiration and awe of the natural world.

Now through December 4, 2011, Gallery 360 is presenting a selection of images from his early series to his current pieces including photographs from Wheat, Oaksdale, taken in Pullman, Washington, Old Trail Town, Cody, Wyoming, and specimens from the Civic Museum in Reggio Emilia, Italy and the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

-Marianne Salza, Panopticon Gallery Intern

A Willow Cabin at Your Gate | Rachel Phillips

Home is a place of the mind and spirit. It offers familiarity and comfort, shelter and repose. A home is not only for escaping the world outside; it has windows and doors to traverse.

Photographer Rachel Phillips is fascinated by homes that merge with the landscape – those built underground, along a river, and in the woods; places where one can be still and let the world come to him or her, watching nature envelope you.

Rachel Phillips, Quincy, MA

Phillips blends the domesticity of home with the bliss of wilderness in her series, Field Notes. The paper houses are constructed from (and printed on) decades-old letters, postcards and envelopes that her grandparents saved in old shoe boxes in their attic. These artifacts were collected from around the world: France, Italy, Germany, and the United States. Their shapes and folding flaps are just as diverse.

The envelopes are glued together to form three-dimensional, quaint homes with pitched-roofs and stamp-clad chimneys. Images depict quiet winter scenes set in an untouched blanket of snow. A tree-inspired wilted branch with dried leaves stands next to every home.

Rachel Phillips, Fruit and Oysters

She prints on transparency film, using a wet transfer process to convey her photographs onto the aged and crinkled scripts. It is a delicate method with the potential for the ink of the letters to bleed or the paper to disintegrate.

Field Notes is reminiscent of the sanctities, rest and security a home can provide.

-Marianne Salza, Panopticon Gallery Intern

Spurs, Screams and Speed

Horse racing, rodeos and state fairs are some of the most popular spectator attractions in America. Together, Ellen Rennard, Meg Birnbaum and Charles Meyer will be appearing in an exhibition at Panopticon Gallery (November 4 – December 5, 2011) showcasing their photographs of this agrarian, communal culture.

Horse racing is a contest of speed, endurance and spunk; and for Ellen Rennard, her dream was to be a jockey. Her images display the Downs at Albuquerque, a thoroughbred racetrack at the New Mexico State Fairground. They focus on the people, horses and trappings of life at the track. The B&W gelatin silver prints suggest the look of photographs from the glory days of racing some 40 years ago. Rennard’s mementos of the grandstands overlooking the finish line at the Downs show that true horsemanship still endures.

Ellen Rennard, Resting

Smitten with fairs since her teenage years, Meg Birnbaum’s photographs were taken over a two-year period at 14 summer fairs in New England. Her portfolio illustrates the abiding, American tradition that combines farm products and livestock with entertainment. Birnbaum captures peoples’ deep connection with their animals, the innocence of joy, and the street vendor hoi polloi of fairs. All of these disparate elements harmonize against a backdrop of shouts, whistles and bells, livestock and sellable items. Photographed using plastic toy cameras and B&W film, the soft-detailed photographs capture a memory of an iconic image.

Meg Birnbaum, Cowgirl

Charles Meyer’s series of images capture the passion, strength and energy of Indian horsemanship. Taken at the Annual Crow Fair Celebration of the Apsaalooke Nation in Montana, the rodeo showcases the top notch cowboys of the western U.S. and their outstanding skills.  It is a competition of riding broncos, roping calves and rounding up cattle. Meyer displays onlookers sitting on the metal fence of cow pens; and rugged men in spurs with their straw hats and leather boots, stretching in the dirt before a ride, and grasping onto a railing, paused, before the rampage. 

Charles Meyer, Cowboy Stretching, 1992

-Marianne Salza, Panopticon Gallery Intern 

Harold Feinstein | Kickstarter UPDATE

We have raised $21,645 or 60% of the funding needed to publish

Harold Feinstein's retrospective.  

We have 14 days to raise the remaining funds.  

Please consider supporting this fine art photography project.

Click on the photo to visit the Kickstarter site.

Famous, Instantly | Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol mass manufactured the celebrity image with his Polaroid Big Shot camera in the 1970s and 80s. The close-up portraits of his many famous sitters fill most of the compositions, magnifying their presence. A selection of Warhol’s Polaroids can be seen now at Panopticon Gallery.

After he wined and dined his subjects, Warhol would interview them and then quickly move into the photo shoot. The artist would cover people’s faces with thick, Geisha-like makeup, flattening their features, to make them more prominent. This created favorable high contrast contours that developed when the Polaroid was transferred to the acetates used to make silk screens.

With a fixed focal length of 3 feet and built in flash, the only adjustment needed was to position the subject. Warhol shot from several angles, usually from the shoulders up.

Women would frequently be wrapped with a cloth around their chest, establishing a simple frame. The effect of the flash cube in combination with the unnaturally white complexion softened skin texture.

Andy Warhol, Joan Collins, Polacolor ER, 1985

Andy Warhol, Maria Shriver, Polacolor ER, 1986

Andy Warhol, Pia Zadora, Polacolor ER, 1983

Hands were an important stylistic element in portraits of men. The stance and way a man would hold a cigar or cigarette would be used to project a feature of his personality.

The Polaroids were re-photographed with 35mm film, printed to 8x10 inch acetates, and then enlarged to 40x40 inches in preparation for silk-screening. Warhol turned these portraits of actors, musicians, sports figures and other debutantes into bold-colored icons of the Pop Art movement.

-Marianne Salza, Panopticon Gallery Intern  

The Reading Suite | A Homage to Reading

October 1, 2011 marked the opening of Hotel Commonwealth’s new guest room, The Reading Suite, which has the décor of a classic library.

This one of a kind suite boasts original photographs by Panopticon Gallery photographers, Eva Timothy and Stephen Sheffield, amongst other reading-related imagery. From the pillows to the chairs, to the reading nook by the window, this room was designed with the reader in mind.

Stephen Sheffield, Robert Parker

Signed books by local and national authors who have stayed at the hotel and artists who have exhibited at Panopticon Gallery are displayed on the shelves. Above the headboard, guests will see three images of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square.

A large map of the 1743 City of Boston Plan lavishes a wall in the parlor; and beside it, a cozy nook situated in a corner by a bay window.

The hotel General Manager, Adam Sperling, welcomed Eva Timothy, who stopped by the suite  to autograph her book, Lost in Learning. The monograph has been left on a wooden table in the lounge area alongside a framed note by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, better known as the author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

Eva Timothy, T.J.

Eva explained the story behind her photograph, T.J., from the series Finding Freedom. The book photographed was Thomas Jefferson’s copy of Plato’s Republic from the Library of Congress. The printer had put a “T” at the bottom of the page for reference. Jefferson completed it by writing “.J.” thus initialing the book as his own.

-Marianne Salza, Panopticon Gallery intern