Panopticon Gallery

Jennifer Hudson | modus operandi

2012-02-11T10:51:00.000-05:00

Jennifer Hudson, Borrowed Time from the series Medic

Through her series Medic, Jennifer Hudson created a narrative about human relationships during illness and recovery. Each of the ten images in the series tells a slightly different story. Although the room stays as the constant, everything around the room and within the room change. Actually, look again. Doors that were in one image disappear in the next. That's right, the room is the only thing that is physically there. Everything else that you see, all of the objects, knobs, doors, clocks, tubes, machines, etc etc were all created in Photoshop. A visitor to the gallery said recently, "It's like Hudson has a big folder of endless clip art that she can pick and choose from to create her imagery."

Jennifer Hudson, Flora #1

These intricately built images help to define Hudson's modus operandi. They began in earlier projects such as her series Flora. The five woman depicted in her series Flora all were thought up during a visit and long walk through one of the most infamous prisons in the United States, Alcatraz. As Hudson states, "Flora is an illustration of perception, perfectionism and confinement, coupled with an earnest celebration of the woman, her nature, and her continued strength."

Both of these series are on display currently in our exhibition Processes and Dreams through Feb. 28th. To see more of these images, click on the link to visit our website: www.panopticongallery.com

Follow Friday | Peabody Essex Museum

2012-02-10T09:49:00.000-05:00

Dear Boston Photo Community,

I'm writing to you today to let you know that there is a wonderful museum on the North Shore that some of you have yet to experience and I don't want you to miss out.

It's called the Peabody Essex Museum and it's my Follow Friday suggestion of the day.
On Twitter they are: @peabodyessex

Jerry Uelsmann, Untitled (Philistine's Eye), 1961

I recently went to the Peabody Essex Museum for a reception for one of my heroes in photography Jerry Uelsmann. The exhibition called, The Mind's Eye: 50 Years of Photography by Jerry Uelsmann officially opens tomorrow. During the reception, it was brought to our attention that P.E.M. has designated 2012 as their 'Year of Photography'. It will kick off with the Uelsmann exhibition, then continue with an exhibition of work by local photographer Barbara Bosworth and be capped off with the exhibition Ansel Adams: At the Water's Edge, which they have stated as being a show like you have never seen before.

Their photography collection consists of nearly a million prints, more than any other museum in all of New England. One of its prized possessions is a Daguerreotype of Pont Neuf in Paris made in 1839 (the year of photography's invention).

Curator of Photography Phillip Prodger, who has been there for the past three years has been leading the charge. A few of the past exhibitions include the recent Man Ray | Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism, The Kennedy's: Portrait of a Family by Richard Avedon, Valerie Belin: Made Up, and Surfland: by Joni Sternbach.

The Uelsmann exhibition is fantastic! They have many of his classic images on display, and vintage prints that have never been seen before. Have you ever seen his pillows, or flip books, or his portrait on a rock?

The Peabody Essex Museum is located in Salem, MA.

Tami Bone | Mythos

2012-02-03T12:22:00.000-05:00

Let us think for a moment on how stories are told. Some stories are read in books while others are passed down from generation to generation. Some are of truths, secrets and that of folklore.

Tami Bone, Girl in the Moon, 2010

Tami Bone's photographic series Mythos, delves into her upbringing as a young girl in Texas. She states that the photographs touch upon her "yearnings, hopes and dreams" and those stories "pulled from early memories and imaginings."

Tami Bone, Fish Story, 2010

You can see photographs from this series in the exhibition Processes and Dreams on display at Panopticon Gallery from January 12 - February 28, 2012.

From Near and Afar

2012-01-25T09:51:00.000-05:00

From near and afar, photographer Neal Rantoul has shaped his career in photographing primarily in the landscape. When I look at his work, I don't feel I'm looking through the eyes of a landscape photographer, but rather a thinker and note taker.

Through his lens, Rantoul is taking notes, visual documents of the cities and spaces he encounters on his every journey. They are never just straightforward photographs, rather a grouping or 'series' of photographs are created to document the place. Often times you need to see the full portfolio of images to figure out just how Rantoul wanted you to see what he saw. Sequence also plays a great deal in his process. You would never understand that by viewing just one photograph.

The images in this portfolio, which he refers to as: Trees, An Italian Series, were shot in Italy in the fall of 2009 during a sabbatical from his teachings at Northeastern University. This region in Italy was not new to Rantoul. He often made pilgrimages to this area in the 1990's while teaching summer workshops in Venice.

Rantoul states, "On my way from Venice to Trieste, I drove through this flat agricultural area and became intrigued by these grouping of trees. Over the course of a few weeks I returned again and again to this area to photograph. During some of my first trips to this region, I worked in color, but decided that by printing them using a black and white duotone process (the process of introducing a warmer color into the black & white tones) rendered their beauty best."

Curtis Wehrfritz | Daguerreotypes re-visited in the 21st century.

2012-01-21T10:20:00.003-05:00

Curtis Wehrfritz (Toronto, Canada)
Secret Heart
1/2 plate daguerreotype

One of the best ways to meet new, emerging artists to exhibit in the gallery is by attending portfolio review events. I met Curtis Wehrfritz, a Toronto, Canada based artist first at FotoFest Paris, then five months later at PhotoLucida in Portland, Oregon. As he sat across the table from me, he began to unwrap these delicate mirrored images. These mirrored images are referred to as Daguerreotypes or 'dags'. I was amazed to see that there was someone taking a vintage process like this and bringing it into the 21st Century.

Wehrfritz uses photography "as a story telling device", and in this series, Fluidrive, he focuses on the use of ritual. He explained, "I am interested in a lyric image that can be revisited by the viewer in the way one revisits the feelings created in a song or prose."

The experience of interacting with and or observing a work of art is personal and relative to the viewer's taste --their likes and dislikes. But what if when you looked at the art, you could also see yourself reflected back. This is precisely what happens when viewing a Daguerreotype. Your reflection can be seen in the silvery, mirrored surface all the while hovering below the surface, a ghostly photographic image presents itself. I've always wondered if this dual gaze changes how a viewer thinks about or reacts to looking at Daguerreotypes.

"When Daguerre announced his great invention to the public in the summer of 1839, he explained how it worked but not really what it was for. The process was obviously a miracle of the age of science, and like any miracle it was self-justifying. Painters did say that it would be a great aid to art, and physicists said it would be a great aid to science, but the important thing, on which everyone agreed, was that it was astonishing. Pictures of exquisite perfection had been formed directly by the forces of nature." --John Szarkowski, Looking At Photographs.

Daguerreotypes by Curtis Wehrfritz are on display in the exhibition Processes and Dreams at Panopticon Gallery from January 12 - February 28, 2012.

Emmanuelle Germain | Le Vent #2

2012-01-18T10:53:00.010-05:00

Emmanuelle Germain (French)
Le Vent #2, 2009
32x47" archival pigment print

Emmanuelle Germain, Le Vent #2

I first met Emmanuelle Germain as an undergraduate at The Art Institute of Boston in 1992. We reconnected through Facebook in 2010 and in November of 2011 we met up in Paris for the first time in eighteen years.

The title of her photograph, Le Vent #2, which simply translates to The Wind, captures a young woman, who by first glance looks as if she is levitating off the pavement. When I spoke to her about the work, she said, "Wind suggests anger to me, that’s what it creates here after a few days...everybody’s aggressive!"

Germain's series Le Vent is a direct contrast to the video project that she had worked on prior where she captured a woman walking slowly through downtown Marseille, France, tracing the steps of her daily commute. "I wanted to work with someone who had danced, someone interested in gravity, heaviness, the ground, basically, someone who was in control of her movements and not afraid of falling, or getting hurt.

Aaron Siskind, No. 37 from the series
Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation, 1953

Freezing a moment in time is the essence of what photography is about. That split second where the click of the shutter now represents the past. Germain's photograph is reminiscent of many that have come before it. Two well-known bodies of work that touch on levitation and gravity include Aaron Siskind's series Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation and a project Stephen DiRado did called Jump, a leap-of-faith off of a bridge on Martha's Vineyard.

Stephen DiRado, from the series Jump

Germain ads, "The wind is invisible, it moves everything upside down, it is wild, unpredictable and yet I asked this person to dance with it and use its strength. The results look quiet and peaceful compared to what it took to make these images."

Le Vent #2 can be seen in the exhibition Processes and Dreams at Panopticon Gallery in Boston, MA from January 12 - February 28, 2012.

TED - Talks worth watching

2012-01-11T21:52:00.000-05:00

If you are not familiar with TED talks, here are a few art & photography related ones that are thought provoking, entertaining and inspiring.

1.) Vik Muniz

2.) JR

3.) Alison Jackson looks at celebrity

4.) Edward Burtynsky on manufactured landscapes

5.) James Nachtwey

6.) Shirin Neshat

Grunt's eye view of war

2011-12-23T12:09:00.002-05:00

Grunt's-eye view of War
Exhibit captures unfiltered images of life on the battlefield
by: Chris Bergeron
MetroWest Daily News
December 22, 2011

In 1950, an ambitious, 19-year-old photographer from Coney Island, N.Y., Harold Feinstein, was drafted into the U.S. Army after war broke out in Korea.
Following basic training, he was shipped to South Korea where he spent the next seven months snapping photos of fellow recruits dozing in their bunks, reading comics and waiting in line in the drizzling rain. Feinstein's 21 black-and-white prints convey the mid-century innocence of the Boy Next Door sent to fight in a foreign land.

"We were all innocent kids," says Feinstein, who now lives in Merrimac. "I had my 35 mm Leica with me all the time. Taking pictures has been my whole life."More than six decades later, Feinstein's sharp-eyed images of the tedium and camaraderie of military life are showcased in "Grunts: The GI Experience," an exhibition that reveals the ordinary men inside the uniforms, at Panopticon Gallery in Boston. His grunts are fresh-faced teenagers, probably away from home for the first time, hanging out with buddies in the barracks, doing pretty much what they'd have been doing back in Any Town, U.S.A. Drafted just two years after President Truman integrated the military, he photographed white and black soldiers sharing the democracy of identical uniforms, bad haircuts and bland chow.

