Meet the Artists

Some of the YouTube videos in this section were made with a grant to buy  video equipment and lighting from The Springfield Cultural Council.


 November, 2022 Photo Exhibit - Jose Figueroa 

Hi, it’s a pleasure to meet you all! My name is Jose Figueroa. I’m a photographer that is currently based in Springfield, and I’ve been doing photography for almost 3 years now. I specialize in drone photography and all-around content creating that involves a drone. I love taking photos of landscapes, especially unique locations like the “White Pocket” in Arizona, in which you need a 4x4 off road vehicle to get to. “It's all about the adventure” I’ve always been compelled by that, especially in creating the perfect shot. I’m represented by AirFig Productions and traveled to 20 states in the USA. I’ve been featured by DJI, Complex, VisitMA, PassionPassport, and much more. Right now, I’m passionate about showcasing the city of Springfield and its beauty. It would be great to stay in touch feel free to follow my adventure on social media Instagram - @AirFig, and Facebook - @AirFigProductions For services and more please visit my website AirFigProductions.com.


                                            October,  2022 Photo Show - Kimani Worghs

Kimani Worghs is a photographer, art director, and stylist based in Springfield. He boasts a rich heritage from Ghana, Jamaica, and England. He has been featured by Vogue magazine and received awards from the International Color Awards and the Valley Photo Center.
Kimani has a passion for Fashion and Editorial Photography. He was the Student Showcase Photographer at Springfield Technical Community College and is currently attending the Parsons School of Design in New York City working toward earning a BAF in Photography. 

                                                            August-September, 2022 - Diane Savioli-Chase

"Have you ever heard anyone say that they don't like ice cream?. I have pursued my photo quest of Cone signs because it represents something that everyone loves. These photos are in addition to those seen in the Valley Photo Center gallery exhibit running through August 2022. "My first photo was taken on the boardwalk at Wildwood Beach in New Jersey as part of a neon sign photo project. It has continued to evolve from there to other places in the U.S A. and several European countries. My favorites are the 3 dimensional sculptural cones."


See her images here

June And July, 2022 - Richard Bulda

Richard Bulda captures images that rock with a sense of happening. His travels to Montreal for the Under Pressure, Annual Montreal Graffiti festival has been a rich experience. This exhibit showcases 12 of his Montreal artwork. Richard started photography using a film camera. His first memorable foray in digital was Christo’s Gate project in Central Park. He was hooked then. He enjoys rubbing elbows with highly creative people wherever he travels. He often visits Miami, Manhattan, Montreal, Atlantic City, and Brooklyn.

April, 2022- Ellen Koteen

Artist Statement 

During the process of photographing flowers, animals and landscapes, I experience joy and a sense of peace.  I delight in and am inspired by the detail, design and colors contained within nature.  Photography has taught me to see light, shadows and nuances with a more vivid appreciation.  In sharing my work, I strive to achieve what was so poignantly stated by Alfred Stieglitz:  "What is of greatest importance is to hold a moment, to record something so completely that those who see it will relive an equivalent of what has been expressed."

My earlier work focused on macro photography and the exquisite details of flowers.  I have included several photographs from my earlier work in this exhibit. More recently and since transitioning to the use of a digital camera, my work more often depicts landscapes and animals.  I have been exhibiting my photographs since 2002 in numerous solo and group exhibits, both within the Pioneer Valley and in Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada where, until 2020, I resided for five months each year.  My studio is located at One Cottage Street in Easthampton which gives me the opportunity, in non-Covid years, to participate in the twice yearly Cottage Street Studios week-end sales and to collaborate with a wonderful and talented group of artists. 

I began my photographic journey in 1999, taking courses in black and white photography at Holyoke Community College. I am grateful for the early support and mentoring of several local photographic artists:  Roy Mansur and Robin Demetrius for their encouragement and instruction, and Les Campbell whose friendship and inspiration I will always treasure.

I currently use an Olympus OM-D camera.  My photographs have undergone little or no digital manipulation.  In addition to the large photographs and smaller 11 x 14 photographs in this exhibit, I have 70+ different photographic greeting cards.  The cards are sold during open studios and at several retail outlets, including River Valley Market in Northampton and the Keystone Vintage Market in Easthampton.

I am grateful for the opportunity to exhibit my work at the Valley Photo Center.

Partial list of solo exhibits within the Pioneer Valley:

Cooley Dickinson Hospital, (2021, 2019, 2017)

Lathrop Communities Art Gallery, Easthampton (2019, 2015, 2010)

Cider House, Easthampton, MA (2018)

The City Hall Gallery, Easthampton, MA (2012-13, 2005)

Easthampton City Arts Gallery (2009)

Northampton Senior Center Gallery (2008)

Burnett Gallery, Jones Library, Amherst (2007)  

Northampton Cooperative Bank, Florence and Northampton Branches (2006)

Robert Floyd Gallery, Southampton (2005)

Hosmer Gallery, Forbes Library, Northampton (2002)


Memberships:  Pioneer Valley Photographic Artists

                          Cottage Street Studios

                          Easthampton City Arts

March, 2022 - Ana'aya McGowan Mozell 

My name is Ana'aya McGowan Mozell, I was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts. I am a 20 year old college student with an associates degree in digital photography. My interest in photography grew when I was in high school when I joined my school's photo club. With the access of having my own camera and equipment, it led me to have the freedom of enjoying myself in taking pictures. I began to take pictures of close subjects -- my family members, then to landscape and urban architecture from my city. I tend to doubt myself along the way but when people noticed my work I took pride in what they were seeing. I want people to see what I see in the world and learn their views or outputs in my images. As I am continuing in my photography, I hope for one day I will work in a fashion magazine to even own my own art gallery. 

January, 2022 - Ellen Finkelstein

                                                                                 September 2020 - Jeff Green


Jeff Green

In my fine art photography I aim to convey the “gestural” energy in the natural world. Focusing primarily on water and flora I seek to reveal the often unseen patterns, textures and rhythms that reflect this energy. Color, a sense of movement, and spontaneity are important expressive elements for me as they counter my more deliberative nature. Location, time of day and mood influence the resulting imagery, which I hope engender a sense of wonder and optimism. My images are captured in a variety of locations including Long Island, America's National Parks, Iceland, Aruba, Arizona, Alaska, Upstate New York and New England. I handle the complete workflow of each image, from capture, through editing and digital development, to producing the final print. My full-time foray into photography is the fourth step in my passion-based professional life, which started in the world of advertising as a strategic planner. After a second master’s degree (in psychology and marketing), I transitioned into a highly fulfilling 9-year period as a clinical professor of marketing. From there I spent most of the last 4 years as an entrepreneur, trying to build a marketing-based software-as-a-service business, which was a valuable learning experience.

                                                                             October 2020 - Fairway Photos


The name FairwayPhotos seemed like a natural extension of my career in the golf industry and my love of photography. I retired after a long career as the Director of the Presidents Golf Course in Quincy Massachusetts. Since that time, I have worked tirelessly on photography and meeting my clients imaging needs.
                                                                                  March 2020 - Richard Harper


Richard Harper

Photography is a skill that I originally developed 50 years ago while serving in the United States Navy. After serving in the Navy, however I took a different path, left the field of photography and pursued a career in chemistry.   Upon earning my degrees in Chemistry, Biochemistry and eventually an MBA I spent the next 50 years in the OTC pharmaceutical industry in product development, biochemical research and operations management. When I retired in October 0f 2017, I made a decision to renew my interest in photography.  A lot has changed in 50 years and I had to basically start from the beginning. It was somewhat overwhelming at first, but little by little, with the aid of so many technological advances and assistance from my friends of the Springfield Photographic Society I am becoming more comfortable being able to express myself through the world of photography.

Photography is for me, a way of enjoying the wonders of everyday life. It is the medium that I use to connect with the world around me, grasp a moment in time and share these moments with others. My camera allows me to better understand and appreciate what both nature and man have created, tell stories of everyday life and express my emotions through my images. I make my home in East Longmeadow with my wife Debi who is also retired as a licensed private detective. My daughter Meredith Is a Doctor of Pharmacy specializing in oncology. She is currently developing the first cancer treatment center for the Navajo nation in Arizona. A chemist will tell you that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only altered…..a photographer will tell you that matter can be captured forever…….

February 2020 - Vietnam, Then and Now

February 2020 - Phil Mardoc


February 2020's show will include photographs from artists Phil Mardoc, Dave Tela, and Jim Cryan.


