"Gandhi Meditation Garden, India International Centre, Delhi," archival pigment print. — Felicia Murray
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Felicia Murray, one of the photographers spotlighted in Sargent Gallery’s current exhibition, refers to herself as an intuitive photographer. “In my experience, photographing is instinctual,” she writes in her artist statement, “as if led by my intuition to unveil the familiar, and expose the dream of existence.” With her book, “Edges of Time,” whose images are featured in Sargent Gallery in Aquinnah, one can see the sublime, dreamlike nature of Murray’s vision. “I call it autobiographical reportage,” said the photographer, who splits her time between the Vineyard and New York City. The book’s title takes its name from a quote by the visionary, mystical, Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. The complete phrase is “Let your life lightly dance on the edges of time,” and the photos have a similar lyrical quality to them. Murray’s dreamlike black-and-white photographs were shot with film, as opposed to digitally, giving them a wonderfully gritty, atmospheric quality. The images depict scenes from India, Paris, and the U.S. Whatever the location, there is always a sense of timelessness and mystery. Many have a voyeuristic quality — a silhouette of a man in a fedora as seen through the snow-speckled back window of a car, a hazy image of a woman peering through a hole in a cracked and blurry window, a car passenger window view of an elephant next to two stooping figures in a desolate landscape. “I use a slow flash that shows time passing and other dimensions,” Murray said. In her artist statement, she writes, “While I have traveled my whole life, these particular images evoke places I have returned to again and again, places that carry a spirit of timelessness that almost eclipses their location. The people are also outside of time, some in another dimension entirely, others as if just around the corner.” Murray has shown her work in New York and throughout the U.S., as well as in Paris and Germany. She has received enthusiastic praise for her work from critics including Gerrit Henry, who wrote in a review, “Murray is fascinated by the spiritual conjunction of opposites — the sublime in the mundane, the extraordinary in the ordinary, the transcendent in the everyday.” Contrasting Murray’s ephemeral images with those of a more temporal nature are the aerial photographs of awardwinning environmental photographer Alex MacLean, whose latest work comments on the effects of climate change at various locations. For the past two years, MacLean has been photographing the impact of sea level rise on the East Coast and Gulf Coast of the U.S. Recently, a French publisher released the book “Impact.” Many of the photos from this book, made up of the photographer’s recent ocean and shoreline images, are included in the current Sargent Gallery exhibit. A pilot and photographer, based in a rural town outside Boston, MacLean has flown his plane over much of the U.S. documenting the landscape. Trained as an architect, he has portrayed the history and evolution of the land from vast agricultural patterns to city grids, recording changes brought about by human intervention and natural processes. MacLean’s photographs have been exhibited widely in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia, and are found in private, public, and university collections. Don’t expect work that is simply documentational in nature. MacLean’s bold color photographs are as striking as they are informative, documenting an important issue facing the world today. Images by other photographers featured in the show include National Geographic’s Joel Sartore and Jim Brandenburg, as well as Barbara Norfleet, Karen Philippi, and Marjorie Wolfe. The exhibit will also spotlight a selection of new work by some of Sargent’s most popular artists, including woodcuts by Ruth Kirchmeier, paintings by John Nickerson Athearn, Peter Roux, Julia Purinton, Margo Balcerek, Judy Howells, and Mariella Bisson, as well as jewelry by Jannette Vanderhoop. Sargent Gallery is open weekends 11 am to 4 pm, and by chance or appointment. There will be a Holiday Open House Saturdays and Sundays through December with local cider, wine, and cheese. The gallery is located at 832 State Rd, Aquinnah. Call 508-645-2776 or text 508-560-7911 for open hours or more information.