Organized by Jim Fitts, this involving show ambushes familiar stereotypes about the military and shoots down misconceptions about the men serving in it. An educator and curator, Fitts has complemented Feinstein's Korean War photos with 32 photos, including three by Robert Capa, of World War II combat, front-line soldiers and portraits. Taken mostly by unnamed photographers of the Acme Photo Service and Army Signal Corps, the World War II photos document in gritty, black-and-white images combat's impact on American soldiers, civilians and, in a few cases, the enemy.

Coming on the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, this thoughtful approach reminds viewers these fresh faced and hard-bitten grunts were our grandfathers, dads and uncles and the solitary man, wearing badges in his cap, in the coffee shop. Panopticon owner Jason Landry says the photos in "Grunts" capture without pretense or contrived artfulness the intimate moments of ordinary men behind the lines or between battles. He included photos of his grandfather Joseph Landry and father-in-law Ralph DeVito in their World War II and Korean War uniforms to emphasize the ubiquitous service of citizen soldiers in modern wars. All photos, except of Landry's relatives, are for sale.

Located in the second floor of Hotel Commonwealth in Kenmore Square, the exhibit in Panopticon Gallery runs through Jan. 10. Fitts says he was "blown away" on first viewing Feinstein's photos which had only been "exhibited sporadically" in the area in recent decades. He notes Feinstein belonged to the prestigious Photo League as a teenager in New York and was an experienced "street photographer" who had collaborated with W. Eugene Smith and discussed his work with pioneering photographer Edward Steichen and even sold him some pictures. "Harold was aware that photography was an art and he had the eye of an artist," says Fitts. Despite Feinstein's experience, the Army did not assign him to be a military photographer probably because the Photo League was considered a left-leaning organization at the time Sen. Joseph McCarthy was claiming communists had infiltrated the Army. Assigned to be a graphic artist, Feinstein had the freedom to take "unfiltered" photos of Army life that "officially sanctioned" photographers didn't dare shoot, says Fitts.

Feinstein shot "unpretentious photos that revealed innocence, an absence of bravado and the closeness" of young men away from home, he says. "One reason Harold's photos were so important was they were among the first images of the newly integrated Armed Forces. Blacks and whites lived and served together without differentiation. When the GIs he photographed went home, they were the ones who kick-started the Civil Rights movement." Don't look for Hollywood heroes in Feinstein's photos. Rather than charging up Pork Chop Hill, GIs in his photos kill time in their bunks, board troop ships en masse or grab a goodbye kiss from a girlfriend in a stylish hat.

In "Mail Call," a mixed race group of soldiers waits anxiously for word from home, enviously eyeing a kid who's already got a letter. Sitting on his bunk, a black soldier peruses a "Blondie" comic book. In "GIs Lounging," four soldiers cat nap on a bench, resting their heads on one another's shoulders. Can you imagine John Wayne snuggling up to Forest Tucker in "Sands of Iwo Jima?" The more than 30 World War II photos by Capra and unknown wire service and military photographers chronicle the grimmer - and more familiar - realities of men at war. The baby faces of Feinstein's grunts are now covered with scruffy whiskers. The cozy barracks have been replaced by devastated European and sodden Pacific landscapes.

Instead of lazing about with a comic, they push howitzers through bombed-out cities, squat behind machine guns and, when lucky, smooch with willing French damsels. Considering they were taken mainly by "sanctioned" photographers in a war yet to be won, many cast the "dog faces" - as they were then known - as the very good guys, rescuing children, pets and democracy. In one revealing pairing, a photo of a captured Nazi U-Boat captain with perfect Teutonic features is juxtaposed with a photo of a dirty but smiling GI giving a Japanese kid a piggy back ride. Like other soldiers, Feinstein eventually shipped home. He documented several decades of life on Coney Island, taught photography at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester and pioneered the use of kaleidoscopic lens for a Life magazine article on New York City architecture.

Since 1998, he has broken new ground as one of the first photographers to use a scanner as a camera for seven popular books of pictures of flowers. Now 80, Feinstein says his professional credo has been "to bear witness" to the all-too-common horrors and everyday miracles of war and peace. He might be describing all the named and unnamed photographers in "Grunts."

Recordscapes | Glen Scheffer

2011-11-17T09:58:00.000-05:00

Glen Scheffer, a New Hampshire based artist, works and teaches at The New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, NH. His subjects can be public spaces like ballrooms, libraries, and music venues, to crushed cars and intertwined wires at a junk yard, antique odds and ends, to a vast collection of records. He photographs with a grace yet leaves room for a bit of humor to fall into his frame. Scheffer's "Record Series" will be on display at the Panopticon Gallery from November 3 to December 5, 2011. These 'recordscapes' have sharp angles, dramatic lighting, and hidden comedy.

Glen Scheffer, Stacked Records 6, 2009

EE: When did photography start to become a part of your life?

GS: I had my own darkroom when I was 16. I had taken a photography class in high school and enjoyed it. At that time in my life, there was skateboarding and photography. It wasn't until I got really hurt skateboarding in my early 20s that I realized how much I enjoyed photography. So I saved up enough money to go to school for photography, graduated, and continued making photographs.

EE: How did you begin this series? Were you an avid record collector and realized that you could turn it into an interesting subject matter?

GS: No, I have always listened to a lot of music but I am not an avid record collector.This series stemmed from another series I had been working on, called Recollection, where I was creating still lives of objects that were left behind in the house my wife and I bought. It was our first house we were buying together and the previous owner had passed away at 92 years old. When we were viewing the house everything looked like it hadn't been changed since the 60s or 70s. There was "a shell" of a darkroom left behind in the basement and as soon as I saw that I said, "I'll take it." There was old camera equipment, movie making equipment and sound equipment; some still in its original boxes. After seeing the darkroom and all of the fascinating objects in the basement, we wrote a letter to the nieces selling the property, telling them how I was a photographer and would be using the darkroom if they accepted our offer. They had higher bids on the house but once they knew I would be using their uncle's darkroom they accepted ours. So I began the Recollection series. I photographed anything from cameras, to light bulbs, to an old canteen, slides, photos bent out of shape, all things that were important to their Uncle Joe. It raised an interesting question for me about how we connected personal memories to inanimate objects. The stack of records was also his.

Glen Scheffer, Harmony #2, 2007

EE: How long have you been working on Record Albums for? Do you work on more than one series at a time?

GS: I began the record series in 2007 and I consider it to be ongoing. I tend to have three or four things going on at once. While all of the series have separate subject matter, the idea behind what they are all talking about is very similar.

EE: Did you have any musical influences while working on this project?

GS: This project is more about the object. Taking the records out, I would see how different they all are: the record names, album art. I would get lost in it and want to explore it further. When deciding how to go about shooting the records I would use the titles of the albums or songs as inspiration. I would think about how each record would sound and use that to form each still life. I have never listened to the records that I have photographed. Uncle Joe didn't leave behind a record player so I haven’t had a chance to listen to them yet.

EE: Did you have any inspiration from other artists or other bodies of work?

GS: The first photo book I ever bought was Walter Evan's book on signs and it was the first time I felt connected to another photographer. The way he composed the frame and the thoughts behind his imagery stuck with me. Also, Lee Friedlander is on my list. Hiroshi Sugimoto is another influence for me, especially his series of mathematic equations. In fact, my image Stacked Records #6 is a homage to Sugimoto.

EE: You work with a large format camera and print in the darkroom, a method that has been slowly overcome by the digital era. Is there an underlying correlation of your photographic approach to your aged subject matter?

GS: It is more of an instinct when I think about how I want to photograph. I enjoy printing in the darkroom and it made sense to use traditional methods for these photographs. I also thought it would be nice to use his darkroom to create these images, to repurpose his objects into art sculptures.

- Interview by Elizabeth Ellenwood

Grunts: the G.I. Experience

2011-10-31T16:40:00.000-04:00

“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

2011-10-25T11:24:00.001-04:00

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

2011-10-18T10:57:00.000-04:00

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

2011-10-11T11:50:00.005-04:00

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

2011-10-08T11:43:00.000-04:00

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

2011-10-07T14:48:00.003-04:00

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

2011-10-04T11:24:00.009-04:00

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

Knickknacks and Photographs

2011-09-30T14:27:00.001-04:00

Panopticon Gallery received a new group of photo-based objects from photographer Heidi Kirkpatrick.

Folded in Red, 2009

Bloodline, 2011

Trying to Remember II, 2011

Exposed, 2011

Using objects that she has a personal relationship to, Kirkpatrick fuses transparent symbolic and family portraits with children’s toys and blocks, boxes and tins. She offers illustrations of the world experienced through a woman’s perspective, revealing the intricacies of the feminine allure. Tattered tins and blocks present divine womanly figures that are delicate combinations of strength and control, grace and ethereality.

-Marianne Salza, Panopticon Gallery Intern

Harding's Ephemeral Light

2011-09-29T10:57:00.009-04:00

The sun is fleeting, unpredictable and liberating

Thirty-one-year old Alexander Harding’s latest series, Visible Light, concentrates on the sun’s rays and our relationship with it.

“Through my work I explore the sun’s physical presence and quantitative character, attempting to give the sunlight an environment to travel within and record its behaviors,” Harding says of his photographs, soon to be appearing in an exhibition at Panopticon Gallery from November 3- December 5, 2011.

His images emphasize our inherent connection with the center of our universe – the source that all life thrives on. The sun empowers our visible perception and shapes how we feel; and while it impacts our emotions, its brilliance remains an ephemeral mystery. Its warmth can be felt on our skin, its light shine in our eyes, and its nutrients provide for our planet and yet it continues to remain intangible.

A good deal of planning is involved to achieve these absorbing lighting effects like Harding’s constellation- like patterns and streams of light that cast a daydream onto a scene. Over several days, he documents the light, noting on its location at various times, making sketches and smaller digital prints to get a broad idea of what he wants to attain. Harding takes long exposures and oftentimes uses steam or fog machines to give the light a distinct form, giving him the ability to “writing with light.”

In a 2010 interview with Holy Ghost Zine, Harding talks about his attraction to experimenting with light: “I chose to make photographs because it is a medium where the image is made from light itself. Making pictures helps me further examine what light may be and why we are curiously drawn to it.”

-Marianne Salza, Panopticon Gallery Intern

William’s Weimaraners

2011-09-27T09:07:00.001-04:00

William Wegman talks with Housepet Magazine about his muse.

William Wegman has delighted viewers with his unique Weimaraners and his humor when he began taking photographs with his first dog, Man Ray.