Phil Mardoc

Faces and Colors of Vietnam - 2019

The images in this exhibition are drawn primarily from my Spring 2019 solo visit to Vietnam, which was my second - but also includes a few images from my first visit in the Spring of 2018.

Employing a travelogue, almost journalist approach, my hope is to provide viewers with windows into the sheer beauty and vibrancy of the people, places, cultures and food that compelled me to fall hopelessly in love with this country that is about as far and as different from my home in Connecticut as I could be – and yet now, feels so familiar and comforting that I plan to continue to get to know and to photograph it. Since I tend to travel and photograph solo, my approach to photography when traveling has essentially become two-fold: first, to capture primarily cellphone snapshots of a location that help provide a viewer with some context; and then, to move in closer – at times, very close - with my full-frame DSLR and portrait lens, attempting to capture fleeting moments via informal and street portrait photos. These two elements – stepping back, then moving in close – help to provide viewers with a fuller understanding of a place and of the people who live there. If I have a photographic goal, it is to aspire to capture simple subjects in ways that are so compelling, that at least once in a while, a viewer’s first reaction is, “Wow!”

Special Thanks

Since I appear in some of the photos in this exhibit, I want to give special credit and thanks to all of my Vietnamese guides, many who quickly became close friends, for most of the photos that include me: Trang, Sky and Khoi in Ho Chi Minh City; Tram in Hoi An; Van in Hue; Hien in Hanoi, Ninh Binh and on her parents’ farm; Za in Bac Ha and Can Cau, and Song in Sapa. I would also like to give extra-special thanks and credit to my dear friend, Lan in Hue, particularly for her amazing photos of my visit to an elementary school there, as a special guest, where I was unexpectedly treated like a rock star by the students. This unique opportunity was arranged by Lan and one of her girlfriends, who happens to be a teacher at this school.

Phil's Biography

Phil Mardoc is an amateur photographer who is a relative newcomer to digital photography. Phil’s introduction to digital photography was a basic adult education class in 2014, taken in preparation for an immersive, month-long solo road-trip through the deep south and Texas from his home in Connecticut – 20 different hotels in 30 days - documenting the adventure through photos that he included in a travel blog, and sharing the blog in real-time with family, friends and co-workers back home. The result was that people could not wait for each next installment of his life on the road. This was the beginning. 

Since that time, Phil has become passionate about documenting and sharing solo travel adventures, while connecting with the people he meets, through conversations, local cuisine, hiking, social partner-dancing, live music, horseback riding, motorbike tours, off-the-beaten-path experiences, almost anything – but always focused on photography and cultural immersion – getting to know some of the people who make these unique places their home. 

Phil’s earliest exposure to working with photography began through high school classes in 35mm film photography in the mid-1970’s. During this time, he immersed himself for countless hours in his parents’ basement, using his father’s rudimentary 1940’s era darkroom equipment to develop and print black and white images he had captured with his father’s 35mm Minolta rangefinder camera. This is where Phil believes he began to develop a photographer’s eye for subjects and composition. 

Ironically, other than snapshots, Phil spent little time doing photography for nearly the next forty years. Instead, focusing on a brief career as a residential remodeling contractor, followed by his lengthy current career in the corporate world, while raising a family and maintaining his earliest creative outlets - playing guitar and singing. 

Through most of his college experience, Phil majored in classical guitar performance at the Hartt School of Music, at the University of Hartford, eventually changing his major. These days, Phil’s musical focus is on songwriting in the Alternative-Country and Americana music genres. Playing guitar, singing, live performance and more-recently song-writing have been a major part of Phil’s life for over 50 years. While choosing not to attempt to earn a living through these artistic endeavors – but rather, support his artistic outlets via his corporate career - a creative, artistic and detail-oriented mindset has evolved into the continuous thread that has run throughout Phil’s life.

Through this current exhibit, Phil hopes to inspire viewers to see and think about Vietnam in different ways than perhaps they have previously. And perhaps, in the process, to further inspire viewers and photographers alike, to create their own travel adventures to destinations as culturally and visually different from the U.S. as is Vietnam.


Dave Tela

Biography

Turners Falls was a great place for Dave to grow up. The small active airport was near his home and he could get on a bicycle and head down to Valley Camera Supply on Avenue A to purchase film and darkroom chemistry. Aviation was a tease but not a career dream like photography.

Mr. Oakes, his high school English teacher and an amateur photographer, would lend tremendous encouragement and opportunity to Dave to become a very active student photographer. Many of his photographs were published in the Greenfield Recorder’s “Teen Scene” page, the local newspaper for Franklin County.

With acceptance at RIT to enter the Photographic Illustration BFA program as a member of the class of 1969, Dave was rewarded with a high level of photographic education and opportunity. After learning the situational awareness discipline of Henri Cartier-Bresson and his decisive moment style as contrasted with the technical and patient aesthetic control of Ansel Adams, they together became Dave’s guiding photographic force.

In the fall of 1967, he spent many hours in the RIT campus library reading about Vietnam, as well as subscribing to an English language North Vietnamese newspaper and booklets and purchasing Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. Go to Canada or enlist? He had no interest in waiting for a draft notice. Newly graduated artists didn’t get deferments.

Dave entered the US Army on July 24, 1968. After training he was sent to Vietnam in September 1969 and assigned to A Troop, 3/17 Air Cavalry at Di An north of Saigon as an AH-1G Cobra gunship pilot. Situational awareness practices developed through thousands of image exposures were now used to stay alive in a front-line combat role. Photographic skills now became survival skills.

With the aid of a plastic Kodak Instamatic camera with no exposure or focus control, he was able to capture moments of his time from January to June of 1970. Dave exposed only two rolls of film, one negative and one transparency.

This photograph collection represents part of his time as a direct participant in war. All, except for two images, were taken with his Kodak Instamatic. Fellow pilots Ed Soliday and Bob Dibbern used their respective 35mm cameras for their images. Spending even a moment as a spectator photographing the environment and people was not comfortable for him so the camera was put away.

Dave’s departure from Vietnam in September 1970, with 1,150 combat flying hours, marked the beginning of a new life. Survival was an unexpected achievement.

After a short tour of duty at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia as the arts and crafts director in special services Dave left the Army with 2 years, 8 months and 8 days of active service and an honorable discharge. With a return to college and new life choices and on to many minor professional successes he eventually was hired by General Dynamics where he worked for 27 years.

Today he lives with his wife Phyllis in Windham Connecticut.



November, 2019 Photos by Butch Griffin

Photographer's description:

This show is representative of some of my work along the Northeast seacoast and some select scenes from the American West.

The Northeast Collection includes my award winning foggy cove 'Dinghy Beach' photo as well as pictures of the historic Mystic, Connecticut lighthouse, of waves crashing on the deck of a boat the midst of a heated regatta, and of the peaceful, fading light reflecting off boats at the end of a day of sailing on Narragansett Bay.

The West is represented by pictures of a haunting, long forgotten ghost town in New Mexico,  of ancients ruins from a once great, now vanished, civilization, and of beautiful, majestic mountains reaching for the sky. 

These descriptions are but a few examples of my photography.  I have many more to offer and invite you to visit the Valley Photo Center gallery on Tuesday - Friday from 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM.  There will be a reception for the exhibit on Saturday, November 9th, from 5:00 - 7:30 PM.

October, 2019 

 

Nancy O. Albert Artist Statement for the exhibition 

Endangered Landscapes, Urban and Rural

 

The images in this exhibition are part of a self-initiated project to document vernacular structures and industrial sites in the Carolinas that are being lost through urban sprawl, changing economics and simple neglect. I began the project in 2006, shortly after after moving to Charlotte, NC. In many ways it is a continuation of the work I had been doing in New England since the 1980's. The rural images include several of tobacco barns, iconic structures and that once numbered in the thousands in North Carolina. I also havea longstanding interest in derelict urban and industrial sites that began while photographing the mills that were once clustered around New England's rivers. That industry moved south but very few of the early structures remain standing.  

 

While photographing abandoned landscapes I have come to savor the colors I find at there. Of particular interest is the process of oxidation-what happens to metal as it rusts? Why are there so many varieties of rust?  When painted surfaces are exposed to sun and rain, layers of color and history are revealed. My work explores the the vagueries of neglect, looks at how vegetation overtakes the human-built, the patterns formed by lichen and moss on stone.  I am intrigued by the beauty of these time-worn structures. And though my photographs seldom contain people, my work attempts to capture a sense of time and place by making visual records of spaces where people spent long hours of their lives, focusing on what they saw and used and what was left behind.

