BOSTON EVENTS

Mark Savoia Exhibit at New England School of Photography in Boston




"Fried Doe Just a Buck"
© Mark Savoia



Mark Savoia, photographer (and co-owner of Connecticut Photographics/Still River Editions), is exhibiting at the New England School of Photography's Stairway Gallery for the month of July, 2010.
Mark graduated from the New England School of Photography in 1980.

Savoia's fine art photography records the visual contradictions that pop up just about everywhere, but it takes a trained eye like his to seek them out. Mark shoots primarily digitally, and his prints are carbon pigment giclees, yet his black and white prints have a film feel. Color would probably just distract the eye from the key elements of his compositions that add up to the visual satire.

Mark is one of seven photographers to receive at 2010 artist fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.

NESOP is located at 537 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA.

~Lys

Tony Donovan's "Ardoyne, Belfast, Ireland 1971-1972" at NESOP








© Tony Donovan

Tony Donovan of Ivoryton Studio's portfolio of work from Ardoyne, Belfast, Ireland 1971-1972 will be exhibited from November 16, 2009 to January 8, 2010 at The Garner Center for Photographic Exhibitions, New England School of Photography, 537 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA. There is an opening reception November 19, 7-9 pm.

Donovan, who was a 26-year-old filmmaker at the time, ended up by chance living in a brick row housing estate in the small community of Ardoyne, in north Belfast, Ireland and photographing its residents with his Leica. "To a lot of Irish Americans, [Ireland] was the promised land," said Donovan. What he saw when he got there was more like a police state.

"At the time the images were made, no one was interested in the work--people didn't want to talk about it," Donovan said. His time in Ireland coincided with some of the worst civil unrest caused by paramilitary groups who waged a war against British rule. Donovan worked on a scaffolding gang rebuilding houses that were burned during the conflict. He says there was around 60% unemployment among the men of the community, as well as high rates of alcoholism and suicide. Some of these problems continue to this day.

As an outsider, Donovan had to gain the trust of his neighbors, and he often photographed children playing in his neighborhood. His images capture the contradictions in Ardoyne's street life, at once tender and supercharged with tension. The black and white carbon pigment prints for the exhibition were made by Still River Editions from the original negatives.

Lys

Two Keith Johnson exhibitions in Massachusetts open in September








© Keith Johnson


Keith Johnson's photographic series Suite Niagara will be at the Griffin Museum Sept 9-October 18, 2009. Johnson made Suite Niagara during his recent residency at CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, NY. The Griffin Museum is located at 67 Shore Road, Winchester, Massachusetts.

Keith will also be featured in a group show focusing on architecture at Panopticon in Boston in September 10-Nov 10, 2009 with an opening reception Thursday, October 15, 5-7 pm.

The show includes photographs by Steve Rosenthal, John Woolf, Keith Johnson and Peter Vanderwarker. From the gallery's website: "Keith Johnson's new work isolates landscape elements, laying them out in grid and multiple linear formats. He suggests that the presentation of multiple images has a very structured and multilayered effect, creating a visual experience larger than the sum of the individual parts."

~Lys