In his November, 2005 interview with Asli Ayata, the photographer explains his anthropomorphic images: “‘Anthro,’ in that they are a throwback to ants; ‘po,’ (like Edgar Allen) kind of creepy; ‘morphic,’ sleep inducing, dreamy shape shifting. Also, when dressed up and made tall, they look like humans. They are hybrid people. Mythological.”

His dogs and interest in photography and video as art mediums were practically coincidences; although, in hindsight it seemed the Weimaraners would inevitably be his work’s focus.

“I am in love with my dogs,” gushes Wegman. “When you photograph someone, you are making a map of them in a way. Switch back to life and you see them in a new way. The map helps you know them and you get more and more attached.”

For Wegman, the pictorial challenge is in their posture and creating a human form. That artistic struggle and exploration is where the fun exists. Weimaraners have a deadpan, relaxed appearance. Their grey, neutral coloring compliments anything and allows Wegman to write on them infinitely.

-Marianne Salza, Panopticon Gallery intern

Panopticon celebration is all encompassing

2011-09-23T08:55:00.000-04:00

Panopticon celebration is all encompassing
Anniversary exhibit ranges in time, style

By Mark Feeney | Boston Globe | September 23, 2011

The 19th-century British social thinker Jeremy Bentham invented the word “panopticon." Coming from the Greek for “all’’ and “seeing,’’ it describes a facility Bentham proposed whose design would insure residents’ every moment could be observed without their being aware of it. Michel Foucault had a field day with the idea in “Discipline and Punish.’’

Panopticon Gallery is having a field day of a far different sort, with its “40th Anniversary Exhibition,’’ which runs through Oct. 31. If Bentham used in a sinister way the word he invented to acknowledge the power of seeing, the gallery employs it in very much a happier sense. To see, per Bentham, is to control, yes. To see, per Panopticon, is also to educate, to liberate, and to delight.

The gallery has been a very welcome presence on the local scene, even as its location has shifted from Bay State Road to Newbury Street to Bay State Road again to Waltham and now Kenmore Square. Its mission when Tony Decaneas founded it four decades ago was, as he writes in a catalog that accompanies the anniversary exhibition, “to show local contemporary photography.’’ Over the years, that mission has broadened and deepened. The roster of photographers that the gallery has shown reflects that broadening and deepening. It runs from A (Aarons, Jules and Adams, Ansel) to Z (Zabarsky, Kal and Zaslow, Francine).

Some 75 photographers have work in the anniversary celebration, which has been put together by current owner Jason Landry. That roster “only’’ runs from A (Anonymous; Armstrong, Frank; Alexanian, Nubar) to Y (Youn, Mimi). That’s still an awful lot of alphabet - and with such photographers within it. The W’s alone contain Garry Winogrand, Andy Warhol (a Polaroid of Maria Shriver), William Wegman, Hiroshi Watanabe (his “Azusa Tukamoto as Osome, Matsuo Kabuki’’ makes a woman’s neck seem like the world’s most elegant light source), Ernest C. Withers, and Bradford Washburn.

Washburn is among numerous local heroes. Others include Neal Rantoul, Stella Johnson, Rodger Kingston, Stephen Sheffield, Daniel Ranalli, Constantine Manos, Alex McLean, Dana Salvo, and that’s just for starters.

The show ranges far and wide in time and style, subject and location. A few themes recur. Rock ’n’ roll is one. Some of the pictures you know. Rowland Scherman’s 1965 performance shot of Bob Dylan is the cover of his “Greatest Hits’’ album. Others you’re glad to make the acquaintance of. Roger Farrington captures a seated, guitar-playing John Lennon. Herb Greene offers a top-hat-wearing Janis Joplin. Bruce Springsteen seems to be staring into Ron Pownall’s lens at a 1984 Worcester Centrum concert.

There’s politics: Kingston’s 2006 portrait of Barack Obama, Withers’s image of Martin Luther King Jr. at Medgar Evers’s funeral; J.D. Sloan’s of Richard and Pat Nixon at the Grand Ole Opry; Jim Harrison’s of Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton in 1992. As all those names indicate, celebrity is another recurring element.

Best of all is the interplay among images Landry sets up. Obama stands before an American flag. In Stanley Forman’s unforgettable newsphoto of Theodore Landsmark being beaten on City Hall Plaza, the flag is weapon rather than backdrop. Johnson, Manos, and Decaneas offer different views of Greece. The play of picture planes in Johnson’s view from inside a bus on Crete is as bewitching as the delicacy of the colors she captures. The dead-center pall of smoke in Armstrong’s “Old Weona, Arkansas’’ chimes with the placement of the sign in Brian Kaplan’s “Blank Billboard #12’’ and the glow at the end of a bare-tree tunnel in John Rosenthal’s “Central Park, NYC’’ - there’s central, and then there’s central.

Geoff Winningham’s “Valentine’s 2nd Gives Splashes of Ice Water Between Rounds’’ is a very different view of prizefighting from Steve Wilstein’s “Super Champ: Muhammad Ali with Superman Cape.’’ The angel’s-eye-view geometry seen in Paul Wainwright’s “Box Pews, Looking Down, Rocky Hill Meetinghouse (1785), Amesbury, MA’’ chimes wonderfully with McLean’s jaw-dropping aerial view in “Guillotined B-52 Bombers at the ‘Bone Yard,’ Tucson, AZ.’’ Here panopticon, as concept, takes flight: What’s more all-seeing than being high in the sky with an eye?

40TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION
At: Panopticon Gallery, Inside Hotel Commonwealth, 502c Commonwealth Ave. Boston, MA
through Oct. 31.
Call 617-267-8929
www.panopticongallery.com

KICKSTARTER | Update!

2011-09-03T15:18:00.000-04:00

Click on the photograph to check out the

Harold Feinstein KICKSTARTER project.

Harold Feinstein | Kickstarter project

2011-08-24T14:17:00.000-04:00

For the past three years, a team of individuals has been working on reinventing the Harold Feinstein brand. In particular, revisiting and reintroducing Harold’s classic black and white photographs to the public.

Now it’s time to launch our biggest endeavor yet!

We plan to raise the funds to design, edit and publish 1,000 copies of a 200+ page large square hardcover retrospective of Harold Feinstein's classic and historically important black & white photographs through Kickstarter.

Harold Feinstein is a living legend in the world of photography. At 80 years old, with 60+ years in photography, he has yet to have a monograph printed of his classic black & white photographs. We want Harold’s photographic legacy to be documented and available for everyone to appreciate his contribution to American 20th century photographic history.

We have established a team of designers, writers, and production professionals who will assist with all stages of this production. We are determined to make this happen, and so is Harold. Please join us in us in fulfilling Harold’s dream by donating to this historically and artistically important Kickstarter project.

Please click on the photograph to watch a short video about Harold.

Thank you.

Panopticon Gallery | 40th Anniversary Exhibition

2011-08-11T16:28:00.000-04:00

Frank Armstrong, Old Weona, Arkansas, 2004

Panopticon Gallery is proud to be celebrating its 40th Anniversary, and with it, our biggest group exhibition to date! From September 8th through October 31st, the gallery will be displaying close to seventy-five individual artists who have been asociated with Panopticon Gallery during its forty-year run.

In 1971, Tony Decaneas opened a small one-room gallery in the basement of 187 Bay State Road in Boston, MA. His first exhibition was a group exhibition of local photographers. This exhibition paved the way for many group and solo exhibitions to come. Panopticon Gallery soon began exhibiting photographs by many of today's most noted photographers, including Ansel Adams, Garry Winogrand, Alfred Stieglitz, Bradford Washburn, Ernest C. Withers, Constantine Manos, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Paul Caponigro, Elliott Erwitt and Edward Weston.

In the mid 1970's, Panopticon Gallery moved to Newbury St, then back to Bay State Road before moving its gallery and imaging business to Moody Street in Waltham, MA in 2000. In 2004, the gallery opened its second location inside the Hotel Commonwealth in Kenmore Square, where it currently resides.

In early 2010, Mr. Decaneas sold the gallery to Jason Landry who continues to host outstanding exhibitions by internationally recognized photographs as well as local and national emerging artists.

Today, the gallery is noted as being the oldest fine art photography gallery in New England specializing in contemporary, modern and vintage photography.

Please join us on Thursday, September 8th from 5:30-8:30pm for a reception with the artists.

A Baseball Doubleheader | REVIEW

2011-07-24T09:42:00.000-04:00

REVIEW By Mark Feeney | Globe Staff | July 24, 2011

A baseball doubleheader
Two exhibits show off photographers' ability to frame the game

Some sports are more photo-friendly than others. Think of how seamlessly baseball integrates pause within play. A base runner crouches before attempting a steal. A pitcher stops at the top of his windup. A hitter cocks his bat waiting for a pitch. These are already images, instants frozen in time. All they need to be hung on a wall are frames. The photographer Robert Adams has described the condition a great photograph aspires to as “a tension so exact it is peace.’’ Baseball fans understand.

For that matter, the sport has long reserved a special place for photographs in its folkways. Ask anyone who collects baseball cards.

So even as games are being played at Fenway Park, baseball is happening at the Griffin Museum by Silver Digital Imaging, newly opened in the South End, and at the Panopticon Gallery, in Kenmore Square. “Sox Shots,’’ at the Griffin, runs through Sept. 19. “Let’s Play Ball’’ is on until Sept. 6.

The South End facility is a satellite space of the Griffin Museum of Photography, in Winchester. The museum is in a handsome Dutch colonial building - handsome and a mite cramped. To compensate for its size, the museum has an additional operation in Winchester, as well as one each in Stoneham and Cambridge. This newest Griffin location is an airy, attractive space in the basement of A Street Framers, across the street from the offices of Boston Ballet and around the corner from Hamersley’s Bistro.

The Griffin’s founder and namesake, Arthur Griffin (1903-2001), was a New England photojournalist whose work appeared in the Globe, Life, Time, The Saturday Evening Post, and elsewhere. Among other accomplishments, he took the first color pictures of both Ted Williams and Joe Louis.

Both “Sox Shots’’ and “Let’s Play Ball’’ feature Griffin’s photographs. The most startling shot of Williams isn’t by Griffin, though. It’s “Ted Williams With a Movie Camera,’’ from the Boston Public Library’s Leslie Jones Collection. A charming image in and of itself, it’s also an amusing, if inadvertent, comment on Williams’s famous feuding with the press. Looking through a viewfinder, he has leapfrogged his print oppressors by joining the electronic media.