 

Although I began my documentary work using a medium format film camera, all of these works are digital images; archival ink jet prints, many on watercolor paper, whose texture I feel further emphasizes the layers of the past revealed through time and weathering.

Biography for Nancy O. Albert

noalbert@carolina.rr.com

www.noalbert.com  

 

 

Inspired by the great documentarians of the 1930’s, Nancy O. Albert has made photographs of disappearing environments for over 30 years. Born in Holyoke, MA  she is a graduate of Trinity College and Wesleyan University. She began photographing textile mills in her native New England during the 1980's, using medium format b&w film. Among her documentary commissions were ones to record structures about to be demolished, including Long River Village, Middletown, CT's oldest housing project. She has also curated exhibitions of historic images; worked with Trinity College students to document Hartford neighborhoods; published photo essays and was photo editor for the Hog River Journal,a regional history magazine. Albert's work has been exhibited in galleries in MA and CT including at the Connecticut Historical Society and the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum. Her entire collection of New England images is now housed at Wesleyan University's Special Collections and Archives. In 2016, a retrospective exhibition, Documents in Black and White,celebrated the acquisition.

 

After moving to Charlotte, NC in 2006 she continued exploring the built environment, focusing on rural structures such as and barns, farm houses and crossroads stores, as well as the area's few remaining textile mills. In 2016 she was awarded a Community Supported Arts grant from Charlotte's Arts and Science Council to create 50 images of NC tobacco barns; humble structures that once dotted the Carolina landscape. In 2017 she was given an Individual Artist grant to continue the project. This culminated in a collaboration with the NC Preservation Office to create an online gallery of barn images. Also in 2016,Rust Revival,an  exhibition of abandoned industrial sites, was mounted at Charlotte's Ciel Gallery where she was a member artist. In 2018 her work was included inThe Fantastic Woman at Met Contemporary Gallery in Rock Hill, SC. As a member of the Aperture Collective, a woman's photography group, her images were shown in An Alternate Perspective anexhibitionat C-3 Lab in Charlotte.  In January of 2019 she collaborated with two other artists for the exhibition When Worlds Collide: The Interaction of Art and Chemistry at Central Piedmont Community College's Ross Gallery.  Since 2015 she has organized Photography and the Art of Seeing  workshopsurban explorationsof Charlotte's disappearing historic neighborhoods. 

 

 

 

May, 2019 - Steve Dunwell

Steve Dunwell- “With these Hands” – May, 2019 

Short Biography for Steve Dunwell 


STEVE DUNWELL makes photographs of New England – its people, landscape, and industry – for publications, for collectors, and for advertising.  Many of his photographs are featured in fourteen picture books on regional subjects. 

Industrial history has been a primary interest for Dunwell throughout his professional career.  Between 1973 and 1977, he photographed inside and around numerous textile mills in New England.  Combined with a rich illustrated historical narrative, this work was published as The Run of the Millby David R. Godine Press in  1978. 


 “With These Hands” is a collection of the textile worker portraits that formed the core of that mill documentation project.  

 In 1980, Dunwell worked with Michael Folsom to document the existing condition of the F. C. Lowell mill at Waltham for the Historic American Engineering Record. Folsom did the groundwork for the re-use of this mill for housing, and created the Charles River Museum of Industry on the site.  

Since that time, Dunwell has continued to visit and document industrial sites around New England, with a special emphasis on early hydro power and textiles.   He also works on corporate and editorial assignments, concentrating on architecture and aerials. His outstanding regional images are published by Back Bay Press, including Extraordinary Bostonand the best-selling Boston Freedom Trail. 

Steve Dunwell lives in Boston.   His photographs are included in numerous corporate and private collections as well as museums and libraries. 

Contact:  steve@stevedunwell.com   


March, 2019

Stephen Petegorsky is an artist and freelance photographer based in Florence, Massachusetts. Born in New York City, he graduated from Amherst College and later received his M.F.A. in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design. He has taught at Amherst College, Smith College, Hampshire College, and the University of Connecticut.

His work has been exhibited internationally, and is in collections throughout this country as well as in Europe


Step by Step

Photographs by Stephen Petegorsky

Since 1998, Stephen Petegorsky has been documenting the work of the Polus Center for Social and Economic Development, a small human services agency that seeks to improve the lives of victims of conflict and people with disabilities. He has traveled with them to Nicaragua, Honduras, Peru, Colombia, Ethiopia, Jordan, Tajikistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Their efforts have led to the creation of prosthetics clinics, a leadership institute for people with disabilities, a fund to assist landmine victims in coffee-growing countries, and a rehabilitation center serving Syrian refugees.

The aim of this ongoing body of photographic work is not simply to show the horror or sadness of limb loss and disability, but rather to create a compassionate view of people who have suffered, and to depict the efforts being made to help them lead better lives. 

People with disabilities in poor countries are typically at a severe disadvantage regarding employment, mobility, and access to their community. Losing a limb often means losing the ability to earn a living, to get an education, or to acquire new job skills. Thus the possibility of receiving a prosthetic limb, a wheelchair, or other forms of assistance is of life-changing significance to individuals, their families, and their communities. It can determine whether someone can rebuild his or her life and be self-reliant, or if they will instead remain dependent and indigent.

February, 2019

Life Studies: Lantern Slides

This body of work represents a course of discovery and experimentation for me. This project began in 2008 when I first saw the lantern slides made in the 1930s and 40s by the British mathematician Dorothy Wrinch (1894–1976). The earliest slides are handmade, with black tape holding the two plates of glass together. The more professional later slides are edged with a red tape and many have intricately detailed patterning on the paper masking. The slides tell the story of a failed theory, the first theory of protein architecture. They take us back eighty years, to a time before penicillin and the electron microscope and the double helix, when ideas with regard to protein molecules were in a state of chaos. Chaos—until Wrinch devised the beautiful, skeletal models shown in these slides. She made the unseeable imaginable, the unimaginable visible. 

These lantern slides, themselves an obsolete technology, speak poignantly to the passing of scientific ideas. Yet the life and vitality they still possess show us why they once lit the scientific sky. The slides stimulated me to imagine their resurrection. I began by photographing plants outside my studio. It was January and the plants were dormant, waiting for the snows to melt before coming back to life. I then proceeded to photograph dead leaves, decaying tree trunks, bamboo shoots bent over from the snows, gnarled tree roots, denuded bushes, dried rushes along the banks of Mill River. All were in a state of life—lost or dormant—like the lantern slides and the theory they encoded. 

Combining my photographs and Wrinch’s lantern slides leads me to what Nabakov calls “a kind of delicate meeting place between imagination and knowledge, a point arrived at by diminishing large things and enlarging small ones, that is intrinsically artistic.” I am both documenting her slides and interpreting them in a new way. I preserve her notations, labeling, taped edges, and illustrations. But, by combining and embedding my images, I am creating a new world within the boundaries of each slide. 

Each lantern slide Iris print contains two voices, the photographer and the scientist. At the same time, each print transcends the hands and minds that created it.

 

About Stan Sherer

Stan Sherer has published five books of photographs, including Long Life to Your Children! a portrait of High Albania and Founding Farms. He was a Fulbright Scholar to Albania, a recipient of two Mass Foundation grants, and numerous other grants and awards. He has exhibited his photographs across the United States and in Europe. Exhibits/USA traveled his exhibition On the Land: Three Centuries of American Farmlifethroughout the country for ten years. Sherer has worked as a photojournalist and documentary photographer in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean, and in Asia. He has a strong interest in local history and is Vice President of the Board of Trustees of Historic Northampton.  

His documentary film The Brush Shop, a depiction of the now defunct local manufacturer Pro Brush, was shown in the 2017 Northampton Film Festival. His new his film, The Gilded Cage: Northampton’s Last Water-Powered Elevator,was premiered at Historic Northampton in 2018 and will also be screened at the 2018 Northampton Film Festival.

Stan Sherer holds a B.A. from the City University of New York and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts 

For more information:

www.stansherer.com

 

Egyptography

Photographs by Frank Ward

Egypt is crowded, empty, noisy, meditative, angry, serene, and filled with beauty and squalor. For me, Egypt generates a total visual immersion that has the possibility to expose these dualities simultaneously.  Five thousand years of human antiquity lie under its deserts and along the Nile. I am a new arrival to one of the world’s most spectacular destinations. In 2018, I stand agape in a sandstorm in Giza. My camera does not see the skyline; I isolate rectangles of light forming in the spinning sand.

