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.

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

——

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.

Paul Caponigro, Yosemite Valley, California, 1972 • ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Scott Nichols Gallery’s OUR NATIONAL PARKS exhibit is a stunner – and I can’t even begin to think how great these images  must look on the gallery walls. Putting the exhibit online for the rest of us poor winterbound eastcoasters is such a gift, so take advantage of this largesse and take a look. A long one.

William Henry Jackson, Mt. Harvard, Sawatch Range, View South On Arkansas River, Colorado, Circa 1872 • ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Approx. 50 photographs from William Henry Jackson and Carl E. Watkins to Ansel Adams and our own Paul Caponigro are on view. The exhibit is up to see through March 27.

Michael Rauner, Inspiration Point, Yosemite National Park, California, 2005 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

And if you are actually going to SF in person and can see this exhibit before it closes on March 27, don’t tell me. I don’t think I could take it.

Rondal Partridge, Pave It And Paint It Green, Yosemite, mid 1960’s • ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

——-

I always get warm and fuzzy feeling when I visit the Smithsonian – finally our tax dollars at work in a way that I can appreciate. Love the free admission to OUR history and culture and arts.

And here’s a show to see: FRAMING THE WEST – The Survey Photographs of Timothy O’Sullivan.

O’Sullivan, Timothy H., 1840-1882, photographer. Shoshone Falls, Snake River, Idaho.[United States], 1874.1 photographic print on stereo card : albumen.
Notes: Original negative number: 92.
Part of series: U.S. War Dept., Corps of Engineers; Geographical Explorations and Surveys West of 100th Meridian, Expedition of 1874; Lieut. Geo. M. Wheeler, commanding.
——–

O’Sullivan was a young war photographer, working with Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner throughout the tragic Civil War, but in 1867 joined the team charged with surveying the fortieth parallel led by Clarence King (did you catch this amazing book about King? “Passing Strange – A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line” by Martha A. Sandweiss? You really, really don’t want to miss this one…) Then in 1871 he joined another team that set out to survey the one hundredth meridian. In 1873 O’Sullivan led his own expedition to document the cliff-dwellers and pueblos. We can never truly understand how amazing these expeditions of exploration and documentation were. But there are plenty of books out there to read and try and comprehend the  magnitude of it all.

SLIDSHOW: SMITHSONIAN/Timothy O’Sullivan – see it here!

I went two years ago and spent four hours walking up and down the aisles and had to rush the last hour to just get past every booth. I can’t make the trip this year but will definitely make it a priority next year.

A column by Jean Dykstra in the current PHOTOGRAPH magazine quotes Steven Bulger, Pres. of AIPAD saying that when AIPAD was founded in 1979 there weren’t many photographs selling for over $1000.

Well, how times have changed. With over 70 dealers from all over the world setting up shop for the show you can imagine, without too much effort, the diversity of work and price ranges show-goers will find.

But click here to download the 76 page catalog (only takes seconds) and see for yourself. If you love photographs and don’t spend at least an hour clicking through and reading the captions in this catalog, have a talk with yourself and straighten out your priorities. It’s a free tour through 170 years of images without leaving your couch. Although I wonder if, once you’ve reviewed the catalog, you might not find a friend to make the trip to NYC with and see the real thing?

Last evening we got together for dinner at Jim’s house and then went downstairs to commune with Edward Burtynsky.

Edward Burtynsky: Manufactured Landscapes is really two important parts and I’d start with the less visible part – on the main menu is a feature called Stills, or The Pictures, or something, and this shows 20 of his pictures on the screen one by one while he talks about them. Then go to the “play movie” and you’ll get more out of the actual film itself.

Other films we’ve enjoyed together that are available from Netflix -

William Eggleston in the Real World

Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens

James Nachtwey: War Photographer

Henri Cartier Bresson – The Impassioned Eye

Masters of Photography Series: Edward Steichen

These are all terrific and worth seeing again soon!

A quick, maybe too quick, overview film is: American Photography – A Century of Images. I can never get enough of photography history, so I would recommend you rent it.

On the list to see:

By the Ways, A Journey with William Eggleston

Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye

Masters of Photography: Diane Arbus (not yet available)

Masters of Photography: Andre Kertész

The Adventure of Photography: 150 Years of the Photographic Image

National Geographic: The Photographers

And Susan writes that she saw the American Experience special The Wizard of Photography: George Eastman and thought it was excellent.

Wish I had time to source all these photographers for you with links, but I gotta get back to my Netflix queue and grab these before you do. And after that, the big fat book Jim loaned me – the newest Burtynsky tome.

If you stepped inside the recent exhibit at the University of New England “Going Forward, Looking Back – Practicing Historic Photographic Proceses in the 21st Century” you know that your heartbeat picked up immediately. Who knew so much incredible work was going on in New England studios? The exhibit stimulated a huge interest in historic processes – exactly what it was designed to do – and many viewers and artists returned again and again to study the works.

