VoxPhotographs Weblog

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.

Brenton Hamilton teaches an exhausting nine months in Rockport at the Maine Media Workshops and then spends three summer months in his studio making cyanotypes. He actually exposes these by putting them in his studio window in the sun. He must pray for sunny summers. This is labor-intensive stuff in its truest form and I admire passionate pracitioners of the alternative or historic photographic processes. Consider that most of them are working in Maine in solitude without the camaraderie of others doing the same or similar things. They are really committed.

For instance, Brenton works at night in his studio, re-enacting this 1840’s process and then is dependent on the vagaries of the next several days’ weather to see the outcome of his inspirations. Sun, clouds, the water’s reflection? It all plays a part in the end result. So, you really need to know what you’re doing and that takes years of concentrated effort, trial and error and commitment. See two large Hamilton cyanotypes at the current New Natural History exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art through to May 11. Gorgeous.

Merging © Brenton Hamilton, 2007

David Puntel is an ambrotypist who lives in Casco, Maine. He is featured in the current issue of Black and White Magazine. He is, I think, the only actively exhibiting ambrotypist in the state. It takes David all day to produce an image, and it’s taken him years of work to get to the point where he has more successes than failures. It’s a highly instinctive skill to make an ambrotype, with myriad steps and chemicals involved. David even makes outdoor ambrotypes which is right up there on the Richter scale of insanity. Humidity, temperature, atmosphere, light and even transportation play huge roles in this process and Puntel is an expert at gaging the degree of importance of all of these factors on any given day There are only approximately 200 ambrotypists worldwide, many of whom are Civil War re-enactors, and not fine artists like David Puntel. He is represented by my gallery, VoxPhotographs.

Rhubarb © David Puntel, 2007

And then there is David Wolfe - featured in the upcoming May issue of Maine Home & Design. David Wolfe has spent a lifetime learning how to work with paper - his letterpress studio in Portland is worth a visit just so you can stand at the doorway and gape at the variety of ancient machinery he works on. Wolfe trained as a photographer and making palladium prints is a process he loves. Using a big old large format camera, he gets out into the streets of Portland and makes poetry, no kidding. The first image of his I saw was exhibited at Greenhut Gallery in Portland in 2006 and was a palladium print of Starbucks on Congress St. The tension of the 1880’s process and the iconic symbol of modern American culture is simply delicious to see and there’s no other way to say it if you’re into photography and understand its history. With palladiums, it’s all about midtones and a depth and clarity that often looks 3-dimensional. David Wolfe is represented by my gallery, VoxPhotographs.

Checkmate © David Wolfe, 2007

Street time © David Wolfe, 2007

I can tell you all three of these experts have earned their laurels. These historic processes are painstaking and finicky. Take a course sometime. You’ll find it’s 75% process and 25% photography and if you don’t like that ratio, stick to digital. Plus, it takes from 1-3 days to make these things, so you need patience, commitment and passion to be successful.

Did I mention vision? You need that too.

Leonard Bartel only moved to Maine a couple of years ago and even more interesting he’s been photographing (intensely, he says) for only 5-6 years. He’s starting to make a name for himself (I saw a couple of his images recently at Gallery5 in Lewiston at their GPS show) Leonard sent me a note asking me to take a look and I want to show you a couple from his website (www.bartelphoto.com).

Calligraphy © Leonard Bartel

Flight © Leonard Bartel

Bartel shows a high level of confidence and when I look through his work I have to wonder that he’s a newbie. Some of the images are crossover photographs - equally at home in a fine art photography gallery or sold to a publication commercially. But his Landscapes and Wildlife galleries are definitely in the commercial work category.

I’m really partial to Leonard’s flora, in the “And Other Observances” category on his site. I’ve looked at them several times over the past two weeks and find them fresh and engaging and always pleasantly serendipitous when I get there. For the fine art images, I hope he raises his prices soon.

Welcome, Leonard - to Maine and to the world of photography!

Lynn Karlin, based in Belfast, has made an art out of garden photography. Her third book is being published -Gardens Maine Style, Act II - and will be available in June from Down East Books (www.downeast.com). She has just won her eighth Garden Writers of America Silver Award of Achievement for her images featured in the May/June 2007 issue of Cottage Living magazine. During a recent conversation with Lynn at the gallery in Portland she told me she is running to keep up with her 2008 workload.

For 8 years Lynn and her husband lived next door to Helen and Scott Nearing in Harborside, Maine and their book, Maine - A Year of Country Life documented the four seasons on their farm and was published during that time. They grew organic flowers and vegetables for inns and restaurants in the area.

Since then she has photographed countless gardens as well and is one of the best in the business. Check out more pics at www.lynnkarlinphoto.com.

Images © Lynn Karlin

Lisa grew up in Blue Hill, but has been living and working in Portland (Munjoy Hill) since 1985. She creates a lot of things and photographs are one of them.

In the late 90’s Lisa shot some important photographs of the demolition of the Million Dollar Bridge. You can see these at http://www.lisadombek.com/gallery/Photos%20-%20Bridge/8575

Last fall in September, she headed down the hill to the foot of Fore St. at India in Portland and shot strong images of the construction site there - did anyone see the pitiful and delapidated Longfellow Birthplace marker there? It had beer bottles strewn around it and I wouldn’t have known it even existed except for a wonderful photography show at the Portland Harbor Museum last summer documenting places now and…well, obviously a long time ago. The next time I went by to torture myself as to its condition, it had been taken away to make room for the new construction there. Where has it gone, I wonder?

Well, here’s another kinder, gentler view of the same neighborhood also taken by Lisa:

Lisa also paints. Her paintings are now being exhibited at the new Thomas Moser gallery in Los Angeles, among other places, and can be seen locally at 3 Fish Gallery on Cumberland Ave. in April. If you want to check out the old Million Dollar Bridge pics in person - go to Norm’s East End and West End restaurants in Portland.

Here’s a guy to watch. As he works on projects to explore and celebrate cultural diversity in Maine, Sean Harris, who received his MFA at the Art Institute of Boston in 1994, makes photographs that make me catch my breath. I doubt I would ever get tired of looking at them.

Here’s one I saw last week at Susan Maasch Fine Art (www.susanmaaschfineart.com) on Forest Avenue in Portland, the gallery now representing Harris…

It’s his close-up portraits I think are his strongest work - there’s something about what he is able to get from his subjects - an arresting engagement in the task at hand -that’s quite exceptional. These portraits are exceedingly genuine and seem completely unaffected. In his quest to portray the Maine of today, Harris could easily slip into the need to have his photography to make a point, to instruct, to SAY something. I hope he is always a photographer first, a documentarian second.

Sean Harris is an important part of the African American community in Maine and his work will be featured at the Museum of African Culture in March during its grand opening celebration of its new home at 13 Brown St. in Portland (www.africantribalartmuseum.org). Here’s an image from that upcoming exhibit…

I would recommend you make it a point to go to both of these venues and study his work. Technically, it’s awesome, whether toned gelatin silvers or palladiums. It’s some of the freshest photography in Maine these days, in my opinion.

Here’s a Portland-based photographer who has a unique vision when it comes to portraits. See more of his work at Whitney Art Works on Congress St. in Portland through February ‘08, or at www.nathaneldridge.com.