An even more enchanting image shows Luis Tiant and Johnny Bench at home plate, so it must be the 1975 World Series. Looie leans on his bat. The elegant stance, the insouciant air: El Tiante could be Fred Astaire (one man’s bat being another’s cane). Which sort of makes Bench Ginger Rogers. Cheek to cheek? Well, cheek to face mask, anyway.

A woman as lovely as Rogers figures in three baseball-themed fashion images from White/Packert Photography. They bear the disconcerting title “Play Ball - Fort Meyers.’’ Clearly, neither spelling nor geography is on the spring training to-do list.

Panopticon’s “Let’s Play Ball’’ comes in three parts (with a few stray baseball-related images thrown in). The most unusual consists of a dozen photographs from David Levinthal’s “Baseball’’ series. The subjects are dolls of famous ballplayers shown either in characteristic poses (Derek Jeter and Ted Williams stand at the plate, ready to hit) or at famous moments (Willie Mays making his over-the-shoulder catch in the 1954 World Series, Carlton Fisk waving fair his home run in the sixth game of the ’75 series).

What’s startling is how recognizable the dolls are. The only time this viewer found himself corrected by a label was when he mistook Rollie Fingers for Dennis Eckersley. If you’ve seen one mustache-wearing, Oakland A’s Hall of Fame reliever you’ve seen them all? Somehow Levinthal has managed to evoke the quintessence of these players. As if to underscore that what he’s showing is how they appear in the mind’s eye rather than in the particularity of newsprint or pixels, the images are slightly blurred. Gods do not answer letters, John Updike famously noted. Nor do they necessarily appear in focus.

There are a dozen Griffin photos, most of Williams. They’re all from 1939. He looks so young! Granted, he was just 19, but he somehow looks even younger. He could almost belong to a species related to our own but more interesting - the high cheekbones, the narrow eyes, the sense of gawky joy - and perhaps more advanced.

One photo, presumably taken at a pregame ceremony, shows Williams standing between his teammate Dom DiMaggio and a Navy sailor in a wheelchair. In an utterly unaffected way, he grasps each man’s hand. Baseball suddenly seems beside the point, compared to so simple a human gesture.

Larger human concerns very much figure in “Negro League Baseball: Photographs by Ernest C. Withers.’’ It’s a thrill to see such stars as Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, and Ernie Banks (future Hall of Famers all) share a dugout. It’s a different kind of thrill to notice that the familiar face in the upper-left-hand corner of “The 1948 Birmingham Barons After Defeating the Memphis Red Sox’’ belongs to another future Hall of Famer. Say who? Say hey: a very young Willie Mays. But amid the fan pleasure of seeing these pictures of a bygone era is the reminder they provide of how the national pastime reflected the nation’s racism.

In a gallery so close to Fenway, the name Memphis Red Sox carries a grim irony. That business about the Sox being cursed? It’s true, all right, but has nothing to do with all that Bambino nonsense. They were the last team in Major League Baseball to field a black player. Doubly damaging, this was moral crime as competitive blunder. Prejudice doomed the franchise to nearly two decades of mediocrity.

There’s a special aptness to the Withers photos sharing the same space with those of Williams. In his Hall of Fame induction speech, Williams urged the inclusion of Negro League players at Cooperstown. This was no mainstream view in 1966. The Splendid Splinter may have been a diehard Republican (people forget that Williams’s campaigning with George H.W. Bush the weekend before the New Hampshire primary helped swing the state to him). But he was a diehard Republican when the GOP still prided itself on being the party of Lincoln.

It’s not all baseball at Panopticon. “Building/Images’’ offers the work of two young photographers, Liz Ellenwood and Greer Muldowney, who focus on urban architecture, and collages by Jim Fitts, former executive director of the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University. So “building,’’ in the title, is an adjective for Ellenwood and Muldowney and a verb for Fitts.

Ellenwood’s cityscapes show Boston (slices of facades, interestingly juxtaposed), Muldowney’s Hong Kong. The latter is a LEGO landscape of tall, slender rectangles. The overall effect is of alluring artifice - the world’s largest diorama? - marked by a cool, aloof beauty.

Fitts’s pieces, 11 inches square, present layerings of information. He takes a magpie pleasure in assemblage: stamps, photographs, ticket stubs, newsprint, wrapping paper, snapshots, postcards, a parking ticket, even half a panel from a “Little Orphan Annie’’ comic strip. Fitts also shows a croupier’s ability to shuffle unpredictably. The one constant is visual pleasure.

SOX SHOTS
Griffin Museum by Digital Silver Imaging, 4 Clarendon St., through Sept. 19. 857-239-9240, www.griffinmuseum.org

LET’S PLAY BALL and BUILDING | IMAGES
Panopticon Gallery
inside Hotel Commonwealth
502c Commonwealth Ave.
through Sept. 6.
617-267-8929
www.panopticongallery.com

Building | Images

2011-07-02T11:14:00.003-04:00

This summer, in the Panopticon Gallery private room, we will be featuring Building | Images, and exhibition of photographs and mixed media images by Liz Ellenwood, Greer Muldowney and Jim Fitts.

Liz Ellenwood graduated from the New Hampshire Institute of Art and has been focusing her attention on the architecture of Boston.

Greer Muldowney spent the last year traveling to Hong Kong to work on an independent project that she called, 6,426 per km2. These large format photographs capture the changing global climate of the most densely populated urban center in the world.

Jim Fitts has been working on a mixed media project for the past few years called, A New Way Of Working. Painting, photographing and graphic design were the tools that he used in the past as a Creative Director in the world of advertising. He was responsible for hundreds of television commercials, thousands of print ads and countless corporate design projects. After 30 years of using these tools to sell products, Fitts began to collect imagery that he finds visually stimulating and use them as the source material for his fine art work.

Please join us for an opening of this exhibition at Panopticon Gallery on Thursday, July 14th from 5:30-7:30pm.

#FollowFriday suggestion @WilliamWegman

2011-07-01T13:17:00.001-04:00

Our #FollowFriday suggestion of the week is none other than @WilliamWegman.

William Wegman, Youngster, 2005

After teaching at various universities, William Wegman's interests in areas beyond painting ultimately led him to photography and video. While teaching in Long Beach, California, Wegman acquired Man Ray, the dog with whom he would began a fruitful twelve-year collaboration.

In 1972, Wegman and Man Ray moved to New York. In 1986, a new dog, Fay Ray, came into Wegman’s life, and a new tool - the Polaroid 20 x 24 camera. Over the years, Wegman’s cast and crew have grown. His photographs, videos, paintings, and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally.

To inquire about photographs by William Wegman, contact Panopticon Gallery.

Let's Play Ball | July 14 - Sept. 6, 2011

2011-06-24T09:04:00.001-04:00

Panopticon Gallery is proud to present Let's Play Ball, an exhibition celebrating our national pastime and the boys of summer. This exhibition will feature photographs by David Levinthal, Arthur Griffin, Ernest Withers and others and will be on display from July 14 - Sept. 6, 2011.

For more than three decades, David Levinthal has examined American popular culture and social mores as reflected through toys and miniatures. Levinthal’s Baseball is remarkable for its straightforward celebration of America’s most beloved sport. With both antique and recently manufactured figurines and the use of the Polaroid 20x24 inch camera, the artist has recreated some of the legendary moments in baseball’s storied history—for example, Don Larsen’s prefect game in 1956 and Carlton Fisk waving fair his 12th-innning home run in the sixth game of the 1975 World Series.

In 1939, Eastman Kodak had just announced a new color film that they were bringing to the market. The company contacted Arthur Griffin, who was working for the Boston Globe on a story about the Boston Red Sox rookie sensation Ted Williams. At the time, the Globe was only interested in black and white photographs, so he captured what he had to for the paper, then with his large format 4x5 camera he photographed Williams as he practiced his batting stance and swing. Unseen for close to a half century, Griffin's images represent some of the first color photographs ever taken of Williams, and comprise one of the largest collections of photographs of the Red Sox great early on in his storied career.

Photographer Ernest C. Withers lived and photographed in Memphis, TN and documented the Negro Baseball League in the 1940's and 50's, earning the unofficial title of team photographer for the Memphis Red Sox. Long before being accepted into the Majors, some of our earliest black baseball players including Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron earned their respect on the baseball fields of the south and became an essential part of the history of this sport.

Abstract Figurative Studies

2011-05-28T10:52:00.000-04:00

From June 8 through July 12th, Panopticon Gallery will be hosting an exhibition in the private room by Larry Pratt and Karin Rosenthal titled Abstract Figurative Studies.

( Larry Pratt, Jacques Starburst, Ver. I, 2006)

Larry Pratt is a Woods Hole photographer and physical oceanographer who makes figurative photos set in the dunes, forests and tidal flats of Cape Cod. Over the past decade his work has evolved from beautiful landscape nudes to more abstract imagery combining elements of the figure with other natural curves and waveforms.

(Larry Pratt, Tasmanian Devils, 2010)

Karin Rosenthal's photographs of the human figure in the landscape, water and tide pools have been published internationally with prints residing in numerous private and museum collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Brooklyn Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Danforth Museum of Art, the ICP, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Her work can be seen in such major anthologies as Male Nude Now, Naked Women, and Eros.

(Karin Rosenthal, Contemplation, 2004)

(Karin Rosenthal, Stretch, 2008)

Heidi Kirkpatrick | Objects of Beauty

2011-05-22T15:33:00.000-04:00

Panopticon Gallery is pleased to be representing Portland, Oregon based photographer Heidi Kirkpatrick.

Kirkpatrick applies her mostly figurative photographs to the surface of objects, from small tin cases, to copper plates, from ashtrays, to children’s building blocks to dominos. These old, sometimes worn out objects are then transform into beautiful, intimate works of art.

Her Paper Doll series for example consists of an individual woman with curled locks and a knee length flowing skirt spinning around and around, each frame freezing her in a particular motion. The artist overlays an image onto various printed surfaces such as pages from an encyclopedia and dictionary, sheet music, a newspaper stock exchange page, even recipes from a cookbook, which are then wrapped and applied to a sold piece of wood. Both foreground and background unite, leaving the viewer to decipher meaning and / or a correlation between image and object.