In fact the demand to understand these processes was so great that the Bakery Collective in Westbrook took action of its own. Coming up are the three remaining courses taught by highly accomplished Maine artists and you need to sign up and get your hands dirty. (Wet Collodion with Keliy Anderson-Staley was held Feb. 20-21, but will repeat May 8/9 and Pinhole Photography with Jack Nordby took place 2/27)

Mt. Mitchell © David Wolfe, 2009 (10″x16″)

On March 20, you can spend the day with VoxPhotographs artist David Wolfe to learn how platinum/palladium prints are made and make one yourself. David has had two shows at VoxPhotographs. He operates Wolfe Editions in Portland. He knows what he is doing.

Disembark © David Wolfe, 2007 (8″x10″)

Then on April 3, Brenton Hamilton will give you an opportunity to learn about cyan and bichromate prints. Brenton has been a fixture at the Maine Media Workshops for 20 years and in fact, the “Going Forward, Looking Back…” exhibit ends up there this fall after two venues in MA. At MMW the exhibit opens on October 22, 5-8.

Poet of Levitation © Brenton Hamilton

Brenton is a renaissance man. He was a guest artist at VoxPhotographs in October 2008 and the show was edgy, brilliant and totally original.

There’s no guarantee early May will be hospitable either, so plan on spending May 8 and 9 learning about Wet Collodion with Keliy Anderson-Staley.

Tintype © Keliy Anderson-Staley

——-

One of the best things Maine has going for it (besides September) is how many opportunities there are to learn about photography and meet the shakers and  movers of it all. So, if you live here and have to put up with our miserable spring, you deserve to give yourself total relief at the Bakery Collective workshops.

Mostly because on the way to that exhibit, I passed through the other exhibit of photography on the walls at the Museum…I hadn’t known about it because I’ve had a terrible time, with the personnel changes at the Art Museum, getting on any mailing list. Kevin Salatino, new Director at the Museum, assures me at long last I will be informed.

In Focus: Photographs from the Permanent Collection will be on exhibit until March 14, so here’s something really worthwhile to do for rainy day fun if you’ve looked at the forecast for the next eternity. For me, falling over dozens of photographs to look at unexpectedly was a big high.

My favorite in the exhibit was the Burtynsky – “Silver Lake Operations #1, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia, 2007.” Seemingly taken when Mr. Burtynsky hovered over the mine like a bird, it is a stunning example of his work. The clarity is something you need to take some time to study.

Just as unforgettable is the chromogenic print by Shai Kremer: “View of a Minefield, Abandoned Syrian Base, Golan Heights, 200?”. If you’re as tired of abandoned building shots as I am, here’s the ultimate panacea. Look at the photograph a while before you re-read the title. Be prepared to be stung by what you perceived vs. the reality of the scene. Isn’t this what photography is all about? No other medium, no words could say it like this. The lovely view out of the “picture window”. The ugly reality. Amazing.

Photograph copyright Shai Kremer. All rights reserved.

Another chance to study a complex photograph is provided by the Sally Mann image Untitled (Georgia), 1996. Almost next to it is a powerful ektacolor print by Richard Misrach – Diving Board, Salton Sea, 1983.

Photograph copyright Richard Misrach. All rights reserved.

You’ll see some wonderful classic images like Weegee’s Children Sleeping on Fire Escape, 1938, and images by Abbott, Bing, Cunningham, De Carava, Kertész, Strand, Sherman and R. Capa. Shore and Morell are there too. Two beautiful photogravures will stop you in your tracks: Alvin Langon Coburn’s The White Cloud, 1911, and one of my favorite Stieglitz images: The Hand of Man, 1902. I really appreciated seeing a color print from 1917 – a Hess-Ives color print by Karl Stuss – Untitled, from the Series The Female Figure, 1917.

Children Sleeping on Fire Escape, 1938 © Weegee. All rights reserved.

While you’re at the Museum, take the time to enjoy the “Learning to Paint” exhibit on the same floor. The forecast is rain, remember, so plan on spending a while to soak up everything the Museum has to offer these days.

Chansonette Stanley Emmons’ archive is at the UNE Maine Women Writers Collection (MWWC), I think, but I’ve not been able to get an appointment to see it. So, I was glad to see this set of six small images gifted by Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr. to the PMA. Five of the images are landscapes and lovely ones.

Chansonetta Stanley Emmons
United States, 1858 – 1910
Dorothy [Emmons] on the Rocks at Ogunquit, Maine, 1910
gelatin silver print
4 x 5 1/2 inches
Gift of Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr.

The sixth Emmons is an interior titled “Shelling Corn, Kingfield, ME, 1901″ as only Ms. Emmons could do an interior. The picture is as sweet as the corn they were shelling.

—–

Paul Strand
United States, 1890 – 1976
Tailor Apprentice, Luzzara, Italy, 1953, 1994
platinum print
8 x 6 1/4 inches
Gift of Owen W. and Anna H. Wells

Another big winner was the exquisite Paul Strand “Tailor Apprentice, Luzzara, Italy 1953″. I am a big fan of Strand’s work. Diane Arbus’ “Mrs. T. Charlton Henry in an Evening Gown, Philadelphia, PA 1965″ was a joy to see and we went back to look at it again – what a great image to have in the Museum’s collection. Can you honestly look at this without grinning?

