Air apparent

The outdoors inspires Faulkner and company

by Leon Nigrosh

PETER FAULKNER, THE BOYS AND GLORIA: PHOTOGRAPHS At the Douglas Arts Common, 274 Main Street, Douglas, through July 26.

Some people just can't wait to get their snapshots back from the one-stop photo store to see if they had a good time. Not so Peter Faulkner, the boys, and Gloria -- for them, the enjoyment is the picture-taking process itself. Faulkner's class, which meets at the Worcester Center for Crafts, has discovered photography's enjoyable method of self-expression. As the current show at the Douglas Arts Common attests, this group show finds itself outside.

This exhibition is the first time that the four neophytes have the opportunity to show their work to the public, and they have acquitted themselves quite well. More than 50 pictures are on view throughout the three-room space and are roughly grouped according to subject. Trees, in varied stages of budding through decay, make up the largest group of works. Notable among these are Frank Logan's Winter Stump '97, a forlorn hollow remnant filled with snow; Frank E. Howe's White in the Night, a stand of birches illuminated against the night sky; and Howe's Ginger's Tree, which proudly stands before a bright horizon.

Barns and old buildings also serve to stir the group's creative imagination. Joseph Gibbons's Barn #3, Penn captures the emptiness of a dilapidated, brokenwindowed homestead, while his Contemplation turns peeling paint and shadows into an abstract composition.

The Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor has provided the greatest stimulation for these photographers, and here is where Faulkner's work really shines. Setting up his camera in the early morning light, he turns the trees in Silver Lake Watershed, Grafton into glittering figures with glowing leaves. His Falls, Flint Pond, Grafton is a high-key image of water cascading past hot trees and their bright reflections. Howe's Blackstone Beauty shows us a quieter area where a water tumbles over a small dam near a reflected stone bridge.

As you move about the rooms, a photographic legacy begins to come into focus. There is an unbroken line from nature photographer Ansel Adams (1902-1984) and his Group f/64 directly to these tyros. One of Adams's close associates was Minor White (19081976), who was a great influence upon Clark University teacher Ron Rosenstock, who in turn is Faulkner's mentor. The attention to technical detail, the use of natural light, the full use of the gray scale -- from searing white to inky black -- important to the earlier professionals, have all become integral to the repertoire of the emerging photogs. In fact, Gibbons's Leaf Studies echo f/64's Imogen Cunningham's 1924 Leaf Pattern and Howe's abstract River Demon could have come from the same roll of film as White's 1958 Ritual Branch.

And what about Gloria? Gloria Woodman has taken a slightly different photographic pathway. After only two years of study with Faulkner, she has set up her own darkroom and hand colors her finished black-and-white prints. Woodman is the only person in this show to concentrate on photographing people instead of trees and rocks, yet she makes pictures of her subjects in their natural habitat. Street Musicians and Solitude show two attitudes of the same tenor sax-playing woman. In one view, she is exuberantly blasting away on her horn, in the other she is curled into a seat with her back to us.

What further sets Woodman's work apart from that of her companions is that she purposely introduces hot, clashing, and misplaced colors into her images. In Dancing in New Orleans the young street dancer is hot-footing it in a lavender shirt against a background of orange, turquoise, and yellow. The two trumpeters in Practice are highlighted in lilac shirts as they play their yellow horns for passers-by.

Although this exhibit is ostensibly about photographing natural situations, underneath it is really about risk-taking. Here are four golden-agers who have only recently embarked on a new artistic venture. They are showing their heretofore unseen pictures for the first time in a public space. And their teacher is exhibiting with them, so that they will stand or fall together. In this case, everyone carries his or her weight admirably, and we should look forward to future efforts by each of them.

The gallery is open Thursday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Call 476-7082.