Heidi Kirkpatrick’s work is currently on display in the glass case at Panopticon Gallery in the Discoveries exhibition through June 6th alongside the work of Eva Timothy, Jesseca Ferguson, and Fran Forman.

Neal Rantoul | Wheat from Above

2011-05-20T14:31:00.000-04:00

So, in 2008 I am walking along the Zattere, the canal where the cruise ships go by in Venice, with a student and a teaching assistant. I was teaching a summer semester in Italy with 22 students for Northeastern University, where I work. Dave, the student, had never been to Europe before, let alone Venice. He said that everything in Venice was "the same, but different". So, of course we took that and went with it.

In Venice...

coffee is the same but different
pizza is the same but different
beer is the same but different
the language is the same but different
the women are the same but different
the light is the same but different
the streets are the same but different

You get the idea.

Well, the Palouse in SE Washington where I am now photographing is the same but different too. Not so many trees as my home back in New England. It is spring here as well, but very different in that the fields which surround the town I am staying in, Pullman, are almost bare and some aren't planted yet. This exposes the earth and the core of the shapes that the crops grow on. Looking down from the air this landscape looks almost alien at times, foreign and unreal. The same but very very different.

I find myself thinking that this most wonderful and photographic of places really is an opportunity to work with "form". And, of course, the concept of "form over content". That one has played in my head since graduate work in art school but it applies here for the content doesn't mean so much, but the underlying form really does. This is most true in photographing these almost endless fields from the air. Highlight and shadow define the shapes, time of day models the form and I have never seen the area look the same twice. I have photographed here most years since1996 and I have never felt like I was working repetitively. The place, for me, is a most miraculous opportunity to photograph in a relatively pure way. This is so very rare and is probably why I keep coming back. This is by far the longest running series work I have done.

This time, this morning in a chartered Cessna 172 high winged plane, I used a gyro stabilizer for the first time. Small planes jump around a lot and using the gyro was an attempt to
reduce the number of pictures ruined due to camera shake. Looks like it worked.

Hope you enjoy the work.

Neal Rantoul

39 years + 1 under my direction

2011-05-14T07:10:00.000-04:00

It has been 1-year to the day that I acquired Panopticon Gallery. It has been an absolute dream come true to be able to operate a gallery in Boston. The idea of owning a gallery began while I was at MassArt. Although I was focused on being an artist, in the back of my mind I had this idea that I'd love to marry my business background with my photography background and start a gallery. Little did I know that I would eventually acquire the oldest photography gallery in New England.

I want to thank all of the mentors that I have had over the past few years who have helped to introduce me to the artists, curators, patrons, collectors, critics and photography professionals that have not only helped shape me as an individual, but the gallery as we see it now. Everyone should know, "Who's in your Top 5?"

To all of the artists and most particularly the emerging artists, I have enjoyed working with each and every one of you. I find much joy in living vicariously through your successes! To quote Robert Adams, "Away at the horizon, almost like a line of trees, are the picture makers on whom I depended."

And to Tony Decaneas, who's birthday also happens to fall on this day, I thank you for passing the torch and for continuing to offer advice when needed.

cheers!

Jason

Fran Forman | Painting Stories with Light

2011-04-30T09:27:00.000-04:00

One might say Fran Forman has created the perfect marriage between the old and the new. Her surrealist imagery are comprised of vintage photographs and digital manipulation and are without a doubt eye catching. Forman's fusion of aged portraits with contemporary backgrounds and objects creates a dreamlike realm saturated with an array of colors

The Secret Gift depicts a red headed woman from the 1900s standing in the foreground of an auburn toned painterly landscape. She is wearing a ruffled off-white dress with a green sash and has her hands pulled up covering her face. At first glance, you might be fooled and think she is one image when in fact Forman has created her out of multiple images. The hands are that of another model while the rest of the woman is a vintage photograph. In the distance a child from the same era is standing holding a nest that he is offering to the woman. The image has the same sense of beauty and elegance that is found in many hand-made processes from the 1900s.

Fran Forman's clever use of various images and approaches keeps us intrigued and wanting to see more of her photographic rediscovery.

Photographs by Fran Forman will be in the upcoming exhibition Discoveries, opening May 4th at Panopticon Gallery.

Eva Timothy | Finding Freedom

2011-04-29T14:23:00.000-04:00

One of the unforgettable qualities of Eva Timothy's photographs is the way she causes the viewer to feel as if they are behind the scenes of a historical event as it's unfolding. This holds true through her newest series entitled Finding Freedom: The Light of Liberty where her black and white images, filled with dramatic lighting and emotion, lead us through a visual story of America's quest for independence.

Eva Timothy captures historically relevant artifacts from our country's leaders, such as John Adams' original copy of The Constitution, letters from Benjamin Franklin and books from Thomas Jefferson among others. Her photographs are an intimate portrayal of the individuals who not only helped define the word freedom but also helped create our great nation.

The artist states, "In this body of work I have taken the opportunity to reflect on the birth of the greatest democracy and standard of liberty which the world has ever known. May the flames of freedom blaze ever on."

Stella Johnson | Photography Workshops

2011-04-20T11:01:00.000-04:00

Stella Johnson will be leading two workshops in 2011, one in Crete, Greece and then other in Paris, France. To sign up or learn more, click on the links provided:

May 22 - May 28, 2011:
Crete Documentary Workshop. Maine Media Workshops, Crete Greece
http://www.mainemedia.edu/workshops/destinations/crete-documentary-workshop

August 28- September 3, 2011
Documenting the 11th arrondissement. Paris, France
http://www.projet-documentaire.fr/

Join Documentary Photographer and Educator Stella Johnson in the documentation of the 11th arrondissement, Paris. Working with Parisian photographer Eva Le Pallec, Stella will teach you how to approach a subject and how to start a long-term project, in the cafes and of the daily life in the 11th arrondissement, where Le Pallec lives. We will look at contemporary documentary photography and discuss how the projects evolved and why the individual images work and how they work in a sequence.

You will be photographing every day and we will also meet for class critiques everyday. You will learn how to make contact and follow-through with one subject. We will show you how to photograph “intangible moments” , those in between moments, the moments we tend to forget but constitute life. Stella will meet with all participants privately to review their portfolios.

Tuition: 500 Euros
Arrival: You should arrive Sunday August 28, 2011 or earlier if possible.
Departure: Saturday September 3, 2011
Accommodations: You can find a room for 350-400 E for the week.
Email for info:
Eva Le Pallec - lettraeva@gmail.com
Stella Johnson - johnson.stella@gmail.com
What to Bring:
This workshop is conducted with digital cameras. Bring your camera, memory cards, batteries, laptop, a photo-editing program and external hard drive.
Meals: The Welcome dinner is included in the Tuition and when possible, the class will eat together.
Welcome Dinner: Sunday night, August 28, 2011, 7:30 pm 9 rue Servan, 75011 Paris
Métro: Voltaire, St Maur, Philippe August

AD2021 | Art Fair

2011-04-08T09:41:00.000-04:00

Panopticon Gallery is pleased to be an exhibitor this year at the AD 20/21 art fair at the Cyclorama in Boston, MA.

Visit us on:

Friday, April 8 from 1-9pm
Saturday, April 9 from 11-8pm
Sunday, April 10 from 11-5pm

Jesseca Ferguson | Fox Talbot Museum

2011-03-29T08:20:00.000-04:00

To our friends over in England, stop by the Fox Talbot Museum for the opening reception with Panopticon Gallery artist Jesseca Ferguson.

Panopticon Gallery | Becoming Dr. Land

2011-03-19T14:30:00.000-04:00

Rowland Scherman | Bob, Bobby and The Beatles

2011-03-14T17:10:00.000-04:00

Rowland Scherman covered the 1st Beatles concert in the US in 1964 and in 1968 won a Grammy for Best Album Cover for this image of Bob Dylan.

Stop by the gallery to see images of Bob Dylan, Bobby Kennedy and The Beatles in our gallery room.

Neal Rantoul | Featured on LENSCRATCH

2011-03-08T12:21:00.000-05:00

Make sure you check out Neal Rantoul's feature on LENSCRATCH today. These images are on display at Digital Silver Imaging.

Artist Profile | Jesseca Ferguson

2011-03-04T11:01:00.003-05:00

Panopticon Gallery is pleased to be representing the work of Jesseca Ferguson. Ferguson's pinhole photographs and collage work have been exhibited and collected throughout the US and Europe. In 1991, Ferguson began photographing with an old typewriter case that she had turned into a pinhole camera.

If the fact that she literally uses a light tight box with a hole in it as her camera does not impress you, her printing techniques surely will...they are all 19th century photographic processes. We are talking cyanotypes, van dyke prints, palladium, POP etc, etc...all of these processes require the artist to hand coat the paper to make it light sensitive.

Her still life images are thoroughly planned in her studio, right down to what page is open in a book and it's correlation with the rest of the objects in the frame. These ethereal images are comprised of layers that overlap one another, all having a sense of belonging and purpose. Ferguson's work has the capability of drawing you in and inviting you to stay awhile, investigating each and every element, even if some of them are skulls.

Ferguson's work brings us back to the romanticism of photography when time seemed to not exist and the world was full of discovery.

--blog post courtesy Panopticon Gallery intern Liz Ellenwood.

Video Teaser | Panopticon Gallery | Storytellers

2011-03-03T13:32:00.000-05:00

Here is a video teaser created by Panopticon Gallery intern Gustav Hoiland from our opening reception for STORYTELLERS.

Boston's BEST Art Gallery

2011-02-22T09:27:00.003-05:00

Let's make this happen. Write in Panopticon Gallery. Click on the photo to place your vote TODAY!

Instant Connections | THE INTERVIEW

2011-02-11T12:21:00.002-05:00

An Interview with Jim Fitts

Article by Panopticon Gallery intern

Elizabeth Ellenwood

Jim Fitts, known widely throughout the Boston photography scene as the former Executive Director of the Photographic Resource Center at BU, is co-curating the upcoming Polaroid-themed exhibition Instant Connections at the Panopticon Gallery. The opening reception will be on March 31st from 5:30pm-7:30pm. Mr. Fitts was kind enough to answer a few questions about the upcoming show.

Elizabeth Ellenwood: How did you come up with the title for the show: Instant Connections?

