Photography

Old Forge and The Fulton Chain of Lakes

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Linda Cohen and Peg Masters, both descendants of 19th-century pioneer settlers of the Old Forge region, have written Old Forge and The Fulton Chain of Lakes (Arcadia Publishing, $21.99) the latest Adirondack edition in the Images of America series. Together they compiled over 200 images from around the area, many seldom seen.

Old Forge is nestled at the foot of the Middle Branch of the Moose River, more commonly known as the Fulton Chain of Lakes. Year-round accommodations at the Forge House in 1871 and dependable rail service in 1892 led to permanent settlement of the hamlet. Within a decade, Old Forge emerged as the residential and commercial hub of the Central Adirondacks and a popular destination and gathering place for guides, sportsmen, and wilderness tourists.

For the sightseer who strolls around Old Forge today or enjoys a cruise up the eight lakes in the Fulton Chain, the landscape is dotted with scores of century-old dwellings, Victorian cottages, rustic camps, and even a few grand old hotels.

Linda Cohen has been an active member of the local historical association and a board member since 2004. Peg Masters has served as the town historian for the past 10 years and conducts historic walking tours every summer.

Saratoga National Historical Park Photo Contest

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Saratoga National Historical Park is having a photo contest to select the photo to appear on its 2012 Annual Park Pass. From September 25 until November 4, 2011, visitors may submit up to 3 photos to be considered for next year’s Annual Pass. The winning photo will also be included in a special 2012 park calendar, and the photographer will receive a complimentary annual pass to the park.

Each photo submitted must be: taken within park boundaries, JPG format with minimum 300 DPI resolution, no larger than 3 MB file size, and between 4”x6” and 8”x10” in size. All submitted photos will become the property of Saratoga National Historical Park, though photographers will be credited if their photo(s) is used in future park publications.

A complete list of rules may be obtained by contacting Park Ranger Megan Stevens at 518-664-9821 ext. 219, or by e-mail at [email protected]

Submitted photos may also be sent to that e-mail address.

New York Photo League Exhibit Slated

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Drawing on the depth of two great Photo League museum collections, The Jewish Museum in New York City and the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio are collaborating on an exhibition of over 140 vintage photographs. The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951, a formidable survey of the group’s history, its artistic significance, and its cultural, social and political milieu, will premiere at The Jewish Museum from November 4, 2011 through March 25, 2012. The Radical Camera exhibition will then travel to the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH (April 19 &#8211 September 9, 2012)- the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA (October 11, 2012 &#8211 January 21, 2013)- and Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL (February 9 &#8211 April 21, 2013).

Artists in the Photo League were known for capturing sharply revealing, compelling moments from everyday life. Their focus centered on New York City and its vibrant streets &#8211 a shoeshine boy, a brass band on a bustling corner, a crowded beach at Coney Island. Many of the images are beautiful, yet harbor strong social commentary on issues of class, child labor, and opportunity. The Radical Camera exhibition explores the fascinating blend of aesthetics and social activism at the heart of the Photo League.

The innovative contributions of the Photo League during its 15-year existence (1936-1951) were significant. As it grew, the League would mirror monumental shifts in the world starting with the Depression, through World War II and ending with the Red Scare. Born of the worker’s movement, the Photo League was an organization of young, idealistic photographers who believed in documentary photography as an expressive medium and powerful tool for exposing social problems. It was also a school with teachers such as Sid Grossman, who encouraged students to take their cameras to the streets and discover the meaning of their work as well as their relationship to it. The League had a darkroom for printing, published an acclaimed newsletter called Photo Notes, offered exhibition space, and was a place to socialize, especially among first-generation Jewish-Americans.

The first museum exhibition in three decades to comprehensively look at the Photo League, The Radical Camera reveals that the League encouraged a surprisingly broad spectrum of work throughout extraordinarily turbulent times. The organization’s members included some of the most noted photographers of the mid-20th century &#8211 W. Eugene Smith, Weegee, Lisette Model, Berenice Abbott and Aaron Siskind, to name a few. The Photo League helped validate photography as a fine art, presenting student work and guest exhibitions by established photographers like Eugene Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Edward Weston, among others.

These affecting black and white photographs show life as it was lived mostly on the streets, sidewalks and subways of New York. Joy, playfulness and caprice as well as poverty and hardship are in evidence. In addition to their urban focus, Leaguers photographed in rural America, and during World War II, in Latin America and Europe. The exhibition also addresses the active participation of women who found rare access and recognition at the League.