About Frank Ward 

Ward is a Professor of Art at Holyoke Community College. In 2017, Ward was honored with the Distinguished Service Award for Contributions to Photography in the Pioneer Valley, presented by the Pioneer Valley Photographic Artists. In 2016, Ward received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant and a Mass Humanities grant for his continuing photography of Holyoke, Massachusetts. Previously, in 1991, Ward received the National Endowment for the Arts/ New England Foundation for the Arts Photography Grant for El Proyecto Holyoke/ The Holyoke Project

Frank Ward was born in Taunton, MA in 1949. He received a BA from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA from Bard College. He lives in Ashfield, MA. 

January, 2019

Seeking Sacred Landscapes 

Images of the Maya Caves and Cenotes of the Yucatán region in Mexico

By

Bruce.T. Martin 

With additional essays by James E. Brady, California State University, Los Angeles, CA, Maria de Lourdes Melo, Macquarie University, Sydney and Paul Munro, University of New South Wales, Sydney.

The Maya Caves and Cenotes of the Yucatán region in Mexico are fragile, organic, limestone tunnels and caverns that run below and along the surface of the earth. They are beautiful, mysterious and compelling examples of the majesty of our natural environment. Caves and cenotes, shrouded by darkness and difficult to access, are a significant symbol of human’s primordial fear of what we don’t comprehend and our desire to comprehend our surroundings.

These images examine the visual and material attributes of caves, early foundations of both the Maya’s worldview and ours. Caves and cenotes challenge both our understanding of the physical world and their spiritual connections. Upon consideration, we find common ground with the Maya, along with a greater awareness of who we are and the world we live in. In addition, the value of clean water sources will continue to grow as a critical aspect of human rights issues for the Maya and rest of the world.

These photographs of caves and cenotes are a component piece from my photographic project on the Maya, Look Close See Far,A Cultural Portrait of the Maya. This project examines the Maya region of Central America, an area both beautiful and complex in its nature. It is a place where the delicate balance between society and the environment dominates life and challenges one's view of reality. Since 1987, I have gathered more than 10,000 images over a range of landscapes and attitudes in an attempt to make a distinctive portrait of this singular culture.

Caves and cenotes are an integral part of Maya mythology, perception and cultural understanding. As natural openings and gateways to the Maya underworld Xibalba, they are fundamental sources of sacred energy and power. Many of the Maya’s defining myths take place in caves. Different legends tell a variety of distinctive and overlapping stories. Corn, a primary source of food for the Maya was found in a cave. Entering the archetypal cave, the Hero Twins of the Popol Vuh, the Maya creation story, travel a dangerous journey to defeat the Maya Gods of Death of the Underworld. By allowing themselves to be sacrificed, the Hero Twins become reborn as the Sun and the Moon. Caves were and are also believed to be a source of malevolent energy and disease carrying winds. 

My motivation is to use photography to document our world, explore our perceptions and question our viewpoints. In the Maya Communities of Central America today, their pre-Columbian earth lords are still revered, their deceased ancestors are consulted with ritual, and harmony in life is a daily struggle.  With the rapid development of recent years, many contrasting and often violent viewpoints have been introduced, so that the Maya and their environment are being overwhelmed.  Surviving these disruptive influences and maintaining their cultural dignity is the challenge for an uncertain future that the Maya now face.

The future for the Maya and this region is unclear. With a greater awareness of their issues, a more productive dialogue on the Maya and their land can begin that promotes cultural diversity, protects their environment and increases respect for their fading traditions.

About Bruce 

Bruce T. Martin is an American fine art photographer who uses photography to document the world, explore perceptions, and question our viewpoints. After graduating from Syracuse University in 1977, he began working as a Historical Preservation photographer, using photography to help put endangered buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. His photographs are in a number of private and public collections and have been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Central America. Today, along with exhibiting his fine art photography projects, he is an architectural photographer, making photographs for the nation's foremost architects, designers, and publications. 

December, 2018

What do 16 amazing award winning women, A group of antique Indian motorcyclists and a pool player in Ireland all have in common?

Robert Charles Photography presents a unique celebration of life in Western Massachusetts with photographic artist Robert Francis Zemba. This unique exhibit celebrates a journey over 30 years in the making. Sharing a passionate love for creating imagery reflecting our Pioneer Valley. 

Whether working in the world of the antique Indian Motorcyclists or being humbled by the incredible stories of a 100 year young award recipient the common thread of this exhibit is an inexhaustible sense of curiosity. The goal is finding a connection in spirit between the artist the subject and you the viewer.

16 large canvas portraits honoring the recipients of the Western Massachusetts Women’s Fund Standing on her Shoulders award are the centerpiece of this exhibit. Click here for their story.

10 portraits celebrating the incredible 2004 cross country Journey home Indian Motorcycle ride from Ca. to Springfield, Ma. Summer of 2004. Photographed with a 4X5 Zone VI camera manufactured in Newfane Vt. with legendary Tri-x film and printed on good old Kodak Fiber warm tone paper. 

5 Poloroid SX-70 Emulsion Manipulation enlargements (affectionately called Smoosh ups). These are basically poloroid prints that were warmed up and physical pressure through a stylus was used to gently push the dyes around. These images were then enlarge for easier viewing.

10 Personality portraits all monochromatic in varying formats and films ranging from 35mm Infrared Kodak film, to Nikon DSLR’s, and even some large format film. See if you can find which is which.

The images on exhibit are on loan from private collections and are not for sale, they are for enjoyment for this month only. 

October, 2018

 Ed Los and Friends

Ed Los, of Chicopee, went to art school in Rhode Island to study photography, and has worked professionally as an artist his whole career. He has exhibited in various art shows throughout New England and elsewhere.

 

His works on display in this exhibit are called photograms -- pictures produced with light-sensitive paper, rather than with a camera. “It’s very abstract,” Los said. “I don’t use a camera; I don’t use film. I use a little box that I built: It’s like a big flashlight. No negatives, no camera -- that black box is my paintbrush.” Photograms originated in the 19th century and were used by well-known 20th-century artists including Man Ray. “I didn’t want to copy them, so I came up with my own system,” Los said. “They put the objects on the paper, so I said, ‘I’ve got to come up with a different idea.’ ”

 

His idea was to make little sculptures from cut-up photosensitive paper in his studio, and then to “paint” those sculptures with light in the darkroom, using the light box he had built. “It took me about six months to control it, and a few years to master it,” he said. The result, a striking abstract image, is unlike what most people imagine when they think of a photograph. In fact, for most people in Western Massachusetts, this could be their first chance to see what a photogram looks like outside of a book, Los noted. Placing the two artists’ work side by side in this exhibit encourages the public to look at images both real and surreal with fresh eyes. “Abstract photography is very subjective for each individual viewer and, most of the time, requires them to think,” Gomes said. “Since the viewer is no longer able to recognize a particular object, the photo is more likely to evoke an emotional reaction and allows him/her to put a personal spin or interpretation on what they're seeing.

September, 2018 

Street And Travel Photography, 

by Len Seeve, Paul Hetzel, and Joel Davidson

Len Seeve

Len Seeve is a Psychiatrist living in Amherst, MA, where he is an active member of the Pioneer Valley Photographic Artists. His work has been shown at several locations in the Pioneer Valley area, including solo exhibits at the Springfield Museum of Art, Jones Library, Forbes Library, Cooley Dickinson Hospital, the Baystate Medical Center Galleries as well as the Vermont Center for Photography in Brattleboro.

Artist’s Statement:

Photography has always fascinated me. On the one hand, it is the visual medium that can most closely mirror reality – a photograph is created not with paint or clay, but with the same light that enters the human eye and becomes an image in the mind. On the other hand, a photograph can be much more than a faithful copy of the world around us. In the words of Alfred Stieglitz, “In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” It is in Stieglitz’s subtle reality that the process of reproduction ends, and the art of photography begins.

Forty years ago, I bought a Pentax SLR, set up a crude darkroom, and I began to explore the art form. However, despite a few early successes, I was not entirely satisfied. While I always had a clear mental picture of the end result, I increasingly found myself becoming a slave to the process. I would emerge from my darkroom, blinking myopically and smelling of developer and stop bath, frustrated that I would never be able to achieve on paper what my mind’s eye saw all too clearly.