Jim Fitts: The idea for the exhibition came first; the title for the exhibition came later. Polaroid is an amazing medium. It is so incredibly pliable. I thought it would be interesting to see if there were any connections, overt or not, between the work of some of Boston’s - as well as the country’s - best known fine arts photographers who use Polaroid in the creation of their images. There is no question that the work of each artist in the exhibition stands on its own, but I think it is fascinating to see the work and compare and contrast it with the work of other artists in the exhibition.

EE: As a collector, do you own any Polaroids?

JF: In my personal collection, I have work produced utilizing Polaroid by Tom Baril, Bill Burke, John Goodman, and John O’Reilly.

EE: Which artists come to mind when you think of Polaroid?

JF: For me, a number of the artists that immediately came to mind are included in the exhibition. Without naming them, they are artists whose work I have admired for many years and I have been fortunate to come to know as friends. They were very generous to agree to allow their work to be included in the exhibition.

EE: In your opinion, what is the most memorable Polaroid ever made?

JF: That’s a tough question. It may be an impossible question to answer. I will answer it by saying the most memorable Polaroids that I have encountered were John O'Reilly's photomontages that were included in the 1995 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. I was working in New York at the time and I was able to take a short break and visit the exhibition. John’s work blew me away. I wasn’t expecting the power and originality of the work and his work still blows me away today.

EE: Polaroid has had a rich tradition of being part of the Boston photography scene for over 50 years. How important was its influence on photography as we now know it?

JF: The Polaroid company was both generous and smart in the fact that they donated so much of their product to photographers. I think that through their generosity they were able to push the use of Polaroid past the commercial applications. In my history, as an advertising creative director, Polaroid allowed the photographer and I an opportunity to see a rough idea of the final image prior to committing it to film. Before Polaroid film, it was usually a matter of taking the shot and hoping for the best.

EE: What do you think causes such nostalgia with Polaroid film? Is it instant gratification?

JF: It is probably different for every photographer, but for me, the magic of Polaroid is that you can almost instantly hold a print or a negative in your hand. It lives in the real world. Perhaps we should have called the exhibition Instant Gratification.

Panopticon Gallery | Facebook Fan

2011-02-07T11:14:00.004-05:00

Have you joined the Panopticon Gallery Facebook Fan Page yet? Here's your chance. We're looking to reach 1,000 fans by Feb 28th.

Here's the link: Panopticon Gallery Facebook Fan Page

Black History Month

2011-02-05T08:38:00.002-05:00

In honor of Black History Month, Panopticon Gallery has a selection of photographs on display by Ernest C. Withers.

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.

To see more photographs by Ernest C. Withers, visit our website:

www.panopticongallery.com

Hiroshi Watanabe

2011-02-02T10:43:00.003-05:00

Hiroshi Watanabe
Selected works now available through Panopticon Gallery

Hiroshi Watanabe was born in Sapporo, Japan. He graduated from Department of Photography, College of Art, at Nihon University in 1975. He moved to Los Angeles after graduation and became involved in the production of TV commercials, eventually working as a producer. He later established his own production company and produced numerous commercials. He received an MBA degree from UCLA Business School in 1993.

In 1995 his passion for photography rekindled, and since then he has traveled worldwide extensively, photographing what he finds intriguing at that moment and place. In 2000 he closed his production company in order to devote himself entirely to the art and became a full time photographer.

Instant Connections

2011-02-01T22:25:00.006-05:00

Later this spring, Panopticon Gallery will be hosting a special Polaroid-themed exhibition called Instant Connections, co-curated by Independent Curator, Photographer, Advertising Creative Director extraordinaire and former Executive Director of the Photographic Resource Center Jim Fitts.

This exhibition will feature various forms of Polaroid imagery by some of the most important photographers whose primary medium is and was Polaroid. It will include Polaroid 20x24, 8x10, SX-70, and Type 55 gelatin silver prints made by the likes of William Wegman, David Levinthal, Vik Muniz, James Casebere, Stephen Sheffield, Olivia Parker, Marie Cosindas, John Reuter, Elsa Dorfman and many others.

Please join us on Thursday, March 31, 2011 from 5:30-7:30 for the opening reception with some of the artists.

One Life Photography Project | Alexander Harding

2011-01-28T14:31:00.002-05:00

Congratulations to Alexander Harding for being a finalist in the One Life Photography Project produced by Artists Wanted and PDN. The competition was juried by Jodi Peckman, Amy Kellner, James Morris, Conor Risch, and Stephen Walker and was open to photographers worldwide. The contest was divided into one grand prize photographer, one photographer for each category (people, places, things, and ideas) and the top 100 photographers. Harding's work was chosen to represent the category "things".

Coming Soon | Storytellers

2011-01-26T09:52:00.005-05:00

Storytellers | Photographs by Frank Armstrong, Bill Franson and Stella Johnson

Neal Rantoul | Specimens at D.S.I.

2011-01-11T15:12:00.004-05:00

Neal Rantoul

Collections: Anatomical Specimens from the 19th Century

January 20 - March 18, 2011

The Griffin Museum at Digital Silver Imaging

11 Brighton St

Belmont, MA

Opening - January 20th 6-8 pm

Gallery talk - February 3rd 7pm

Photographer Neal Rantoul is getting ready for a new exhibition, one that might cause you to question what you are looking at. While we are use to Rantoul pointing his large format camera at landscapes and architecture, he throws us for a loop when he focuses on specimens found at the Civic Museum in Reggio Emilia, Italy and at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

If you walked through either of these museums staring at the subjects found in Rantoul's exhibition, Collections: Anatomical Specimens from the 19th Century, a feeling of grotesque and horror might emerge, however these are not the feelings that erupt when looking at Rantoul's beautifully rendered black and white images of these medical oddities. Despite the dramatic change of subject matter, Rantoul uses his thoughtfulness and sensitivity to form compositions based on light and shape.

Rantoul takes a subject that is hard to look at, so much so that we would rather put it in a dark basement than have it out in the open, and exposes not only its hidden beauty but also an acceptance that these medical phenomena exist and are a part of our history.

Join us at the opening on Thursday January 20, 2011 6-8pm and at the gallery talk with Neal Rantoul on Thursday February 3, 2011 7pm

Foto Fortunes

2011-01-06T09:52:00.002-05:00

Here's a series of Foto Fortunes.

enjoy!

I Am Thankful For...

2010-12-22T11:04:00.001-05:00

This holiday season, I am thankful to all of those individuals who have made my first year as the new owner of Panopticon Gallery a success. Owning a gallery had been a long-term goal; although never in my wildest dreams did I expect it to be as fulfilling as it has been. It gives me great joy to live vicariously through the successes of the artists that I represent. Being able to speak with and educate individuals about fine art photography is shear joy. Arts education builds community. The support that I have received from my peers, the collectors, curators and art patrons, designers, photo business owners and photographers and of course my assistants as been overwhelming. I cannot thank you enough.

In 2011, the gallery will reach a milestone. It will have been in business for 40 years, a feat only achieved by a handful of other fine art photography galleries in the United States. We will mark this milestone with an exciting line up of exhibitions, photography salons, book signing events, and a 40th Anniversary exhibition in the fall.

We look forward to seeing you in the New Year.

with a handshake,

Jason Landry

Owner | Director

Panopticon Gallery

Upcoming Exhibition | Contemporary Culture

2010-12-17T16:10:00.002-05:00

PRESS RELEASE

Contemporary Culture
Photographs by Erik Schubert and Brian Kaplan
January 6 - February 22, 2011

Reception with the Artists
Thursday, January 6, 2011 | 5:30-7:30pm

From the earliest known photographs, to our most contemporary digital captures, man has been pointing the camera's lens toward the landscape and its surroundings for centuries. Artists and photographers alike continue this affinity whether they are creating photographs to document concerns over changes in a region’s topography, for the purpose of general survey or even to capture its majestic beauty. Panopticon Gallery is pleased to be exhibiting photographs by Erik Schubert and Brian Kaplan, two emerging photographers with ties to New England.

In the exhibition, Contemporary Culture, Schubert and Kaplan tackle two very different regions of the United States. Schubert has been actively photographing the landscape of the west, examining how manifest destiny has shaped this region, leaving in its wake a place where culture continues to prevail and how their identity owes itself to past explorers. Kaplan's counterbalance is photographs that focus on the northeast, specifically what he refers to as America’s consumption-driven culture and its relationship with the natural world.

Erik Schubert earned a B.F.A. in Photography from Columbia College in Chicago and an M.F.A. in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design. He has taught at MassArt, Greenfield Community College and currently at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Schubert has been in several exhibitions throughout the U.S. including Boston Young Contemporaries, SPECTRA: National Photography Triennial, and in 2010 was included in the exhibition, On the Road: A Legacy of Walker Evans at the Robert Lehman Art Center.

Brian Kaplan spent years assisting before taking his 4x5 view camera out into the landscape. Kaplan has exhibited both locally and nationally including the Danforth Museum of Art, Griffin Museum of Art, Houston Center for Photography, and the Provincetown Art Museum.

Neal Rantoul | In Review

2010-12-16T10:58:00.002-05:00

If you haven't made it over to the gallery yet to see Neal Rantoul | Twenty-Five Years (1980-2005), you still have until January 4th.

For those of you who would like to read a little about the exhibition and about the artists, here is a list of recent reviews and stories:

Boston Globe review by Mark Feeney
Art New England story by David Raymond
NPR story by Jason Landry
Boston Phoenix review by Greg Cook

Frank Armstrong | Rock, River & Thorn

2010-12-08T14:42:00.004-05:00

A book review by Panopticon Gallery intern Liz Ellenwood:

In the book Rock, River, & Thorn: The Big Bend of the Rio Grande, Frank Armstrong takes us on a visual exploration that awakens all of your senses. When looking through the black and white photographs, one can feel the sun beating down on the back of their necks in the desert, hear the slow cascading of a waterfall hidden between rock faces, and feel the texture of the soil beneath their feet. Simply put, you feel like you are a part of the Big Bend. Armstrong's work invites the viewer to a journey full of dramatic sunrises and moonrises, sun-kissed forests, shimmering reflection pools, and intimate renderings of rocks and plant life.

