VoxPhotographs Weblog

Freddy Silva is a citizen of the world, a terrific photographer and on a quest to understand the world’s crop circles and sacred sites. He lectures worldwide, makes documentaries (3 so far) and writes books (Secrets in the Fields).

He just got back from his third trip to New Zealand – he calls the country “an addiction” and I heartily agree after my month there in January. His photographs will convince you of it in a heartbeat.

He took up my challenge of sharing his New Zealand photographs with the rest of us and they definitely put my own, posted here a month or so ago, firmly in the snapshot category! My favorite is one titled “Castle Hill” – Freddy said at a public lecture last fall that this is a “shot-of-a-lifetime” -  the sun hit this ancient monument just as he was driving to the site and was still 5 miles away. He nabbed it on the spot. I saw it on a big screen and it is a heart-stopping image of ancient boulders.

Castle Hill © Freddy Silva

Tongariro © Freddy Silva

Aspiring © Freddy Silva
Tongariro © Freddy Silva

Topeka © Freddy Silva

After a month in New Zealand I felt ready to get back to Maine and back to work. I have to admit I felt a tug on my heartstrings when I saw Freddy’s pictures. They made me know for certain I’d be going back.

No wonder Jack Montgomery writes on his website that he greatly admires F. Holland Day. And I’ll bet he’s sneaked more than one peak at Diane Arbus’ work, and spent some time with Sally Mann’s.

Nude Youth Playing the Pipe (1910) • F. Holland Day

But when you review Jack’s website there is no doubt the work is all his. He has two major portfolios featured on the site: Genderwork, and Coming of age at the turn of the century. Frankly, there are many, many phenomenal images there.

But let’s step back. In 2008, Susan Maasch Fine Art in Portland included Jack’s work in a show titled “Gender Through the Artist’s Eyes”. I hadn’t met Jack yet, but had heard about him – “local attorney making REALLY weird photographs, etc…” and the gallery was crowded at the opening night we attended. But I saw something incredible there that night – one of the most poignant, tender portraits I had ever seen, and I don’t say that lightly. It has haunted me ever since.

Cindy 2004, Boston © 2004 Jack Montgomery. All rights reserved.

Yep, it’s a guy in that vinyl dress. But as I studied this photograph I felt that all of mankind’s struggles through the ages were summed up here, in this one image. At the same time, I was stunned by the artist’s success in capturing this one person’s own deeply and quite painfully personal story. A perfect and powerful photograph that needed no written support or explanation (people: STOP writing about your photographs, please!). This photograph writes its own book.

When I ran into Jack last week during First Friday at Susan Maasch Fine Art, I was delighted to hear he has a show opening there in April. He’s working on a nearly complete video. He’s a busy man: he’s on the board of Maine Media Workshops, and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. He also serves the Portland Museum of Art as a member of the Photography Advisory Committee. Did I mention he’s an attorney (Bernstein, Shur, Sawyer & Nelson)? But he very obviously goes somewhere deeply aesthetic and far away from all of this when he’s taking pictures.

I loved reading about Jack’s childhood in his artist’s statement – how his mother wove her family history for him in a hardscrabble tapestry. The Arthur Schopenhauer quote- “And so it is that in our childhood years the foundation is laid of our later view of the world, and there with as well of its superficiality or depth: it will be in later years unfolded and fulfilled, not essentially changed.“  supports Jack’s strong sense of time and place that very clearly influences his work, especially the new series Coming of age at the turn of the century.

Rosie and Jay © Jack Montgomery. All rights reserved.

Molly and Lucky © Jack Montgomery. All rights reserved.

Katie in the Pond © Jack Montgomer. All rights reserved.

Sebastian at Morse Mountain Beach © Jack Montgomery

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It just about kills me not to reproduce every image on Jack’s website here in this blog posting, but that’s a good problem. Log on to his website and take the time to thoughtfully review the two collections. It will be the most rewarding thing you do this week.

If you stopped in to Domaine Gallery on Commercial St. in Portland any time during the three years before it closed in December/08, you will remember Stacey Cramp’s square format color Maine landscapes.

Blueberry Field, Winter © Stacey Cramp

Although I saw them every time I went in the gallery, every time they took me a bit by surprise. I’m definitely partial to square format framing, but I really liked the way Cramp continued to divide up many of the images into three or four distinct horizontal sections. I found I saw more in the images each time I studied them.

Seawall Beach Sand © Stacey Cramp

I also found that many of the images crossed over from satisfying Maine landscapes, easily read and appreciated, to something much more abstract. Step back, or stick your nose right up to the prints – there was always a freshness about them.

If you go on to Stacey’s website you’ll see she’s been busy. Most recently she did the cover shot for Jan/Feb PortCityLife magazine.

I also got an e-mail notice recently that she has moved into a shared studio space at 82 Gilman St. and that there is an Open House coming up soon – Feb. 19, 6-8. It’s under the auspices of AIGA.

Stacey published a popular calendar for 2009 and it continues to prove the breadth of her work and interests.

Okay, it all makes sense so far, right?

But Stacey Cramp has a secret. And it’s a monochromatic one.