Diane Arbus
United States, 1923 – 1971
Mrs. T. Charlton Henry in an Evening Gown, Philadelphia, PA, 1965
gelatin silver print
14 1/2 x 14 3/4 inches
Gift of John S. Ames, III

There’s a really good set of Jon Edward’s work as well as a Cartier-Bresson, Todd Webb, and images from the Vernon Reed series “Operation Potato”. And so the collection grows – and nicely.

——

There are two gems in the Museum these days and I didn’t expect to see them. I should have seen them at the Committee of 100’s pre-opening gathering for the Objects of Wonder exhibit a couple of weeks ago, but I was too busy gabbing to spend serious time in the exhibit, I confess. However, I’ve been back twice this past week to give the exhibit my full attention and was rewarded especially by the two gelatin silver photographs (of about 8 photographs included in the exhibit) by Lilo Raymond and Robert Mapplethorpe.

“Peony”, 1984 by Raymond is one of those perfect photographs – always fresh, and just what you want to see sometimes when everyone is complicating their work to the nth degree: simple. Lovely, perfect, wish I owned it. In my ignorance, I’ve never heard of Raymond and her website is very spare. There is bio info. on the card next to the photograph and you can read more about her and see a few more like images here as well. (2/25 update: I just noticed while flipping through the Jan/Feb PHOTOGRAPH magazine that Raymond passed away last year.)

When I look at Mapplethorpe’s “Carnation” 1982 I just marvel. How he did he do it time after time – giving us totally unique images of whatever he chose to photograph? This photograph is worth studying – he was a fanatic about everything when setting up a photograph I’ve read, but the result is like a Sargent portrait – these geniuses make it look so easy, the viewer sees none of the tension and utter mastery behind the final product. “Carnation” – it’s wonderful to have it there to visit again many times before this exhibit ends on June 6.

In August, the Friends of the Farnsworth Collection of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, a group formed to donate to a purchase fund and then decide which piece(s) to purchase, selected a simply amazing image by Eliot Porter – “Maine Forest”. Why is it “amazing”? Several reasons:

It is a stunningly gorgeous photograph.

It was taken in 1958 of the woods right outside the photographer’s home in Great Spruce Head Island, Maine.

At the artist’s request in 1973, Ansel Adams made a print of Porter’s 4×5 negative.

THAT PRINT IS 51 X 40.5 INCHES. Let me repeat that: In 1973 Ansel Adams made a print of Eliot Porter’s 1958 “Maine Forest” negative and that print is 51 x 40.5 inches.

And where is that remarkable print? On view, right now, at the Farnsworth Art Museum. I just found out about it by reading the Farnsworth’s Winter 2010 news magazine and I’ve got to say it was a swooning moment when I saw the image reproduced on p. 17!

Please remember back to 1973: as the magazine says, “[the] large-scale print of the image…is a remarkable technical achievement.” This is not 2010 when 1) every photographer is addicted to BIG prints whether or not their work is supported well by BIG prints, and 2) this BIG print was made in the darkroom. Remember those? Porter had the right instinct on this baby – this image is a stunner as a BIG image.

Well, due to the Museum’s cautious approach to intellectual property copyright concerns, I couldn’t get a reproducible jpg from them to share with you. And I’m glad, because this is one photograph that HAS to be seen to be loved.

So work in a nice trip to Rockland, take in the Museum’s other exhibitions from their permanent collection (finally we get to see some of this buried treasure!): The State of Printmaking since 1940 and Real and Abstract – Contemporary Art from the Farnsworth, and enjoy the city’s vibrant main drag. See you on Saturday!

On March 27 ARNOLD  NEWMAN opens in the Craig Gallery at the Museum and it’s up for viewing until August 8. So we can go and soak it up several times and take summer visitors, too.

Arnold Newman sure had something special when it came to photography, and in particular, portraits. Some of his images are join the list of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century. Who doesn’t know the one of Igor Stravinsky or Picasso, or one of my favorites, Yasuo Kuniyoshi?

All photographs by Arnold Newman © Getty Images. All rights reserved.

The Farnsworth Art Museum exhibit will celebrate Newman’s entire career, but with a special emphasis on his Maine connections: his students at Maine Media Workshops over the years and his portraits of a who’s who list of Maine artists.

Newman attended the University of Miami as an artist but couldn’t afford to continue after two years there. So, he moved to Philadelphia and started making 49-cent portraits. And well, the rest is history. It’s good to remember the often humble struggles of photographers who have worked hard to become the best in the business.

“Influences come from everywhere but when you are actually shooting you work primarily by instinct. But what is instinct? It is a lifetime accumulation of influence: experience, knowledge, seeing and hearing. There is little time for reflection in taking a photograph. All your experiences come to a peak and you work on two levels: conscious and unconscious.”- Arnold Newman, Interviews With Master Photographers

At the Farnsworth Art Museum, Craig Gallery, March 27 – August 8. (207-596-6457) As you know by now, I really appreciate NOT having to travel to NYC to see terrific photography exhibits. Thank you to the Farnsworth for a little trundle up or down the coast of Maine to see something world-class.