The Radical Camera presents the League within a critical, historical context. Developments in photojournalism were catalyzing a new information era in which photo essays were appearing for the first time in magazines such as Life and Look. As time went on, its social documentary roots evolved toward a more experimental approach, laying the foundation for the next generation of street photographers. One of the principal themes of the exhibition is how the League fostered a multifaceted and changing identity of documentary photography. &#8220A mixture of passion and disillusionment characterizes the Photo League’s growth, which led photographers away from objective documentary images and toward more subjective, poetic readings of life,&#8221 said Mason Klein, exhibition co-curator and a curator at The Jewish Museum. &#8220The tenets of truth in documentary photography laid down by League members were also challenged by them and ultimately upended by members of the New York School,&#8221 he added. Catherine Evans, exhibition co-curator and a curator of photography at the Columbus Museum of Art, observed that &#8220This museum partnership is an extraordinary opportunity to showcase two in-depth collections. Because the images continue to have relevance today, it is especially important that the exhibition will be seen in four U.S. cities, reaching as broad an audience as possible.&#8221

In 1947, the League came under the pall of McCarthyism and was blacklisted for its alleged involvement with the Communist Party. Ironically, the Photo League had just begun a national campaign to broaden its base as a &#8220Center for American Photography.&#8221 Despite the support of Ansel Adams, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, Paul Strand and many other national figures, this vision of a national photography center could not overcome the Red Scare. As paranoia and fear spread, the Photo League was forced to disband in 1951.

The exhibition has been organized by Mason Klein, Curator of Fine Arts, The Jewish Museum, and Catherine Evans, William and Sarah Ross Soter Curator of Photography, Columbus Museum of Art.

Photo: Sid Grossman, Coney Island, c. 1947, gelatin silver print. The Jewish Museum, New York. Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery.

Ansel Adams Masterworks Exhibit in Utica

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Images of the American West by the premier photographer of the 20th Century will be showcased in the major exhibition, Ansel Adams: Masterworks through January 8 in the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art in Utica.

The collection of 48 images by Ansel Adams (1902-84) represents two-thirds of his Museum Set, a selection the photographer himself made to represent the best of his life’s work. In these images one sees the importance Adams placed on the drama and splendor of natural environments, particularly in the American West. Visitors to the exhibition will see iconic Adams’ images such as Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California, 1927 and Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941.

Adams, a California native, first photographed Yosemite National Park at the tender age of 14 with a Kodak Box Brownie. He fell in love with the forests, valleys, and sublime rock formations there and soon dedicated his life to photographing and advocating for the conservation of the environment. In the 1920s Adams became a guide for the Sierra Club at Yosemite, where he covered the terrain via burro or woody station wagon, setting up his large camera and tripod on the roof of the car. He would be active in the Sierra Club for nearly five decades.

Adams’ stature in the history of photography is monumental. With Edward Weston, he was co-founder of the California–based photography group named f64, which emphasized “straight” or “pure” photography over soft-focus pictorialism. Photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who was an important influence on Adams, gave him a one-artist show at the New York City gallery, An American Place, in 1936. In 1941 Adams was commissioned by the Department of the Interior to document western national parks, including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and Carlsbad Caverns. He received the competitive Guggenheim Fellowship three times- was a consultant for Polaroid- was named to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s environmental task force in 1965- was a co-founder of both the Friends of Photography and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in 1967- was the subject of a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, as well as a cover story subject for Time magazine in 1979- and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Jimmy Carter in 1980. In 1985, on the first anniversary of his death, Yosemite National Park named “Mount Ansel Adams” on the Merced River. Throughout his long career Adams was also an influential teacher- he lectured extensively and wrote several books.

A technical master, Adams developed the Zone System for black-and-white photography, in which light is divided into eleven zones, from pure black to white. This system regulated light exposure and development of negatives in the dark room in order to maximize the photographer’s control of each print. Such control was imperative for Adams, who believed photography reflected the maker’s emotional response to his subject matter.

Photo: Ansel Adams from the 1950 Yosemite Field School yearbook (Wikipedia Photo).

NYS Archives Online Exhibit of Rare 9-11 Images

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The New York State Archives, the nation’s largest repository of records of a state government, has introduced a new online exhibition entitled Ground Zero from the Air.

Based upon an archival collection of images commissioned from a private contractor by the New York State Office for Technology (NYS OFT), the website features aerial, infrared and computer generated imagery of Ground Zero, as well as photo images of recovery efforts. Also included
is a directory of related websites and New York State Government records contained within the New York State Archives related to the World Trade Center attacks and subsequent response efforts.

