For 15 years, fabulous photographers have graced Featherstone Center for the Arts’ Photographers Salon. Works by 28 of the 61 artists who have presented during the last decade and a half shine in the Francine Kelly Gallery.
The germ of the salon began in 2010 with photographer Michael Johnson, who was attending informal artistic gatherings on-Island at the time. One was run by Stephen DiRado, a notable photographer and professor. He hosted an informal daily morning gathering at a café in Vineyard Haven for students and friends. Up-Island, Johnson’s friend Richard Skidmore, who was a keeper at the Gay Head Lighthouse, also regularly had Island artists at his house. Johnson recalls, “I was driving home from Richard’s, and I thought it would be wonderful if we had something like this to bring photographers together and have people present their art, and make it a networking and sharing space. I went to Ann [Smith] and told her I had this idea, and of course she said, in her inimitable fashion, ‘Do it!’”
And Johnson has been “doing it” ever since.
The salon format is straightforward. An invited photographer presents their work and, most important, tells their story: “I pick people for their art, but also I want them to bring their personal narrative of how they’ve come to do what they’re doing the way they are, and why.”
One of Johnson’s favorite memories involves Bob Avakian, who had been attending nearly every salon. When asked, Avakian admitted he did “a little photography.” Johnson insisted that Avakian give a mini-presentation, and Johnson recalls, “When he lined the works up, everybody’s mouths dropped open, and eyes popped to see his low-light photography.” In the show, we see Avakian’s signature style in his photographs of the Grange and Ag Hall. He captures the iconic buildings in all their magnificent historic splendor, set against a moody, cloud-filled sky, at that singular moment when night dances on the edge of daylight.
The Vineyard is the subject of other photographers’ works, though each has a distinctive twist. Luke DiOrio captures one of the beach cabanas, coated in snow, in “Season’s End at Cow Bay.” We look straight through the central rectangular cutout at the back of the building. Beyond lies the cool blue ocean, ending at the horizon line where the icy water meets a cold winter sky, whose light illuminates the snowy foreground as if from within.
Michael Cohen’s black-and-white “Leap of Faith” catches the jumpers and onlookers at Jaws Bridge. Shot from below, the figures appear in dark silhouette, drawing our attention to the action rather than the details of their appearance. Larry Glick also shoots looking up in his breathtaking “Northern Lights,” so that Jay Lagemann’s “Harpoon Fisherman” appears above us, caught in the dramatic moment of spearing the great swordfish with the spectacular, moody colors of the Northern lights roiling behind him.
In Denys Wortman’s black-and-white drone photograph, “Lucy Vincent,” sunlight shimmers on the water, gently rolling along the entire stretch of the treasured Island shoreline. Tiny figures dot the beach, dwarfed by the large rock formations that have long since crumbled back into the sea.
In Elizabeth Luce’s large color photograph “3 Amigos,” juvenile ospreys, so beloved on the Vineyard, perch at the edge of their nest, staring straight at us with their penetrating orange eyes, clearly perturbed by our intrusion.
Many of the artists take us far and wide. Photojournalist Leo Frame’s “Popsicle & 4 Guys” transports us back to a summer in the mid-’60s. Amid the projects in North Nashville, the young pals are completely at ease, stopping just long enough to have their photo taken. Patrick Cashin conveys the essence of a time far earlier in “Ellis Island.” We stand on the threshold of a completely dilapidated, long-abandoned room — a single broken cane chair the only echo of human life. Behind is an open window, poignantly framing the Statue of Liberty in the distance, a sign of welcome, or perhaps freedom just out of reach.
We travel further with Gwen Adams Norton’s “Hokkaido Couple,” taken in Japan. The pair refers to the two tall, lacy, bare trees standing like proud parents in the snow on either side of smaller “baby” vegetation, barely emerging from the white-covered ground. Joshua Eli Plaut shares a poignant moment in Turkey in which an older man and woman gingerly hold up a desecrated family Torah scroll between them, allowing us to fill in the story of what it cost to save the heirloom from total destruction. And the arresting visage of the man seemingly sitting inches from us, cigar held to his lips, in John Rosenmiller’s “Leonora: Trinidad, Cuba,” holds a million stories.
Equally as intimate is Jeremy Driesen’s “Man Tango,” in which we seem to have interrupted a private moment in which two fashionably dressed men are so deeply engrossed in moving smoothly together to the music that they are unaware of our gaze. Teresa Kruszewski captures the sensuous quality of her model in “Grace 2/25.” With her back toward us and hair drawn off to the side, we become lost in the sensuous play of light on Grace’s bare shoulders and upper back.
Dena Porter takes us into the inner sanctum of the chic cocktail lounge at Grand Central Terminal in New York City, which was formerly the office and private reception hall of Jazz Age financier John W. Campbell in the 1920s. Interestingly, in “The Campbell II,” Porter focuses not on the bartender as her subject, but rather on the back-lit liquor bottles that reflect seductively off the highly polished bar at which we sit.
Near or far, black-and-white or color, figurative or abstract, the plethora of images in the 15th anniversary Photographers Salon show reflect the vast talent of our Island photographers.
The 15th anniversary “Photographers Salon” with guest curator Michael Johnson is on view at Featherstone through July 19, daily from noon to 4 pm.