With the advent of digital imaging, a world of possibility emerged. Not only was my artwork liberated from the tyrannical chemistry of the darkroom, but computers were able to transform my photographs in ways I had never imagined. My passion for photography rekindled, I began to search for new ways to achieve the disconnected subtlety of not-quite-reality.

As for the subject matter of my photographs, it almost always plays a secondary role. Each of my works is intended to be viewed as a study in shape, color, and texture. The subjects I choose are widely varied – buildings and bridges often emphasize a certain stark geometric structure; natural scenery can serve as a foundation for experimentation with color and focus. Whatever the subject, my works are images first, reproductions second.

Contributed Work: Landscapes and portraits from his most recent trip to Vietnam.

Paul Hetzel

Paul Hetzel seriously took up photography in 1994 while on a trek to Mount Everest. The landscapes were inspiring and worthy of preserving. Upon return to Springfield, he constructed a darkroom in the basement and watched as the magic unfolded before his eyes.

His early mentors, Jack Holowitz, Steve Sherman and Stan Sherer taught him the basics of light, composition and form.

In 1995 he switched to the digital medium which gave him finer control of the final image. He subsequently participated in workshops given by John Sexton, Charles Cramer, Jack Dykinga, Justin Black and John Shaw. Paul is a member of the Pioneer Valley Photo Artists and the Suffield Photographic Group. His images have won awards locally and internationally.

Contributed Work: The theme of my collection will be to give observers a feel for the geography of Nepal and Tibet, their citizens and how the Buddhist religion plays an an essential role in their lives. 

Joel Davidson

 I thoroughly enjoy photography because it forces me to carefully study, observe and record the world around me. I work to convey the essence of a person, place, animal, or bird in a fraction of a second.

I am particularly interested in portraiture whether it is in my private studio or when visiting foreign countries. When traveling, I try to build a rapport with individuals and hope I am then given permission to photograph them. This process has been a rewarding experience for me personally. Through my images, I try to tell a story or evoke an emotion in those who view my work. 

Contributed Work: Our recent trip to Northern India was enlightening. The bright colors, religious chants, luxurious textiles, flavorful foods and sweet floral aromas awaken our senses. I hope my images will take you along with us on this unforgettable journey. 

New England Large Format Photography Collective

Cate Brown


My photography has taken me on unhindered explorations of coastline throughout there world. But no matter where my work has taken me, I can always find solace walking the sandy shores of home in southern New England. This body of work focuses on my abstract series and aerial perspectives to bring a comprehensive expression of the unique beauty and intrigue of a place defined by both land and sea. 

Driven by an equal love for the ocean and beautiful photographs, my aim is to draw you into a world defined and surrounded by sandy beaches and salty ocean waters. 

I hope that my photography not only invokes the smell of salt air, the sound of ocean water and sensations of salt spray, but also an appreciation and respect for our Oceans. We owe so much to the waters that have given us life, abundance and a calling for exploration and expression. The Sea inspires me to capture its likeness through creative vision, and in turn I hope my images will motivate others to return to the Sea to find their own inspiration.

“The sea, once it casts its spell, hols one in its net of wonder forever.” –Jacques Yves Cousteau

Biography

I developed a love for photography at a young age. It all started with my mom’s Canon AE-1 35mm film camera in the backyard. I was enchanted by the feel of the controls and the sound of the shutter. I took my love of photography to college, graduating from Fitchburg State in Massachusetts with a degree in both Photography and Professional Communication. But only a few short years “landlocked” in central Massachusetts was enough for me to realize what else mattered to me just as much: the ocean. 

After graduating, I moved back home to southern Rhode Island and reconnected with the coastal community. I started to bring my love of sailing into my work by building a nautical portfolio. But I felt a dichotomous undertone in what I was photographing. I found myself almost exclusively photographing sailing during summer months, and seascapes in the off season. My work was so different in each I felt hard pressed to choose one path or the other, to find a singular creative expression. 

Over the past few years I have embraced this dual nature to my shooting, and have found photographing a combination of marine sports and fine art seascapes does not divide my attention or draw energy from one to execute the other. Rather, they work to reinforce my view of the world, keep my vision sharp and clear, and allow play and creative exploration by bringing techniques from one genre into the other. 

Today, my body of fine art work is an expression of years of walking beaches, digging my toes in the sand, getting wet in the middle of winter, and testing the limits of my creativity. My favorite series to explore includes my panning and abstract series, whereby I utilize motion blur techniques to best capture the feeling of the water and waves. My aerial drone pieces incorporate entirely new perspectives as I continue to explore the coast line from the air. 

My work has taken me on road trips across the country, on travels through Europe, and sailing through the Caribbean. I have been awarded Second Place for my Seascape photography in the international 2015 Neutral Density Awards, the Excellence Award for my abstract work at Warwick Center of the Arts, and a Finalist in both the María Luisa International 2017 and Siena International 2016 photography awards. My seascapes have found themselves displayed in exhibitions from Rhode Island to Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. 

But no matter where my work has taken me, I can always find solace walking the sandy shores of home with my camera. Through my work, I hope you may also fall in love with the unique beauty and intrigue of a place defined by both land and sea.

www.catebrownphoto.com • Rhode Island

                                                        Fran Gardino

Fran Gardino has a BFA in Painting from the Massachusetts College of Art, which included Photography courses with such notables as Garry Winogrand and Gus Kayafas.  He also pursued graduate studies at Harvard University Extension with Frank Gohlke and Jack Lueders Booth.

He has self-published 4 photo books on blurb.com: “Manhole Covers Etc.”, a collection of over 400 photos of utility covers from around the world, “Paint the Sky Fiery”, a series of night photos from Boston’s annual Fourth of July fireworks displays from 2005 to 2012,

“The Sky Mourns”, a photo book of the 2013 fireworks in honor of the Boston Marathon victims, and “Touch the Sky”, showing numerous photos of clouds (many of which are panoramas) taken from the windows of commercial flights.

Fran is represented in the Vermont Artisans Gallery in Brattleboro VT, has two grandformat images installed at Boston’s Logan Airport, and has had several solo photo shows in the Boston area, including his “Italian Journey” show at the Italian Consulate in the Federal Reserve Building in Boston and “Villaggio Italiano”, a show of three 30-foot, 360-degree images in mini-cycloramas on display at the Harvard Education Portal in Allston, MA.

Fran is the 2017-2019 president of the International Association of Panoramic Photographers,

http://www.panoramicassociation.org 

Stars and Lighthouses by David Zapatka

Our January, 2018 show, Stars and Lighthouses,  featured the work of Rhode Island David Zapatka opens on. For over 20 years David has been a freelance television cameramen working primarily for the US network news and sports programs. He got his photographic start as a 13 year-old with his first camera and with this portfolio he returns to his photographic roots.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Donate $50.00*to the Valley Photo Center and get a FREE autographed softcover copy of David Zapatka's book Stars & Lighthouses and a 2018 membership that entitles you to enter prints into our Spring and Fall 2018 Open Submission shows.

Just CLICK HERE to donate. You'll be able to pick up your book after the exhibit closes and our next exhibit opens in February during gallery hours, our Artist Reception, or by special arrangement by contacting me at valleyphotocenter@icloud.com.

*Donate $60.00 for a hardcover edition of the book signed by David Zapatka.

For more information about David Zapatka's work go to http://www.starsandlighthouses.com

Jack Holowitz, A Retorspective - December, 2017

Jack Holowitz Photographer

Jack Holowitz is part of a class of people that are few and far between: a creative soul who sees the world in Black and White. If you see a man along side of the road with a dark cloth over his head and a large camera on a tripod, it is more likely, Jack. 

Holowitz, of Longmeadow Ma. is world renown, and his work does not have a dated look to them.  “It is my hope that viewers won’t be able to tell the older images from the newer.” This idea of ageless is one that colors Holowitz’ words when he speaks of his work.

When viewing Jack’s work, it becomes clear that form and individuality are qualities he values in a photograph. In many of his landscapes, figures and portraits Holowitz, uses a unique process: platinum printing, an early version of developing that, according to Holowitz, gives an i

I use some of the same materials that they used in the 1800’s, when the platinum process was widely used. Platinum prints require the chemistry to be brushed on watercolor paper, rather then photographic paper. It has a distinctive texture as well as being one of a kind. Jack has studied with Ansel Adam's assistant, John Sexton, Bruce Barnbaum, George Tice, all well known in the black and white large format world. Jacks images are becoming more collectable everyday.