Principally accumulated during a series of flights that occurred between September 15 and October 22, 2001, the aerial imagery collected for NYS OFT was used to direct the efforts of first responders, identify unstable areas, pinpoint stairwells and elevator shafts, and coordinate removal of debris.

“As we consider the events of September 11, 2001 and the heroic efforts of first responders and, indeed, of many levels of local, state, and federal government in the weeks and months following the attacks, we at the New York State Archives committed ourselves to putting together an online exhibition that provided a unique look at this history event
for the 10th anniversary,” said New York State Archivist Christine W. Ward.

Ground Zero from the Air is the newest in a series of projects undertaken by the New York State Archives. Following the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, the New York State Archives was instrumental in the creation of the World Trade Center Documentation Task Force, a
multi-institution group committed to identification, collection and preservation of public and private records that chronicle the attack and its aftermath and to determine future steps necessary to insure that the historical record is as complete as possible for use by future
generations.

Ground Zero from the Air may be found on the New York State Archives webpages online.

Photo: Ground Zero seen from above. Courtesy the NYS Archives.

Landscape Photography Workshop at Olana

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The Olana Partnership will host a two-day landscape photography workshop, Growing your skills beyond the snapshot phase, on Saturday, September 17 and Sunday, September 18 from 1-7:30 pm at the Wagon House Education Center at Olana. Photographer Greg Miller will teach participants how to blossom from a snapshot shooter to a photographer who makes compelling photos that elicit strong emotional reactions. Participants will learn about proper lighting, technical vs. artistic skills, composition, equipment, and technique, and will have an opportunity to shoot intimate scenes and vistas in Olana’s picturesque landscape.

Cost of the workshop is $75 for Saturday only or $125 for both days for non-members, and $50 for Saturday only and $100 for both days for members of The Olana Partnership. An additional $5.00 entry fee per vehicle will be charged (waived for members of The Olana Partnership). This fee may be credited toward a house tour as long as tickets are available. Register now while space is available. Contact Sarah Hasbrook, education coordinator for The Olana Partnership, at [email protected] or call (518) 828-1872 x 109.

Greg Miller’s books include The Hudson River: A Great American Treasure (Rizzoli, 2008) which was selected for the “2008 Editors’ Favorite Books of the Year” list by The Bloomsbury Review. Miller’s second book, Panorama of the Hudson River (SUNY Press, 2009), was commissioned by Open Space Institute and the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz. His selected permanent collections include the Center for Fine Art Photography in Ft. Collins, Colorado, Royal Netherlands Embassy in Washington D.C. (five prints), and Catskill Regional Medical Center (eighteen prints), to name a few. Miller was selected to be a 2009 “Artist in Residence” for Acadia National Park and was a finalist for the “2003 Photography Now” award from The Center of Photography at Woodstock. In addition, Miller is a workshop leader for the Center of Photography at Woodstock, and photography tour leader for the Adirondack Photography Institute. More information and photographs can be found on Greg Miller’s website

Wagon House Education Center programming is made possible in part through support provided by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency- the Hudson River Bank & Trust Foundation- the Educational Foundation of America- the John Wilmerding Education Initiative, and the members of The Olana Partnership.

Photo: Hudson Valley by Greg Miller.

New S. R. Stoddard Exhibit: New York Harbor

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The Chapman Historical Museum in Glens Falls (Warren County) has opened a new exhibit of Seneca Ray Stoddard photographs featuring views of New York Harbor. Taken in the 1880s on his visits to New York City, the fifteen photographs include images of sailboats and steamers in the harbor, people bathing on the beach at Coney Island, the Brooklyn Bridge and other landmarks. A highlight is Stoddard’s famous night-time photo of the Statue of Liberty, captured using magnesium flash powder. The exhibit, planned to coincide with The Hyde Collection’s exhibit, &#8220NY, NY,&#8221 will be on view through September 4th.

The Chapman Historical Museum is located at 348 Glen Street, Glens Falls, NY. Hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am to 4 pm, and Sunday, noon to 4 pm. For more information call (518) 793-2826.

Photo: Coney Island bathers by Seneca Ray Stoddard, ca. 1880

Adirondack Museum Monday Lectures Begin

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The Adirondack Museum will host its annual Monday Evening Lecture Series in July and August. The first evening is with Museum Chief Curator, Laura Rice’s lecture &#8220Night Vision: The Wildlife Photography of Hobart Vosburg Roberts&#8221 on July 11. Hobart V. Roberts’ photographs, camera equipment, published articles, and awards are featured in a new exhibit at the Adirondack Museum. Rice will discuss Roberts’ work and the museum’s exhibit in an illustrated presentation.

