Photographer Jeffrey Serusa at Louisa Gould Gallery

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The advent of digital photography has made it possible for anyone with an inexpensive camera or a smartphone to shoot away with abandon without worrying about the cost of film. On the other end of the spectrum is photographer Jeffrey Serusa, who is no fan of what he calls “fast photography.” Serusa still shoots with film, using a traditional large-format view camera that summons images of old movies (think bellows and a cloth hood) and taking his time to wait for the perfect moment.

The best example of Serusa’s patience can be found in his image “Sea Smoke.” The iconic image features the Islander ferry engulfed in a gray fog that blurs the boundary between sea and sky. Serusa spent eight years trying to capture the rare phenomenon seen in the image.

Sea smoke is a low-lying fog that is formed when very cold air moves over warmer water. For Serusa’s moody image, he set up his cumbersome camera and tripod down by the Vineyard Haven ferry landing on a morning when the temperature hovered around the zero mark and the wind was blowing over 40 miles an hour. “Everything in the air was ice crystals,” Serusa recalls. “I knew the weather conditions were perfect. I knew exactly where I was going to stand and I knew when the boat was going to come in. Finally, I got a glint of sunshine that lasted about two seconds.”

Serusa’s patience and tenacity paid off. The shot is hauntingly beautiful with the ferry emerging from the fog, its white exterior highlighted by the ray of sun, putting it in sharp contrast to the all-encompassing gray cloud of smoke.

That image, along with a handful of others, can now be found at the Louisa Gould Gallery on Main Street, Vineyard Haven. Serusa is the first photographer that Gould has represented. An acclaimed, award-winning maritime photographer herself, Louisa Gould stopped showing her work at the gallery a few years back, and she chose Serusa to fill the void after meeting him and viewing his work.

The new working relationship between gallerist and artist also filled a gap for the photographer. For 10 years, Serusa owned and operated his own gallery on Beach Road in Vineyard Haven. He closed the business in 2016 after he and his wife bought a farm in West Tisbury. The work on the farm has become a full-time job for Serusa, who no longer shoots or prints his own work.

Recently, Serusa has started offering his work on aluminum, which, according to Gould, has attracted a lot of attention. The metal medium adds another dimension to the photographer’s work, showing off the light that Serusa has expertly captured in many of his images.

Another subject for the photographer is old boats, with a focus on their pointed bows. Three images of the latter can be found on display. One is, not surprisingly, a photo of an antique lifeboat from the Islander, which Serusa discovered behind the MV Museum. The two other photographs are old wooden boats –– one a yacht, built around the turn of the 20th century by the former Herreshoff boatyard in Bristol, Rhode Island. The other shot is of an antique cruise ship lifeboat.

For the boat images, Serusa blocked out the background to spotlight the form and surface details of these vintage models. Aside from that sort of manipulation of images, Serusa doesn’t photoshop or alter his photos in any way. He prefers to wait for the perfect shot, however long that may take. And with his particular choice of using film as opposed to going digital, his shots are as close to reality as it gets.

“Film doesn’t lie,” he says. “What you shoot is what you took.” Serusa has also found that film allows for crisp, clear large-scale prints. He explains that by shooting with a large-format camera, he can blow up his images to sizes as large as three to four feet across without losing any of the clarity.

Serusa notes that shooting film the old-fashioned way is becoming more and more difficult. “It’s really impossible to get the film these days,” he says, adding that one of the types he was accustomed to using is no longer available at all.

“The only reason I still do this,” says Serusa, referring to creating prints of his images, “is that it humbles me.”

Along with the canvas and aluminum prints that Gould has on display at the gallery, she is also offering a series of notecards featuring other images, any of which can be ordered in any size on canvas, on aluminum, or as framed museum-grade paper prints.

Also currently hanging at the gallery is the annual Small Wonders Holiday Show, which features smaller-scale, more affordable works by many of Gould’s most popular artists. That show will hang throughout the remainder of December and into January. Jeffrey Serusa’s work will be on display on a continuing basis, with new prints being added periodically.

The Louisa Gould Gallery is located at 54 Main Street, Vineyard Haven. The gallery is currently open from 11 am to 5 pm daily.  Visit louisagould.com.