Histories Explored

Like many families, ours has boxes of old snapshots: pictures of grandparents and parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins; old blurry black-and-whites of wide eyes and Easter hats; faded color shots of ourselves in outdated hairstyles and bell-bottoms.







My father even has a box with some silvered old Daguerrotypes, slowly fading in their hinged leather frames; sadly, few of the subjects' names were written down.







Time passes, but images remain. Photography is powerful that way to remember where we came from, the experiences which shaped us, the transitions we have experienced. Photos carry feeling - feeling enhances knowledge. Two photography exhibits are opening in Saranac Lake in the next few days which will help us remember, feel, and understand.








Tonight, Friday November 6, the Adirondack Artists Guild hosts an opening reception for the show "bridges I have crossed", by Mark Kurtz. I have written before of Mark's work (click here); this show is his prize as first place winner of the Guild's 2009 Juried Show back in March.







Bridges carry both physical and symbolic resonance. These days, we realize that a bridge also has very practical importance in the North Country: the sudden closure of our bridge across Lake Champlain has been devastating.







Mark's new show, featuring dreamy sepia-toned images, chronicles numerous bridges. Some will be familiar to North Country travelers, such as the Covered Bridge in Jay or the bridge over Lower Saranac on State Route 3. The Brooklyn Bridge is represented, as are bridges in Europe. But, familiar or new, each image is startling - either for its perspective, or the lighting, or something less easily defined...







In his Artist's Statement, Mark mentions that he has crossed many bridges in his life - I think most of us have. These images are the more powerful for helping us see layers of meaning in such crossings.





Another photography exhibition opens in Saranac Lake this week: "The Stones Have Memories", by Kelly Gorham, at the 7444 Gallery on Depot Street. This show is subtitled: "an exploration of Berlin's Cold War landmarks".









In the early 80s, I visited both West and East Germany. The West thrilled me with colorful flowers and fields, grand architecture, and, everywhere, sparkling cleanliness. The East, by contrast, impressed me as grey, unswept, and decrepit. Nowhere was this contrast sharper than in Berlin - that famous city divided. On the West side: fashionable people, dancing trees, neon lights, bustling boulevards. On the East side: grey. Grey buildings, grey streets, grey grit - even the plant life seemed colorless. I recall the empty, unresponsive eyes of the ladies shuffling along the sidewalks in head kerchiefs and dusty overcoats. I was traveling with a group of young people - Americans and West Germans - and we felt we could not laugh aloud. The very air was heavy, as I'm told happens before a tornado.

Unbeknownst to us, of course, a tornado WAS imminent. Before the end of that decade, that brutal grey wall - with its guard towers, barbed wire, and land mines - fell. I remember looking in wonder at photos of young people standing atop the ruins of that edifice - rejoicing with them at its destruction.

Gorham's new show opens at 7 pm on Monday, November 9, 2009: twenty years after the wall came down. I have not seen the images yet, but I look forward to it. In an interview featured in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, Gorham points out that this story is in danger of being forgotten. He says, "It's not really covered in history in school anymore. Why would kids know about it?"

He has a point. Like the fading old Daguerrotypes in my family's box, these images need to be named, so that future generations will know them.