Jack is also  a well known portrait photographer, and has the highest degrees awarded from the Professional photographers of America. He is one of 60 in the world to have earned his Fellowship from the American Society of Photographers. He has also been given and Honorary Educational Degree from The American Society of Photographer. In Feb. Jack and wife Nancy were given The Professional Photographers of America's National award for their service to the Professional Photographers of Ct.

He spends much of his time traveling the country regularly, conducting master classes, seminars and workshops for Photographers. More of his images can be seen on Holowitz.com



Cuba: Culture, Cars, and Cigars - February, 2017

About Barb Krawczyk (Left)

Barb has lived in Westfield for 34 years and is a native of South Dakota. She is currently semi-retired and works part time for Pearson VUE as a test proctor after a career in marketing and employee communications. Her major hobbies are travel and photography. This show is an obvious combination of her true passions. Barb is currently president of the Westfield Camera Club and has served as an officer and on the Board of the Springfield Photographic Society. 

She holds the designations of PPSA and EPSA in the Photographic Society of America and has won many photographic awards locally, including at the Valley Photo Center, and internationally.

Her work has appeared in calendars, web sites, print marketing, newspapers, and magazines. She has also exhibited in various galleries, presents photographic software technique demonstrations and travelogues to camera clubs and serves as a judge for photographic competitions.

About Diane L. Savioli-Chase (Right)

Diane considered photography a hobby with specific interests in documenting travel and street life. She was given her own camera at 9 years old, when her grandparents took her to Italy.

She started using a Minolta 35 mm film camera on her first trip to Mexico in 1976. In 1981, she started a project with two other photographers traveling around New England documenting textile mills. This culminated in exhibits at the Quadrangle in Springfield and the Holyoke Textile Museum.

Diane spent many years documenting family travels to Mexico, Belize, Italy, London and France – first with film, then with a digital point and shoot camera – always upgrading to a more powerful zoom.  She currently takes the majority of her images with her cell phone – an LGg5.

She has had solo exhibits in local libraries as well a group shows at the Valley Photo Center and the Robert Floyd Gallery in Southampton, where she has won awards at both.

She works as an Ob/Gyn ultrasonographer at Hartford Hospital. Her ongoing project is street photography in the Park Street neighborhood in Hartford, CT. These photos can be viewed on Instagram under “dianeultra .”

Silver & Steel - Railroad Photogrphy by Bob Solomon - January, 2017

Brian Solomon Biography

Brian has authored and illustrated more than 60 books on railroads—including: Railway Depots, Stations & Terminals, North American Railroad Family Trees, North American Railroads, Coal Trains, Railroads of California, Railroads of Pennsylvania, North American Railroad Bridges, Conrail, Amtrak, and Railroad Signaling. He produces a popular railway photography web-blog called Tracking the Light (see: http://briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/) and divides his time between Massachusetts and Ireland. His articles and photography have appeared in the pages of many rail magazines, including Trains Magazine, Railway Age, Railroad Explorer, Germany’s Modelleisenbahner, and the Journal of the Irish Railway Record Society. 

Bob Solomon's Lumix Photos

While many of us carry a Smart Phone with us to make photos, Bob always has a bigger camera handy. He uses a variety of different cameras and formats to make his photos, but has a Lumix LX3 his Lumix LX7 handy even when he isn't on an assignment. These are some of the photos he made with these cameras. They were used in his book, Railway Depots, Stations, & Terminals that was published in 2015 by Voyageur Press.

International Association of Panoramic Photographers (IAPP)

December, 2016

International Association of Panoramic Photographers (IAPP) Reception December 3, 2016

Springfield Photographic Society September 6-30, 2016

Springfield…..Some say that “All Roads Lead from Rome.”  This show proudly states that “All Roads Lead from Springfield.”  Celebrate the “City of Homes” at the photography show All Roads Lead from Springfield.  Twenty members of the Springfield Photographic Society will exhibit approximately 80 photographs, most of which are for sale,  at the Valley Photo Center on the second floor of Tower Square in Springfield from September 6-30.  The show is sponsored by F.L. Roberts & Company.

All are welcome to the opening reception Thursday September 8th from 5-8pm.  Thursday is TGI(almost)F night.  Bring your friends to celebrate Springfield and surrounds.

The title of the show was chosen with an image in mind.  Picture the flaming ball of the sun emanating rays of different lengths.  Springfield is the ball, the center of the universe.  Shorter rays reflect places, people and nature close-by while longer ones reach out through New England and beyond.  Just as the sun’s rays illuminate our entire planet, photos will reflect scenes worldwide.  The exhibition begins with an exploration of Springfield.  As viewers wend their way through the gallery they’ll find treasures in our suburban towns, greater New England, on to Europe and as far as the South Pacific.

The Springfield Photographic Society welcomes new members from the photographic novice to the professional, who share one thing in common - a love of photography.  Meetings are held on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of each month from September to May at Loomis Lakeside at Reeds Landing in Springfield.  We plan educational activities and offer various events and field trips throughout the year, giving members a chance to have fun, share and learn with like-minded people.   Visit our website:  http://sps.photoclubservices.com.  For information on membership, please contact Kevin Fay at fay44@comcast.net.

  Connections & Disconnections

May16 -June 17, 2016

To watch interviews with the photographers that created this show click here:


Connections & Disconnections Interviews


Foundation for TJO Animals Show, "It's Raining Cats & Dogs" April - May, 2016

 Photos

Bark at the Moon Pet Photography

 http://www.barkatthemoonpetphotography.com

 Long Leash Pet Photography

http://longleashllc.com


 2016 Spring Open Submission Show

Photos for Sale Include Frames Unless Otherwise Noted contact valleyphotocenter@icloud to buy

Ed Cohen

Ed Cohen is a Springfield Ma based Freelance photographer who has been photographing in the Pioneer Valley and beyond for over 30 years. He is a former UMass Amherst and Springfield Technical Community College graduate. Ed s studies have concentrated on Diversity in Communications and has based his photography on presenting diversity in his imagery.

He has had many photographic exhibitions throughout the area, including University of Massachusetts, Northampton Center for the Arts, the Springfield Museums and Libraries, and the Carberry Gallery at Springfield Technical Community College. Ed collaborated with the late Mark Baszak on a book entitled Such Sweet Thunder; Views on Black American Music which featured photographs and text of the Jazz, Blues and Gospel musical idioms.

He has worked for such organizations as Greater Springfield YMCA, African American Point of View newspaper, Mass Live,Inspired Marketing, 6 Pont Creative, The Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield, the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, Springfield Museums, Spring of Hope Church, United Way of Pioneer Valley, Freedom Credit Union, Springfield Urban League, and Stone Soul Festival among others.

 

 Keith Spies' JAZZ GALLERY

Jazz Gallery is a collection of internationlly known jazz musicians photographed  between 1968-1982 by photographer Keith Sipes.

Many of the photographs were captured at concerts, jazz festivals, and jazz clubs in New York City where Keith grew up, and in Boston where he attended Berklee College of Music as a clarinet and composition major.

Keith Sipes is owner of Keith Sipes Photography, a wedding/portrait photography business located in Cromwell, Connecticut.

For information/purchase of these and other Jazz Gallery images, please contact us at

860 632-8989

keithphotography@sbcglobal.net

“Kintsukuroi” 

Exhibit by Alyssa Hansen Opening November 29, 2015 at the Valley Photo Center

Alyssa (Aly) Hansen was raised in rural New Hampshire and developed a love for photography at a rather young age. Over the years, her passion increased and her focus expanded from nature to portrait photography. Aly lives in Springfield and is studying nursing at Springfield Technical Community College. She has formed her own photography business and takes photos of families, individuals, and pets. Aside from photography, Aly enjoys bicycling, being outdoors, and spending time with her boyfriend and two dogs.

Aly has endured combination of severe depression, anxiety, and anorexia for the past seven years, and through these experiences she has learned how stigmatized mental illness can be. In October of 2014, she attempted suicide and in turn was hospitalized for eight days. Then, in May of 2015, she was placed in a treatment program for Anorexia Nervosa. Throughout her hospitalization and treatment program, she met many amazing people who experienced a range of illnesses, but were attempting to make themselves better by seeking recovery. Aly saw the recovery process as a long, yet beautiful, road.