Lectures continue on July 18 with Robert Arnold’s &#8220Let Loose the Dogs of War: New York in the American Civil War-&#8221 and on July 25 with Mark Bowie &#8220s &#8220Night Over the North Country.&#8221

August begins with Bill McKibben on August 1 and &#8220The Most Important Number in the World: Updates on the Fight for a Stable Climate-&#8221 August 8 with Robert Demarest and &#8220Traveling with Winslow Homer-&#8221 August 15 with David Wagner and &#8220John James Audubon, Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait and American Wildlife Art.&#8221 The summer series concludes on August 22 with Elisabeth Hudnut Clarkson and &#8220The Lost World of Foxlair and the Valentino Summer.&#8221

The presentations will be offered at no charge to museum members- the fee for non-members is $5.00. For full descriptions of the lectures, please visit www.adirondackmuseum.org.

Hudson Valley Farm Photo Exhibit at Olana

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Olana has announced the opening of a new exhibition by photographer Brandt Bolding entitled FARM: Agricultural Life of the Hudson Valley. The exhibit in the recently restored Coachman’s House Gallery at Olana State Historic Site.

In 1860, Frederic Church purchased approximately 126 acres of farmland and immediately set out to build a new “farm house” for his family. The artist expanded his land holdings over the next ten years and ultimately moved his family to the larger stone-and-brick house he built near the summit of the hill, but he continued to work on and operate a farm at Olana for the rest of his life. Church was proud of his farming accomplishments, writing friends and family of the success of his orchards, vegetables, and livestock.

The FARM exhibit coincides with extensive farm restoration work about to begin in Olana’s historic farm complex. The Olana Partnership and Olana State Historic Site have secured two major grants to focus on restoring Frederic Church’s farm. Over the next several years, meadow and orchard restoration projects will return the neglected farm to potentially active agricultural use. “According to a report of the American Farmland Trust, every hour we lose 125 acres of farm and ranch land in the U.S.,” reports Olana Partnership President Sara Griffen. “By focusing on the restoration of Olana’s farm we hope to play a small role in ensuring the agricultural future of Columbia County.”

Photographer Brandt Bolding states, “through extensive travels photographing and documenting the farms of northeastern America I am attempting to bring awareness of just a small part of what is at stake. Nowhere is this more of a concern than in the Mid-Hudson Valley…where citizens, and civic organizations large and small rally to preserve the irreplaceable beauty of our landscape from less than circumspect development.”

The photos included in the exhibition will be printed by the photographer in a limited edition of twelve and are available for purchase in the Olana Museum Store. The exhibit will be open every day through October 30, 2011 at Olana State Historic Site, 5720 State Route 9G, Hudson, New York.

About Brandt Bolding:

Brandt Bolding’s photographs have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the northeastern part of the U.S. and have appeared in newspapers, journals, and publications by various preservation organizations in New York State. His work on agricultural life will be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Arkell Museum in Canajoharie, NY, later this year. Two of his photographs appeared in the book entitled Old Homes of New England: Historic Houses in Clapboard, Shingle, and Stone published by Rizzoli in April 2010.

Photo: Level Acres Cornfield, Route 82, Columbia County. Courtesy Brandt Bolding Photography.

A Stoddard Adirondack Waterfalls Photo Exhibit

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A new exhibit featuring twenty original Seneca Ray Stoddard photographs of waterfalls in the Adirondacks is now on view at the Chapman Historical Museum. Included are popular falls located on the Hudson, Raquette and Ausable Rivers, as well as lesser known falls in remote locations in the central Adirondacks — places that today still are accessible only by foot. Examples are Roaring Brook Falls on Giant, Buttermilk Falls on the Raquette, Surprise Falls on Gill Brook near Lower Ausable, and Silver Cascade in Elizabethtown. The photos will be on display until July 3rd.

In 1864, when Seneca Ray Stoddard relocated to Glens Falls from Troy, NY, he first worked as a sign painter, but soon took up landscape photography. Several times Stoddard made treks through the Adirondacks to photograph the sights that drew tourists to the region. Abundant waterways and the steep terrain made for many scenic cascades and falls, which became popular destinations for travelers. For the next 50 years he sold his images of these falls to tourists visiting the region.

The Chapman Historical Museum is located at 348 Glen Street, Glens Falls, NY. Public Hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am to 4 pm, and Sunday, noon to 4 pm. For more information call (518) 793-2826.

Photo: Silver Cascade, Barton Brook, Elizabethtown, ca. 1880.