HARBOR WORKSExhibits Archive
No Cakewalk: Legacies of an African-American Place | William Anderson
July 27 – October 3, 2010
Conversations with the Artist
Tuesday and Wednesday,
September 28 – 29 | 4:30 – 6:30 pm
“Photographer William Anderson, Jr. is to the rural South what Zora Neale Hurston was to Black folklore—the keeper of its secrets, the champion of its unheralded ways.”
— Shonda Buchanan, The International Review of African American Art
“The photography of William Anderson reveals his compassion for the common people. His black and white images bring dignity and honor to his subjects.”
— Catherine Fox, Atlanta Journal Constitution
In an age of novelty and convenience, when mass consumption overwhelms the remnants of an earlier generation and powerful voices re-write the lessons of history, there are places in America where time stands still. Across fields worked by unknown hands, through narrow streets cracked by silent neglect and behind tarpaper walls clad only with bare necessities, the people share a quiet dignity. Few comforts or surprises await them, save for a distant cakewalk, when the spirit of self-determination awakens a community. Fifty years since the height of the Civil Rights Movement, change is not something they believe in.
William Anderson is a former associate professor of art at Morehouse College; a sculptor, musician, painter and photographer who has documented life in African American communities for four decades. His intensely-personal portraits of sharecroppers, rural families and worshippers in ecstatic religious ceremonies reveal the history of the African American struggle for self-determination. Widely exhibited, his photographs are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, the Wadsworth Antheneum Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Off-Season, Off-Shore: [Yet Another] Trap Day on Cliff Island
Words by Roger Berle, Photographs by Lesley MacVane
July 27 – October 3, 2010
Gallery Talk
Saturday, August 21 | 7:00 – 9:00 pm
“Roger and Lesley have captured so well in text and image a fleeting way of life.”
— Allen Wells, author
“Stunning photographs and wonderful writing.”
— Annie Robinson, author
Summer’s a pretty face. Winter’s serious business. In a Maine island community, you’ve got to focus, year-round, not only on what will sustain your livelihood but even on how your very way of life can survive today’s multitude of countervailing forces. From mending gear to finding enough kids for the island school to seeking a second or third income for paying sky-high property taxes and insurance premiums, the off-season demands full attention. Cliff Island’s community is such an endangered species. Yet these off-shore residents have not given up; they are constantly and doggedly seeking ways and means to remain afloat.
Roger Berle is a writer and former business owner whose lifelong ties to Cliff Island and extensive travels to Maine’s coastal and island communities form the basis for his fiction and non-fiction. A recipient of several community and philanthropic awards, his writing is deeply expressive of the role of individuality and interpersonal relations. His work has appeared in the Cliff Island Seagull, the Maine Coast Fisherman, the Portland Pigeon and the Forecaster. He is at work on a novel of Cliff Island life.
Lesley MacVane is a documentary portrait photographer with a deep commitment to community storytelling. Her work has been published in When Towns Had Teams (RiverVision Press, 2005), The Portland Pigeon, and Neighbors News. She has produced numerous documentaries for CTN5, Portland, Maine’s community television network, and her story about a homeless man—Billy Wolverton—was featured in the documentary newspaper, the Blue Room. A native of Portland, she has lived in Nova Scotia, Nigeria and Jamaica.
Kettle Bottom: An America I Had Never Seen | Guy Saldanha
May 28 – July 25, 2010
“A combination of austerity, power and loneliness. Serious, difficult, perilous work is being done, a situation that invites editorializing, indignation or sentimental idealization. But [Saldanha’s] work never allows a specious response. There is a devotion to the subject...that is a matter of diligent, disciplined attention.”
— Franklin Burroughs, Author
“Saldanha’s black and white images reveal the bent backbone of a modern nation.”
— Bob Keyes, Maine Sunday Telegram
At a time of public outrage—in the midst of environmental distress—when a large segment of the population is looking for a more sustainable existence, there are places in America that depend upon old industry, where occupational accidents are a familiar occurrence and the legacies of an earlier generation are inescapable. They are the last factory towns, mill villages and mining camps that were workshops of the world when coal and oil were young. Cauldrons of production whose native-born and immigrants of every nationality gave us warmth and convenience, and propelled a nation through two global wars, they are today forgotten and disparaged.
Guy Saldanha is a documentary photographer from Harpswell, Maine, who explores traditional agricultural and industrial communities through portraiture and oral history. His work has been exhibited nationally at the Civil Rights Institute, The George Meany Memorial Archives, The American Labor Museum, and the Youngstown Museum of Industry and Labor.
Up River: The Story of a Maine Fishing Community | Olive Pierce
September 1 – October 11, 2009
“Pierce is distinguished by her ability to merge the soft and the hard of her subjects and by sidestepping sentimentality or propaganda, giving the subject back to itself clarified...”
— Paul Caponigro, photographer
Up a neck that reaches toward Muscongus Bay is a culture rooted in the land and sea, where power resides in the family and community, and in wisdom passed from generation to generation. The people there have a tradition, a skill, and a love of their work. They are self-sufficient and they take care of each other. They are not primarily consumers, for they save and re-use. And their method of catching lobsters is not so mercilessly efficient that they ravage the ocean bottom as they make their catch. A quick look around the country gives evidence that communities like it are dying out. —Olive Pierce
Olive Pierce is a Maine resident and lifelong political activist whose images reflect the spirit of community. She is represented in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts; the Portland Museum of Art; and the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. Her books include No Easy Roses (1976) and Up River (1996)
South Street | Barbara G. Mensch
May 19 – August 30, 2009
“An extraordinary portrait of waterfront life...Ms. Mensch’s images are a reminder of all that was lost.”
— Sewell Chan, New York Times
“Ms. Mensch has penetrated the Fulton Fish Market in a poetic and profound way.”
— Bruce Davidson, Magnum
At a time of economic dislocation, in the shadow of Wall Street, one group of workers defied the establishment. A tightly-knit community of fishmongers—modern day immigrants and descendants of the earliest New Yorkers, whose codes of behavior and rhythms of labor were rooted in the pre-Civil War decades—thrived at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Fiercely resistant to government regulation and corporate encroachment, they inhabited a secretive, internally-policed world that was deeply hostile to outsiders. Their story, fraught with risk, intrigue and misadventure, is a powerful statement on the meaning of place, a rare glimpse at the last vestige of historic Gotham and a timely lesson in the survival of working waterfronts everywhere.
Barbara G. Mensch is a New York artist whose work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and Centro Culturo/Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City. Her work has been published in Natural History, Inc., Metropolis, and The New York Times, among other publications. She has contributed to a number of books, including Cityscapes: A History of New York in Images. Her book, South Street, was published in 2006. She is represented by Bonni Benrubi Gallery, Inc., New York.