This semester, Aly is participating in an independent study photography class, in which she is required to complete a three-month project using 35mm film. She decided to focus her project on reducing the stigma of mental illness. She interviewed and photographed people who have various types of mental illness in hopes to display each individual as someone who has grown and become a better person from dealing with their unique experiences. The hope of the project is to show how, although these people “suffer” from mental illness, they’ve grown from it and become stronger people. These people have been through struggles and many have felt “broken”, “unloved”, or “irreparable”, but yet they have not let that defeat or destroy them. Instead, they have conquered and come out as a stronger person. This is where the gallery title, “Kintsukuroi” comes from.

Kintsukuroi (kin-soo-koo-roy) is a form of Japanese art in which broken pottery is repaired with gold or silver lacquer. The word comes along with the understanding that the piece of pottery is more beautiful for having been broken and repaired. The pieces of Kintsukuroi blatantly display the damage and show off the pieces that have been broken in the past, but yet the pottery seems more beautiful than it did before, because the onlooker understands the history of the pottery more fully. With her artwork, Aly is seeking to display the human process of Kintsukuroi. 

Suzanne Revy, Bill Harting, & Ken Hanson Exhibit 

February 24 - March 20, 2015

Suzanne Révy

I am a portrait and fine art photographer based in the greater Boston area with a BFA in photography from Pratt Institute. After a decade in the field of magazine photography as a photo editor at U.S.News & World Report and Yankee Magazine, I left to raise two sons. I began photographing my boys, their cousins and friends, and have intuitively built two portfolios of pictures that explore the culture and nature of childhood, and my own emotional response as a witness to their growth and development.

My work has been exhibited at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA, the Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham, MA, The Workspace Gallery in Lincoln, NE, and the Camera Club of NY in New York City, New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, NH, and the New England School of Photography  in Boston. My work is represented by the Panopticon Gallery in Boston, MA

William Harting

William Harting started taking pictures on film and in black and white, and he continues to do so, trying to find what mysteries the shadows conceal. These pictures, except for the color one, were made by hand in a wet darkroom. 

Kenneth Hanson

Kenneth Hanson’s interest in landscape photography derived from his boyhood association with the English Lake District. The shore was a few minutes from his home, the Pennine moors were to the east and the horizon was a profile of the Lakeland Mountains.

            He began his serious, but part time, pursuit of large format black-and-white photography in 1978 when he acquired a Toyo 4x5 field camera. His experience as a laboratory oriented biochemist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station encouraged both his darkroom work and his interest in exploration. 

            Over the years Hanson has photographed with his view camera in New England, the California Sierra Nevada, Northern England (his home territory), India, and the Himalayas of Nepal, Tibet and Pakistan. More recently he has employed a digital camera to take color photographs in Tajikistan, Iran and Burma.  

            A constant anchor in his photography has been his involvement with Images, the annual juried show run by the Shoreline Arts Alliance. Between 1982 and 2013 he had 31 photographs included (First Honors, Best Portfolio, Honorable Mention, Viewer’s Choice.) He also hung Images over most of these years and in 2009 was designated Volunteer of the Year.  Inspired by former director Ann Christensen, he was for many years chair of the Alliance Visual Arts Committee. The 1989 Images poster “Braga in Evening Light” is included in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

            For a period Hanson was also a member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists. He was a founding member in 2004 of  the New England Large Format Photography Collective (NELFPC) and has been active in the New Haven Photo Arts Collective.    

            In addition to his participation in Images, there have been solo exhibits — The Homer Babbidge Library, UConn (1987, 1995); The Paul Mellon Arts Center, Wallingford (1987); Atlantic Film Works (1998, 2002): John Slade Eli House, New Haven (1998) The Jorgenson Gallery, UConn (2002), The Pfizer National Headquarters, New London (2002) and the New Haven Lawn Club (2014.) Images, maps and text were included as part of an exhibit of Tibetan Tangkas at the Benton Museum, UConn (2008.)   There have also been group exhibits and inclusion in 11 or more juried exhibits as well as membership exhibits. A number of his photographs have appeared in the Himalayan Research Bulletin

            A decisive turn was made in 1986 when his wife, Betty Hanson, a political scientist, was awarded a Fulbright to teach in India. He and his wife were able to take a trip, with the view camera, to the Annapurna region of Nepal. Thereafter he was hooked on these superb mountains. Peter Matthiessen’s book The Snow Leopard prompted him to sign up for two trips to the formerly closed area of Dolpo (1989 and 1993.)  Between came a mountaineering course in Washington State and a trip to the Dhaulagiri area 1992.  A major feature of these trips was the chance to encounter a culture built around Tibetan Buddhism (this was also a factor in the 1997 trip to Ladakh.) His exploration expanded northwest to Pakistan (1994 and 2001) and southeast to Kangchenjunga (1998). He visited the Everest area in 1996 (Ralwaling) and 1999 (Mera)  and in 2003 and 2005 made trips to the north and south Everest base camps.  Twelve trips in all.

            All this activity led to a large exhibit at the Jorgenson Gallery at the University of Connecticut in the fall of 2002. This was in conjunction with a Tibetan exhibit at the Benton Museum.  Discussions with Charles Fields led to the notion that a book could come out of the displayed material. However, the research needed to generate a scholarly text that would address the iconic nature of these mountains and their place in the Western imagination took about five years. The book

      Himalayan Portfolios; Journeys of the Imagination

was published by Fields Publishing in 2009.  It includes over 100 duotone black-and-white photographs and appropriate maps.   It received a Benjamin Franklin award for design from the Independent Publishers Association and it was a finalist in the Mountain Image category at the prestigious Banff Mountain Book Festival. It also received a starred review by the Library Journal (“Highly recommended; awesome images, insightful commentary.”) 

 Once the book was launched there were talks at the Peabody Museum in New Haven, the Benton Museum at UConn and other places.


Note on Digital Prints.  The early work all involved darkroom silver printing but advances in digital printing have made it possible to make archival prints using digital files generated from the 4x5 negatives.  This is especially useful where there are defects in the negative arising from the difficulties of keeping dust off sheet film loaded into holders in a tent. More significantly, many of my landscape images extend over more than one negative. Digital scanning makes it possible to print from a composite file.

 

These are the artists for the Holyoke Hunt's Photo & Video Sales Associate Show:


Andrew Mosijchuk
Andrey is a self-taught photographer who began taking pictures as a hobby. He enjoys going on adventures to photograph the splendid landscape of New England and other areas. A great part of the photography experience is that it   forces him to look at the outdoors in unique ways and helps build patience and determination. In his free time he also enjoys fishing and woodworking. 

Susan Mosijchuk
I'm new to this photography gig but I fell in love with it fast and hard. I picked up a camera a few years ago, and don't plan on putting it down at all for the rest of my days. Still in the experimental phase and working on finding my niche, but I'm discovering that people are my favorite works of art to capture. I hope to be telling some of your stories through photography and sharing some creative portraits with the world in the future. Currently in love with fog,faces,and film.

Steve Bidwell
Received my first camera in 9th grade and nobody could get the camera away from me ever since. Graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Art Institute of Minnesota. I have been specializing in architecture and documentary style photography ever since, but I love all aspects of photography.

Brian Nolte
Brian Nolte is a photographer from Southern California currently living in Amherst, MA. His images are critical observations of others in order to further understand one's own actions, relationships, and culture.. He is currently the photography editor for BOAAT PRESS.

Christopher Devine
Originally from West Hartford, Connecticut. I moved to Southern California to study Filmmaking and Photography at Brooks Institute graduating with a Bachelor of Arts. I enjoy photographing landscapes and nature scenes.

 

The following is a gallery of images from the Fall 2014 Open Submission Show. Click on one of the thumbnails to see a bigger image. The title of the print, artists name, and price of the print if it is for sale is on the bottom left of the enlarged image. If you want to buy one of the images please contact valleyphotocenter@icloud.com  to make arrangements. 

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – A unique way to pay tribute to our vets on Veterans Day night.

The Valley Photo Center, a non-profit gallery in Tower Square in Springfield, is displaying more than 100 years of military photographs.

The exhibit is entitled “Images from the Front & Home Front.” It features pictures taken by Defense Department photographers, historical photos from the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and from the Electric Boat submarine manufacturer in Groton, Connecticut.

The idea is to foster respect for the people performing the mission.

John McCarthy, a retired Marine Reservist from Wilbraham told 22News, “They may be against the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, they realize that the people that serve are really heroic, and we need to honor those people. They make a great sacrifice, and also their families’ sacrifice.”

Some of the photos feature western Massachusetts military personnel. The exhibit at Tower Square is open weekdays from 11am to 2pm. 