Armstrong has a soothing quality that is found throughout his work. Whether he focuses on an up-close abstraction of natural forms or a broader view of a mountainous landscape, the organic quality of lines gently guides the viewer throughout the frame. While there is a feeling of peace and contentment when looking at Rock, River, & Thorn: The Big Bend of the Rio Grande, there is also the sense of death and destruction with the way Armstrong has incorporated the representation of mankind. In some images the sense of mankind is obvious and abrupt, roads built into the landscape, an old cemetery falling apart, or an abandoned building with faded drawings on the walls, while other man made artifacts blend into the natural landscape, such as tire tracks winding into the gravel or the words "I love you" carved into the base of a cactus.

With what Armstrong refers to as his "social landscape", he shows us a lush, natural landscape being juxtaposed with the remnants of what was left behind by mankind.

PDN Photo of the Day | John Lennon

2010-12-08T14:33:00.002-05:00

This image of John Lennon by Panopticon Gallery photographer Roger Farrington was the PDN Photo of the Day.

Read Boston | A Boston Book Signing Event

2010-12-06T11:30:00.004-05:00

Join us TONIGHT for Mayor Menino's Read Boston event at the Hotel Commonwealth from 5:30-7:30pm. Click on the photo above to see a list of the participating authors and artists!

To purchase tickets, (click here).

William Wegman | Puppy Pictures

2010-12-02T12:00:00.004-05:00

William Wegman, On Edge, 2010

Panopticon Gallery has some new puppy photographs by William Wegman. After spending some time at his studio last month, I had the opportunity to hand-pick some brand new prints made in 2010 and a few older ones.

Stop by the gallery to have a closer look.

Unique Partnership | Lodima Press

2010-11-26T11:35:00.003-05:00

Panopticon Gallery recently formed a unique partnership with Lodima Press to offer their portfolio books through the gallery. These limited edition books are printed in a 600 line screen quad tone, creating one of the highest quality reproductions that I have ever seen.

Books currently available through this series include those by photographers: Nicholas Nixon | Carl Chiarenza | George Tice | Keith Carter | Linda Connor | Larry Fink | Arthur Tress | Marilyn Bridges | Paul Caponigro | D.W. Mellor | Hans Bol | Robert Adams | Eric Lindbloom

Please stop by the gallery to check them out.

Boston-Reykjavic-Paris

2010-11-23T13:02:00.004-05:00

Just returned back from Paris where I was reviewing portfolios at Lens Culture FotoFest Paris. This was the first large-scale photography portfolio review event for Paris. I met with 42 international photographers in three days. It was a wonderful experience and I met so many great artists and peers in the photo industry.

Next stop on the trip with ParisPhoto. ParisPhoto is one of the biggest photo expos in the world and it is held in the Carrousel, located underneath The Louvre in Paris. I have gone to this event for the past few years to see some of the best art, displayed by some of the biggest galleries in the world. It never disappoints. If you can't make it to Paris, check out PhotoLA in January or AIPAD in NYC in March for a similar experience.

Opening Reception | THIS WEEK!!!

2010-11-06T14:51:00.002-04:00

The opening reception for
Neal Rantoul | Twenty-Five Years
(1980-2005)

Wednesday, November 10, 2010
5:30 - 7:30pm

A Super Wide Point of View | NPR

2010-11-03T10:53:00.003-04:00

Today on the NPR Picture Show, read about photographer Neal Rantoul in, A Super Wide Point of View: Photos from an American Series.

Here's an excerpt:

"Before Leonardo DiCaprio ever walked on the set and shot his first scene for the movie Shutter Island, photographer Neal Rantoul had already been there. The backdrops for the movie were these abandoned houses located in a wooded area on Peddocks Island, off the coast of Boston, Mass. A series of photographs from the island, made in 2004, are included in his recent monograph, American Series. Now off-limits to the public, buildings lay dilapidated and decaying, part of the old Fort Andrews, an inoperative artillery post that was built to protect Boston Harbor up through World War II."

To read more of this story, visit: http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow

America in Transition | Art New England

2010-11-01T17:18:00.002-04:00

Our friends over at Art New England recently visited the studio of photographer Neal Rantoul as he was preparing for the upcoming exhibition, Neal Rantoul | Twenty-Five Years (1980-2005). Here is an excerpt:

"Ribbed patterns of wheat, like corduroy, cover the broad, rolling land near Pullman, Washington. Neal Rantoul’s Pullman, Washington, 1996–2001, is a series of photographs that explore this territory with straightforward visual clarity, honoring the formidable scale and visual depth of the land while making it accessible. Rantoul’s exhibition at Panopticon is a survey of a number of his serial black-and-white projects done over a period of twenty-five years. Rantoul, who has been head of the photography program in the Department of Art and Design at Northeastern University since 1981, has built a substantial body of work with roots in American photographic landscape traditions and the lean aesthetic of photographers like Harry Callahan and Frederick Sommers."

To read more of this article by David Raymond, visit www.artnewengland.com.

BOOK SIGNING | Starting Over

2010-10-26T14:49:00.008-04:00

On August 7th 1980, Roger Farrington was the first authorized photographer hand selected to document the initial recording session for John Lennon & Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy album at The Hit Factory in New York City.

Join us on Tuesday, December 7th from 6-8pm when Panopticon Gallery will be hosting a book signing and reception for author Ken Sharp and photographer Roger Farrington for the newly released book, Starting Over: The Making of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy.

Tour Dates:
Tues, Dec. 7 - Panopticon Gallery, Boston, MA
Wed, Dec. 8 - Border's (Penn Plaza), New York, NY
Fri, Dec 10 - Barnes & Noble, Fairless Hills, PA

Bill Franson | Me and My Leica

2010-10-23T13:58:00.009-04:00

Panopticon Gallery is pleased to be representing the work of Bill Franson.

Bill Franson studied photography at the Art Institute of Boston and earned a BA in Philosophy at Calvin College in Michigan. He is currently a professor at both the New England School of Photography in Boston, MA and Gordon College in Wenham, MA. Franson's work has been exhibited in New York City, Texas, Canada and throughout New England.

When it comes to Franson's imagery, his motto "observe, and get on with it" can be seen throughout his series of work; he observes, captures, and moves on to the next moment. His documentary style explores every day occurrences and renders in black and white a world full of mystery and a feeling of time. Franson successfully captures a tension throughout his imagery which causes the viewer to create their own story line of what has happened or is about to happen.

While some photographers put down their cameras for a rest, that never seems to happen in Franson's work. He is constantly rendering the world surrounding him; whether he is traveling via plane, train, car, or walking down the street, his photographic eye is always engaged and ready to capture the moment in front of him.

PDN Photo of the Day | Human Notes

2010-10-20T12:34:00.005-04:00

The image Mac Music by Panopticon Gallery photographer Keith Johnson was featured today as the PDN Photo of the Day.

Ernest Withers | Remembered

2010-10-15T10:33:00.002-04:00

Today is the anniversary of the passing of civil rights photographer Ernest C. Withers.

Ernest C. Withers, Twins at WDIA, 1948

Larry Pratt | Lyrical Nudes

2010-10-13T14:39:00.004-04:00

Panopticon Gallery is pleased to be representing the work of Larry Pratt. Living on Cape Cod, Pratt is able to incorporate the lush and diverse landscape with his study of the human figure. His work ranges from figures gracefully placed in the landscape to abstract depictions of the nude form, both in black & white and color, causing the viewer to second guess what they are looking at.

Throughout Pratt's varying series, there is an apparent fascination with light. Whether he is painting with light to create a scene of two figures under a tree (The Secret, (version #2), 2008), or using a long exposure and the choreographed dance of models on the dunes in (Alien Dancers, 2010), Pratt consciously uses light to his advantage. In the series Contours and Space, Pratt pushes abstraction in his work further. With a limited depth of field, Pratt selectively focuses on the natural curving of branches in the foreground while an out of focus figure elegantly intertwines in the background (Alien, 2006).

Through his compositions, light delicately wraps around forms, highlighting specific repeating shapes. Using both positive and negative shapes throughout his photographs, Pratt explores the lyrical movement of the human body.

Eva Timothy | Lost in Learning

2010-10-13T13:08:00.004-04:00

Eva Timothy's photographic journey has taken her to the ends of the world and back. Through her photographs, she has unveiled a previous age, one based upon discovery and exploration. Her series Lost in Learning has led to her first published monograph, released in September 2010. Her monograph received the 2010 People's Choice Award, First Place in the Professional Book Category through Prix de la Photographie and was a finalist in the 2010 Julia Margaret Cameron Award.

Eva Timothy,Creator and Creation,from the series Lost in Learning

Throughout the book, Eva Timothy's photographs lead us through the discoveries and ideas by some of history's most important figures, including Christopher Columbus and Leonardo da Vinci. She has described this project as "a photographic investigation linking the lives and works of significant Renaissance figures to the power of creativity in modern day learning."

Photographs from her series will be on display at Panopticon Gallery in the Spring of 2011.

Spallanzani Collection | Neal Rantoul

2010-10-07T11:28:00.003-04:00

On a trip to Reggio Emilia, Italy in 2009, photographer Neal Rantoul set up his large format camera with permission inside their Civic Museum to document the Spallanzani Collection.

Rantoul's black and white photographs encompass a variety of specimens having congenital disorders, with many having Polycephaly (a condition of having more than one head). Here's just a sample.

Harold Feinstein | Breast Cancer Awareness

2010-10-01T14:00:00.003-04:00

Harold Feinstein at Panopticon Gallery inside Hotel Commonwealth to promote
Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Photography by Roger Farrington

Harold Feinstein stopped by the gallery this morning to help promote National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. For more information about what we are doing to help this cause, check out our website.

National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

2010-10-01T10:02:00.002-04:00

From October 1 - 31, 2010, Panopticon Gallery in conjunction with the Hotel Commonwealth and photographer Harold Feinstein will be honoring National Breast Cancer Awareness Month by painting an entire wall in the gallery pink and exhibiting an original Harold Feinstein photograph called Robin's Roses.

This photograph, which was named after Feinstein's daughter who lost her battle with breast cancer in 2001, was recently used by Oprah Winfrey on the cover of her most recent book, Words That Matter.

During National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Panopticon Gallery has produced a special edition signed print of this image with the majority of the proceeds going to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. With each print sold, you will also get a copy of Oprah’s book, Words That Matter, courtesy of Harper Collins.

For more information, or to purchase a print, please contact the gallery.

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

2010-09-25T14:19:00.002-04:00

"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

2010-09-16T15:00:00.002-04:00

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

2010-09-15T11:18:00.002-04:00

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.

