PHOTOS
Alicia Grega-Pikul
Like many photographers of his generation, Ben Lifson was trained making silver prints in the darkroom. But as a teacher, in particular, he’s embraced the technological advances of digital photography. Lifson began studying in the mid-’60s, earning his first professional dollar shooting production photographs for The Yale School of Drama. Widely-known for his candid street work, including a study of Boston’s North End, Lifson (www.benlifson.com) worked as the photography critic for the Village Voice from 1977-1982 before publishing freelance in the world’s most prominent niche publications. In the ’70s and ’80s he taught at major universities including Harvard, Fordham, Yale and Bard, and led workshops at RISD and abroad. He’s now teaching students via instant messaging.
“The new world of distance learning enables photographers and teachers to discover and reach each other. Its virtual environment makes sustained growth possible within the context of the photographer’s other professional, family and personal commitments, and provides a way for photographers to contact each other and establish the kind of dialogue which, before the creation of the Internet, e-mail, instant messaging, affordable scanners and/or digital cameras, was possible only in the concentrated environment of a graduate school or a big city with a strong and populous art world. And so, I’ve decided to recruit and teach by Internet,” he wrote on his Web site.
It just so happens that Lifson is a mentor of Camerawork’s Michael Poster. When the Scranton gallery was looking to schedule shows for 2009, the guru was asked to recommend two of his students worth exhibiting.
He suggested Germany native Bernd Reinhardt (www.berndreinhardt.com) and the Italian-born Giancarlo A. Mori, both street photographers currently residing in Los Angeles.
“They sent us a whole bunch of work and once we looked at it and decided we’d like to show them, they selected the work and sequenced it. They collaborated, actually, on the overall concept,” said Rolfe Ross, a partner at Camerawork along with Poster and Ivana Pavelka. “It’s an interesting comparison, the way each of these guys see the street. I think it’s one of the better shows we’ve had here, but I’m partial to this kind of stuff.”
Titled On the Surface opens Friday with a reception from 6 to 8:30 p.m. and will remain on display through August. It’s notable that those in Scranton will be looking at many of the same images now on display in Reinhardt’s exhibit Of this Time, and of this Place at the Goethe Institut in Los Angeles. (www.goethe.de/ins/us/los/kue/en4514272v.htm)
“In my photography I concentrate on the aspects I love about Hollywood, which are sometimes things that residents take for granted and tourists ignore,” Reinhardt stated in his vision for the collection.
“I try to capture small private moments in this public place. Observing the people around me, I scan through the routines of urban behavior, and when life sparks, I try to freeze it.
“I look for the expression of an emotion, however small and fleeting it may be. This is a moment when a person reveals their individuality and becomes more than part of a crowd.”
Reinhardt has been working in Los Angeles in television since 2000 and began studying with Lifson in June of 2007.
Mori began to pursue art photography on his own in the early 1980s and shoots almost exclusively in black and white. The most recent images in his portfolio were made in Los Angeles, North America, Italy, Europe, Australia and Japan.
“The pictures straddle the public and private realms: many are of street scenes, architectural elements and “found” objects, but they are not documentary,” he explains in a statement online. (www.giancarlomori.com)
“I am constantly searching for the way in which reality can and does manifest itself in photographs, with all its ambiguity playing a critical role. I am fascinated by visual ambiguity (the tension between the way things look in life and the way they look when photographed) and the ambiguity of meaning (what things are vs. what they suggest or evoke when seen). … This ambiguity, like a zen koan, questions the nature of reality and our perception of it, and ultimately produces an esthetic point of view.”
Camerawork is located at Marquis Art & Frame on Center Street in Scranton. Visit www.cameraworkgallery.org for more information.