She has a portfolio of about a dozen heartstopping black and white square format landscapes taken with her Hasselblad, many of which she took using a pinhole lens cover.They are traditional dark room prints, many selenium toned, giving off a soft violet hue. When she asked me to look at the images at the end of a photo review session at the gallery recently, I was happy to comply.

I had no idea I would be stepping through the Wardrobe.

When I opened the portfolio, my immediate world changed. These were gorgeous images that gave me that rare experience of losing myself in them and tuning out everything else. They  filled my senses entirely, leaving no room for any other stimulus.

Special Road © Stacey Cramp

The best photographs speak for themselves and these don’t need any words from me to enhance their value to the viewer, that’s for sure.

Morse Mountain Tree © Stacey Cramp

Fisherman’s Point, Dawn © Stacey Cramp

No, this secret can shout all on its own just fine.

When I bought a copy of “Portland – Through the Lens” the night of the publishing party last year (or the year before?? – the years are flying by too fast to remember this stuff) I enjoyed it and have it very visible in the gallery. The photographs are good and it’s a very worthy group.

Of all the photographers, I guess Dave Wade’s images stayed with me the longest. I liked his perspectives and the images were obviously the work of a really confident photographer. I was delighted to see his work again at the current Addison Woolley show – “The Urban Eye” – here in Portland and you need to get in there to see especially Wade’s four shots of Commercial St. at night. I love them. Street photography is my thing, so this show is like dessert, I can tell you.

Utopia © Dave Wade, all rights reserved

Wade also is showing some “double exposure” shots of NYC which I liked, but would not have said were from the same photographer. When you cruise through Dave’s website (www.davewadephoto.com) you’ll see that this is one versatile guy who has an eye for just about any kind of image needed and does commercial work as well as his fine art photography. I really, really like his use of color in the Commercial St. shots and the one below of LA.

©Dave Wade, all rights reserved

“Versatile” doesn’t quite cut if for this photographer – he hosts WMPG’s “Juke, Jive and Jazz” each week, and loves and lives his music and poetry as well as his photography careers. He lived in Japan for 12 years before settling in Portland.

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Also in the Urban Eye show is a fabulous photographer by the name of Rene Braun. I loved every one of his photographs which is a rare thing in a show. Each one surprised me and drew me in and I hope to get back to Addison Woolley (before the show ends on August 30) to see the images again. He works from gutsy angles, especially successful in his image titled “Manhattan, New York” (2007) of a couple sharing a smoke in some dubious place that allowed Braun to take full advantage of some great light sources. What a photograph! Many of his photos evoke real tension. He was born in the Czech Republic and now lives in Windham, Maine. Here’s Rene’s website and if you google him, you’ll find some other interesting things!

Orchard Lunch © Jon Edwards, All Rights Reserved

Jon Edwards is an attorney (civil rights and environmental) but is much better known as a photographer. He joins Jack Montgomery, a Portland attorney who shows his provocative portraits at Susan Maasch Fine Art as well as other venues, and Jim Nickelson, a patent attorney and aeronautical engineer based in Camden, whose singular landscape photographs tend to stop viewers in their tracks (Jim is represented by VoxPhotographs and also posts here on technical stuff regularly). I bet there are other attorney/fine art photographer combos in Maine…but I think 2008 is Jon’s year.

Coming on the heels of graduating from the MFA program at Rockport College/Maine Media Workshops, Jon received notice that out of 900 submissions, he was one of six photographers to receive an Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer Fellowship Grant. That’s pretty darn impressive!

From, A Way of Being – Communicating © Jon Edwards, All Rights Reserved

His new self-published book A Way of Being won first prize, Book Series, from the Prix de la Photographie Paris; he received an Honorable Mention from the Camera Club of New York (Larry Fink, Juror) and was named a finalist in the London Photographic Association “Let’s Face It 4″ competition. All this I learned from Maine Media Workshop’s photo newsletter (www.theworkshops.com/newsletters/mmw/2008-07-16/index.html), not from Jon himself.

Well, some of this info. is in the bio he sent to me in April, and most of it is on his website, but when we got together at the gallery to look at actual photographs, he never said a word about any of it. In his first book and catalog, Jon Edwards, complete with an introductory essay by Curator-At-Large Bruce Brown, eighteen of Jon’s images are carefully placed in a meaningful sequence. All the images are selenium toned silver gelatin prints.

Jon Edwards is a quiet type of guy. So, get on his website and enjoy the images that are helping him gain an international reputation because you probably won’t hear about these achievements from him.

When Mary Woodman, of Kennebunkport, made the commitment to become a full-time photographer, she went right to the top – she called Paul Caponigro to ask if she could study with him and use him as her mentor. You don’t ask, you don’t get. Mary got. That was 1999.

Mary’s worked hard and in the last couple of years it has paid off with numerous shows and exhibits. Her work has been selected twice (2007 and 2008 ) as a winner of Black & White Magazine’s Single Image Contest. Here is the 2008 winner:

Pear © 2007 Mary Woodman

Woodman sure has some unique digital darkroom techniques. She excels with her flowerspheres – I can’t get enough of them. Floating, but not at all tentative, portraits of individual blooms or a same-flower bunch, these are simply gorgeous images to look at over and over.

Flowersphere #31©Mary Woodman

To see more, visit Woodman’s website. I’ve seen some of her winter images that aren’t yet posted and this is one photographer to watch.