Keith Johnson | Photo of the Day

2010-09-12T07:27:00.003-04:00

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

2010-09-04T11:46:00.006-04:00

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

2010-09-01T09:07:00.003-04:00

"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.

On the Road with Neal Rantoul | Part 2

2010-08-31T12:25:00.002-04:00

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

2010-08-29T18:24:00.003-04:00

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

2010-08-28T13:42:00.002-04:00

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

2010-08-28T09:30:00.003-04:00

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

2010-08-27T09:45:00.005-04:00

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

2010-08-14T09:57:00.003-04:00

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.

#####

Stephen Sheffield | Panopticon Gallery

2010-08-12T15:05:00.005-04:00

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

2010-08-12T12:09:00.010-04:00

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

2010-08-11T13:31:00.003-04:00

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

2010-08-03T09:12:00.004-04:00

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

Stella Johnson | runner up in JMC award

2010-07-31T09:46:00.004-04:00

Photographer Stella Johnson received a 'runner up' nod in this year's Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers.

Another Panopticon Gallery artist Karin Rosenthal picked up First Prize in the Professional: Nude section of the awards for her image, "Vortex".

Vittorio Sella | Photo of the Day

2010-07-30T15:37:00.003-04:00

Vittorio Sella, Crevasse on the Glacier Blanc, Grand Sagne
and Ecrins, Alps, August 13, 1888.
© Fondazione Sella. Courtesy Panopticon Gallery / Decaneas Archive, Boston, MA.

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

With the greatest of ease | Boston Globe review

2010-07-20T20:45:00.004-04:00

William Wegman, best known for working with his beloved Weimaraners, was photographing bulldogs for a commercial shoot in May when Panopticon Gallery’s owner Jason Landry and independent curator Jeffrey Keough stopped by his New York studio. The artist would gently toss the dogs a short distance onto a landing pad, according to an affectionate and comic essay by Keough. When the shoot was finished, Keough writes, Wegman turned to his assistant and said, “I want to throw more dogs."

In came Wegman’s Weimaraners Penny, Candy, and Bobbin. Penny and Candy cheerfully submitted to being thrown. Bobbin, who has a sore hip, was excluded, even though, Keough reports, he “begged to be involved.’’

William Wegman, Untitled (Flying Dog #2), 2010

Four stunning, funny images from the brand new “Untitled (Flying Dog)’’ series are included in “William Wegman: Inside/Outside,’’ a delightful exhibit Landry and Keough have organized at Panopticon. The four describe an arc as a Weimaraner, almost as fluid as a drop of mercury but with more personality, rises into the air against a warm sepia background and begins to descend.

Wegman has been photographing Weimaraners for more than 30 years. The images receive popular acclaim because the dogs — gorgeous, velvety beasts — express such soulfulness and naked trust, and because Wegman often does witty and surprising things with them. That’s what folks relate to and laugh at. But Wegman’s acute attention to form makes his work art rather than greeting-card fodder, and the flying dogs are a perfect example. They stretch, gather, and fold, each reading like a Japanese Zen master’s calligraphic stroke.

“Inside/Outside" features 38 enchanting prints, some shot in the studio, others outdoors. “Washed Up’’ features two dogs lying on the beach, eyes closed, one with a leg draped over the other. They’re almost human, but their tone and contours are not unlike those of the rocks in the background. In “Psycho,’’ a gray dog peeks out from behind textured glass (the kind you find in a shower door), eyes wide, a canine Janet Leigh.

Each shoot is a collaborative and improvisational performance. That sounds chaotic, but Wegman’s photos distill the chaos into form, relationship, and narrative, and into art just about everyone can appreciate.

-Cate McQuaid, Boston Globe - July 21, 2010
(for a copy of the original post, click here)
(for images that appeared in the Boston Globe, (click here)

On Being an Artist | Neal Rantoul

2010-07-17T14:25:00.003-04:00

I am always pleasantly surprised when Neal Rantoul stops by the gallery to show me prints. Often times I find that it isn't always new work, but work that he has done over his long career as an artist. It is interesting to see how an artist and the projects that they work on move from point 'a' to point 'b'. It's like marking a child's height on a door jam, watching the pencil marks gradually climb up the wall. Time is what each artist has, and over time, they grow, they learn, they share, and ultimately a sense of accomplishment is realized.

I received an email this week from Neal with a short statement that he wrote a few years ago on his thoughts on being an artist. Enjoy!

"Thirty-five years ago, when the concept of being an artist for the rest of my life first dawned on me, I had little to show; no skills, little education, no ability to define what it would be like to bean artist and few mentors. But my job seemed clear: I needed to learn my chosen discipline and produce work. This I proceeded to do, learning as I went, adding a series of photographs or a group of pictures that were an idea, concept or an interest on top of a stack of others that would grow over a whole career. This program entailed life-long learning. Parts of my process would change: my understanding of the medium would grow and evolve during these years. Photography too would change; movements in contemporary art and society would affect me in obvious and subtle ways. However, the requirement was to make the best work I could, to stay active, to produce work that was both quantitatively and qualitatively as consummate as I knew then how to make it. This I’ve done. As I grew and understood more about photography as an art form, and worked to master my technique and refine my aesthetic, I became more comfortable with my place in the discipline. I no longer was aspiring to be something. I was heavily engaged in the making. Finally, I have sought, quite simply, to make a contribution to the medium of photography."

-Neal Rantoul

More Wall Space | More Exhibitions

2010-07-16T11:01:00.004-04:00

Panopticon Gallery will have more exhibition opportunities in the future as we prepare to expand into an additional space inside the Hotel Commonwealth. The soon-to-be-renamed room will give us twice as much wall space to have exhibitions.

The inaugural show in the new room will be with Panopticon Gallery artist Harold Feinstein. We will also be hosting gallery events in the space starting this fall. Check our website for more information.

Bradford Washburn | The Last of His Kind

2010-07-10T21:41:00.002-04:00

There is a new paperback book available about the life and times of photographer and mountaineer Bradford Washburn.

(courtesy of Amazon.com)

Before his 30th birthday, Bradford Washburn was already a legendary mountaineer, completing four major first ascents on his way to becoming the greatest mountaineer in Alaskan history. Soon after, Washburn took over the creaky New England Museum of Natural History, which by his retirement in 1980, had become the renowned Boston Museum of Science. Washburn (1910–2007) was also an innovative cartographer as well as a self-taught photographer whose aerial shots garnered major acclaim. A longtime friend of Washburn and a former mountaineer, Roberts (No Shortcuts to the Top) is an ideal candidate for writing Washburn's biography, but the book lacks the depth of compelling biographies. Roberts's decision to extensively profile Washburn's various expeditions (and those of others) offers no insight on the man, while contributing to the book's glacial pace.

On a different note, the 2011 Bradford Washburn calendar just arrived in the gallery. if you are interested in one, contact the gallery.

Finally | A Flickr Page

2010-07-10T19:55:00.002-04:00

Panopticon Gallery finally has a Flickr page. We recently posted photos from our last two opening receptions and we'll continue to fill it up with photos from all of our upcoming events.

We've also started a Visitor's Album where we'll post portraits of our (famous and not so famous) friends whenever they stop by.

Wegman reception | A smashing success!

2010-07-09T20:45:00.004-04:00

We just want to say thanks to the hundreds of people who came out to support the opening reception for William Wegman: Inside | Outside. It was a smashing success! It also doesn't hurt when the Boston Globe, Boston Phoenix, Boston Metro and the Improper Bostonian all come out with blurbs about the show on the same day. Many thanks!!!!!

William Wegman and Jason Landry at the Opening reception for

William Wegman: Inside | Outside on July 8, 2010.

John Woolf | Panoramas & Diners

2010-07-02T11:31:00.003-04:00

John Woolf is an accomplished fine art photographer who has spent a career capturing the urban landscape. His portfolios include panoramas of Boston, Chicago, Providence and New York City. His cameras vary from 8x10 large format, to panoramic and digital.

In Woolf's most recent series Night Road, he digitally composites multiple individual photographs into one large image to capture the various tones of light that appear in a photograph.

John Woolf and Neal Rantoul will be having a 2-person exhibition at the Scollay Square Gallery at Boston City Hall from July 12 - August 27, 2010.

Save the Date: Griffin Museum of Photography's 16th Annual Juried Exhibition

2010-06-29T13:30:00.010-04:00

For anyone who loves photography, the Griffin Museum's Annual Juried Exhibition is not to be missed. We encourage everyone to make it to this Thursday's opening from 7-8:30 at the Museum.

The Panopticon Gallery has two celebrated artists, Alexander Harding and Susan Révy, have been selected for the exhibition, as well as over 30 other very tallented contemporaries.

The 16th Griffin Museum Juried Exhibition will be on display July 1st through August 29th.

photolucida | Critical Mass

2010-06-25T22:28:00.005-04:00

Sign-ups for this year's photolucida Critical Mass begin next month. The aim of Critical Mass, and all photolucida programming, is to provide participants with career-building opportunities and to promote the best emerging and mid-career artists working today.

I'm honored to to be included as one of the jurors this year. A current list of this year's jurors are located (here).

Karin Rosenthal | Workshop at F. Holland Day Center

2010-06-24T11:43:00.013-04:00

Award winning photographer and teacher Karin Rosenthal will be teaching a workshop, Body in Nature, from Wednesday, August 11 through Sunday, August 15. at the F. Holland Day House in Georgetown, Maine. Karin has garnered acclaim and many awards for her work, including the 2010 International Renaissance Photography Competition in London, England.

Ripples, 2004

Of her work, she states “my desire to photograph nudes was born of the water, of a passion for being in and meditating upon still waters. Wanting to make statements about human nature as I had before in portraits and street pictures, I sought a way to photograph people in water to create images of a psychological, dreamlike, and emotive nature.”

Within the beautiful setting of Georgetown Maine, Rosenthal’s workshop should be a promising venture into examining the body as image and landscape.

Contemplation, 2004

Karin Rosenthal's photographs of the human figure in the landscape have been published internationally with prints residing in numerous private and museum collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Brooklyn Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Danforth Museum of Art, the ICP, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Her work can be seen in such major anthologies as Male Nude Now, Naked Women, and Eros.

In 2000, she published Karin Rosenthal: Twenty Years of Photographs. She has served actively on the Planning Committee for New England Women in Photography since 1995 and has taught numerous workshops.