Current Art Exhibitions
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July 14–August 4
“Photos from Down the Road” is a photographic exhibition of street photography by East End artist Richard Law. The collection includes street photography and beautiful scenes from the East End and around the world. The exhibit will be on display from July 15 through August 4 at the Southampton Cultural Center, Southampton, NY.
“Photos from Down the Road” is a continuation of Law’s earlier exhibit “Meet the Street” which has been presented in Ashawagh Hall, East Hampton, The Paulina Rieloff Gallery, NYC and The Parthenon Gallery, Nashville, Tennessee. “Photos From Down the Road” were selected from Law’s 50 year archive as a street photographer. It will include scenes from the East End as well as places as far away as Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, as an artistic attempt to demonstrate that, no matter where we are, we are all more alike than different and we are all in this together. The photos were inspired by Norman Rockwell who Law states was his “entry into photography.” As a child, he thought Rockwell’s paintings and illustrations of everyday life, which hung in his family’s dining room, were actually photographs; at around age 12 he was told they were paintings, so he set off to create similar images photographically.
The large, colorful and often humorous photos are suitable for children. The opening reception will be held on Sunday morning July 21 from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, as Law states, “I wanted to give people a place to take the family without fighting traffic … and at the same time, in the park across the street, is the Southampton Farmer’s Market … I thought it could be a nice way to spend the morning in the Hamptons”.
Leaving July 14
“It started when I was fifteen. I was in a spot. I liked music, but I didn’t want to persevere at the piano. I wanted to draw and paint, but I hadn’t the patience. I couldn’t settle the difficulties in drawing. . . and my teacher. . . was disgusted and left me to do what I wanted. ‘If you don’t want to learn to draw lines straight, why don’t you get a camera and stop wasting my time . . .’ About three months later I was sitting in the local doctor’s waiting room and noticed a copy of LIFE – an early issue. I was excited. I had never seen anything quite like it. This was the thing for me. How can I do work like this? I started looking around.” (American Photography)
Leonard McCombe grew up in rural isolation on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. He was the son of a contractor who had worked the construction of the Panama Canal and taken photographs to prove it. These snapshots were Leonard’s earliest exposure to photography. At age14, he contracted Scarlet Fever and had to drop out of high school. While recovering, he took up painting, then photography. He began taking identification photos of German Refugees in an internment camp on the island. At 16, he had he sold his photos of a local fire to the London Daily Express. This encouraged him to send pictures to London newspapers. By the time McCombe turned 18 in 1941, he was a full-fledged war correspondent for Picture Post. By 21, he was covering the great Allied breakout from Normandy, and became the youngest Fellow ever elected to the Royal Photographic Society. His photos of the V-1 Bombing, Normandy invasion and Allied march across Europe appeared in Life Magazine, Colliers, Atlantis, Picture Post and others. He witnessed the Nuremberg Trials and the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. His pictures of German and Polish refugees after WWII earned him an invitation to work with Life Magazine. From 1949 through the last issue of LIFE in 1973, McCombe documented world history through visual storytelling. His 1949 images of the American Cowboy and the Navajo Reservation were published as books in 1951. He chronicled every aspect of life in America, including midwestern towns, industrial life, political life and immigrant New York. In 1953 Leonard received a “registered letter that filled him with deep pride. It was the letter which certified that McCombe . . . was now a citizen of the Unites States of America. . . His American pictures. . . show his day to day. . .punctuating his progress from loneliness. . . when at age 23 he arrived in New York . . . to his period of discovery. . .to the time when he finally felt he belonged here.” (LIFE 1953).
As photojournalism made a transition from storytelling to sensationalism, McCombe turned inward to farming with his family. In 1961 Leonard and his wife Gertrude bought a farm on eastern Long Island during a change in leadership and culture at LIFE Magazine. Buying a farm was like making a journey back to the Isle of Man: ‘It gave me the feeling of getting back to myself.’ Then bigger novelty came along – television – which had moving images and sound. LIFE Magazine faded and, with it, McCombe’s unique brand of picture journalism.” (American Photographer). McCombe’s scrapbooks, writings, negatives, prints and books were quietly forgotten in his study until recently. The photos in this exhibition are a small sample of original prints that tell the story of America through Leonard McCombe’s lens.
“I have now learned to form more or less an opinion, to weed out and stress the significant things in life and make stories more personal and alive.” (Leonard McCombe)