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – People with a creative eye got the chance to view a special photography exhibit on Sunday night.

The Valley Photo Center at Tower Square in Springfield was filled with the work of the New England Large Format Photography Collective.

It’s a group made up of more than 20 photographers from New England and beyond. They use large wooden cameras to take the photos.

These photographers say the final image is more rich and beautiful than what you would get from a digital photo.

One longtime photographer told 22News how over the years, a lot has changed about the photography business.

“The primary reason for us doing a family portrait was so people could hang pictures on their wall. Now, the owner isn’t interested in hanging pictures. All they want to do is get them on the computer or phone,” said Jack Holowitz.

The Valley Photo Center is open Monday – Friday from 11-AM to 2PM. Admission is free. 

  1. Edward Hing, from Easthampton, a photography and digital video instructor at the Williston Northampton School won both the best of show and tied for first place in the People’s Choice Award with Joseph Schmidt an amateur photographer from Hampden, Mass with his photograph, “Redwood National Park” in the Valley Photo Center Spring Open Submission Show.

Mr. Hing’s Photograph, “Redwood National Park” also was selected best in show by a panel of judges. Edward Hing is the photography and digital video instructor at The Williston Northampton School. Prior to teaching, he was a New York based advertising photographer. Edward and his wife Janine Norton, also a photographer, reside in Easthampton.

The images from the Valley Photo Center Spring Open Submission are from an ongoing body of travel photography utilizing the panoramic format begun in 1998. The ‘Redwoods’ was taken in 2005 with an xPan film camera (30mm lens) and the ‘Coffee Plantation’ was captured  in 2013 with a D7000 dSLR (10-24mm lens). Both images were edited utilizing Photoshop & NIK Silver FX and printed using a pigment based inkjet HP9180. 

If you have any questions about the photographs please email ehing@williston.com. Edward will be teaching a workshop in Black and White digital imaging at The Snow Farm (www.snowfarm.org) in Williamsburg August 11-15.

 

Joseph Schmidt’s Photograph, “Direct Connection” was the other photograph selected by patrons of the gallery to tie for the people’s choice award. While his photograph was not select by the panel of professional photographers for an award, it is an example of a photograph that ordinary people liked. Mr. Schmidt is an amateur photographer and he captured the image while on vacation with a digital camera. His winning photograph was printed on color Kodak paper by a commercial lab. He is a graduate of Minnechaug Regional High School and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a major in geology.


June Jacobsen 

From June's Website:

June Jacobsen has been creating Gallery Wall Portraits for her clients since the early 1980's. She won the honor of Top Portrait Photographer for four consecutive years in the Professional Photographers of Greater New York. Working towards the Master Photographer Degree, June earned numerous state and national awards in the Professional Photographers of America. Her articles on portraiture have been published worldwide.

Currently June teaches photography workshops at the studio, from beginner digital to advanced portraiture as well as private tuition. Information on upcoming classes can be found on the blog.

A fascination with polar regions has taken June to the ends of the earth, but she visits her homeland, Norway, most often. She lives and works on Long Island and her most recent trip was to Kenya, Africa in September, 2013.

 

Ronald Wilson 

From Ronald Wilson's website:

As I walked up the sloping path that led to a bearberry covered drumlin in Truro the fog had transformed the landscape into one filled with photographic possibilities. I have stood here many times before in anticipation of a morning such as this and I am anxious to get started.

Whether it is a barrier beach on Cape Cod, a red rock canyon in Utah or a glacial lagoon in Iceland, using photography to record the details that give shape and form to the land is how I communicate the wonder that resonates from such places.

After graduating from the Massachusetts College of Art with a degree in painting and some years later from Tufts University with a degree in education, I taught art to physically disabled students at a hospital school in Massachusetts, created enameled art while in Santa Fe, New Mexico and participated in a dance improvisation group with creative movement innovator Barbara Mettler in Tucson, Arizona.

I was almost thirty when I purchased a 35mm camera. Although I had no formal training in photography I felt certain that I like many other photographers before me could learn the art of making photographs while fulfilling the urge to once again create my own art. When my volkswagen was totaled in an accident the money from the insurance settlement equipped my darkroom and my life as a photographer began.

I no longer use the camera I purchased in 1976. The small format was unable to produce the photographic quality I desired, so I purchased a large format view camera. This camera evolved from simple wooden boxes that were the earliest known cameras. Their basic design of 2 nesting boxes that slid in and out of one another for focusing was primitive when compared to the modern view camera. In the large format camera the image that can only be viewed from beneath the dark cloth, appears on the groundglass both up side down and reversed. While adapting to this new approach took some time. I knew the increased film size would be far superior to the smaller format in rendering the fine detail and tonal range of nature photography.Currently I am using the view camera less in favor of the more versatile and convenient medium format with results that rival those of the larger and more cumbersome 4×5 format.

For many years the New England landscape, particularly Cape Cod was the theme of my photography. That changed with my first trip to Ireland in 1987, followed by the Greek islands,Iceland,the American Southwest and Scotland.

I first exhibited my photography at an outdoor art show in Andover, Massachusetts in 1981. Several print sales and a second prize ribbon encouraged me to continue and I am still on the art show circuit, earning a living doing something that has become part of the fabric of my life, a life enriched immensely by photography.

Ireland Since 1970 photographers, D. John McCarthy, left and Jim Cryan, right, flank, Mary Kate Sullivan, Springfield Parade Committee Colleen, at the reception held on October 24th. 

Featured Photographers - Jim Cryan & D. John McCarthy

D. John McCarthy and Jim Cryan,  have been friends and have shared their interest in Ireland since 1970 when they met as graduate students at UMass Amherst. The exhibit, reception, and lunchtime programs will all be open to the public and be free.

For 40 years Jim has been doing photographic studies of the Irish people, the scenery, and the antiquities.  He has made seven photographic pilgrimages to Ireland and has a collection of Kodachrome and Digital images covering the whole of the island.  He has exhibited at a number of Colleges and Libraries in New England and has a permanent exhibit on display at the Irish International Immigration Center in Boston. 

McCarthy has been traveling to Ireland since 1990 including several trips with Jim. John’s specialty is panoramic photography and he made a presentation on the subject at the World Photo Congress in Dublin in 1995. While most of his Irish images portray panoramic vistas of the land, Jim’s images portray close ups of the people places, and monuments.

John’s latest trip to Ireland was in September, 2013 and he was amazed by the changes there in the last 23 years. Many of the single lane roads have been paved over and new limited access motorways allow one to cross the country from Dublin to Galway in a couple of hours. Even the historic road signs have been replaced with new ones with distances in kilometers instead of miles.

Jim’s images dating back to the early ‘70’s help document an Ireland that no longer exists. But, fortunately most of the beautiful Irish scenery remains unspoiled, as you’ll see in both Jim’s and John’s photographs, and the people are as hospitable as ever.

James Cryan is a photographer and teaching artist currently living in Pelham, N.H. with Elizabeth, his wife of 26 years.  He has been doing photography since the 1960’s when he read world history and literature for a BA at Merrimack College. 

From 1968 through 1970 he served in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Vietnam at Marble Mountain Air Base in Da Nang.   In 1972 he finished a Masters degree in Educational Media at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. 

During the early 70’s Jim was the College Photographer at Amherst College.  Since the late 70’s he has operated his own portrait studio and photography business in the Lowell, MA area. Jim is a founding member of the C.S. Lewis College in Northfield, Mass.

D. John McCarthy, the new director of the Valley Photo Center, is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology where he majored in professional photography before going to UMass Amherst where he received his Master’s Degree in Educational Media 1972. He also earned an MBA from the Isenberg School of Management at UMass in 2008.

John worked as a photographer for the UMass Public Affairs office before he joined Fujifilm in 1978 where he worked for the next 28 years in a variety of sales, marketing, and technical positions.

John is retired from the US Navy after serving in the Marine Corps and Naval Reserves for 22 years as a public affairs specialist and a photographer. He currently operates a pet photography studio, Long Leash LLC, in Wilbraham, Mass where he lives with his wife Mary and son Yaroslav, a senior at Minnechaug Regional High. McCarthy is also a member of the Hampden Wilbraham Regional School Committee.

John earned his Master of Photography and Photographic Craftsman Degrees from the Professional Photographers of America. He served on the boards of several professional photography associations including the International Panoramic Photographers Association as President.

As a follow up to the exhibit the Valley Photo Center is happy to sponsor a trip to Ireland this May led by D. John McCarthy.