“Meriden, CT, July 4, 2012,” digital ink jet print, by Jane Lederer.
Jane Lederer’s photograph of a seemingly ordinary July 4 celebration is anything but.
If you look close up, folks are relaxing in lawn chairs and taking in the fireworks. Step back and they become sprawled out bodies, carnage in a battle scene beneath the rockets’ black and and white glare.
The legerdemain of light and distance emerged in lively conversations among photographers and their admirers who attended the Thursday night opening reception of Spectra 2013 at the Arts Council’s Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery.
That’s the annual show of the Arts Council’s Photo Arts Collective. This year it features about two dozen photographs, generally small format compositions in both black and white and color, that line the walls and alcoves of the Audubon Street second-floor space.
The exhibition runs through July 5 and is viewable during regular business hours Monday through Friday.
Maryann Ott (pictured) is one of the cofounders back in 1995 of the Photo Arts Collective, along with Harold Shapiro, Terry Dagradi, and Julie Trachtenberg. Any artist member of the Arts Council can join for the $35 Arts Council membership simply by checking off the Photo Arts Collective box.
As with many of the photo-savvy viewers and practitioners at Thursday’s reception, Ott saw the light, not the other-worldly narrative, in Lederer’s composition: “It’s a night photograph. A lot of people shoot fireworks, but she put it in context, with natural light.”
The collective has approximately 150 members, with a core of 60 active, of whom 25 are represented in the show.
The photographers meet once a month at the Kehler Liddell Gallery in Westville and talk shop or listen to a speaker, but there’s no “portfolio sharing,” said Ott.
“Tree,” black and white photograph by Rod Cook.
That’s why when they see each others’ work at the Spectra shows, there are surprises. That’s one of the pleasures of the exhibition, said Rod Cook, a former fashion photographer who with his wife Penrhyn Cook share a studio in Bridgeport.
Cook said he himself is surprised at the latest turn in the work of his wife. She generally is known among the Spectra folks as someone who shoots in black and white and whose compositions contain quirky images of people, Rod Cook said.
“Urban Color,” digital print with archival pigment ink, by Penrhyn Cook.
But she showed at Spectra 2013 two large digital prints of cityscapes, one of Bridgeport and one of mid-town Manhattan (pictured) shot from the window of a hotel in Brooklyn.
“To me this looks like Oz,” Cook said, explaining that she bumped up the contrast on the computer to bring out the emerald‑y greens of some of the skyscraper rooftops.
Because the exhibition is in many ways a cozy setting where the photographers feel not so much judged but are showing among friends, the participants, like the Cooks, often display works that are new for them or show a new side.
For Penrhyn Cook, as she talked about her work, you got the sense that the exploration was ongoing: “I shot in color, converted to black and white [her usual practice], but when it transferred, the impact and vibrancy were lost. It’s harder to work in color than black and white. To get a color image that’s different [and satisfying] is more of a challenge,” she said.
