Roman holiday

John Gaumond's beautifully composed photographs

by Leon Nigrosh

COLORS OF ITALY:
Photographs by John Gaumond at the Italian American Cultural Center Fine Arts Gallery, 26 Mulberry Street, through January 29.

This exhibition could just as easily have been titled "The Nooks and Crannies of Italy" because, unlike the typical tourist, John Gaumond finds greater pleasure in discovering the little nuances of foreign places, including light, color, angles, arches, and doorways. He takes very few wide shots and even fewer pictures with people in the frame. Twenty-three colorful examples taken from over 700 photographs he shot during two recent trips to Italy are currently on display at the Italian American Cultural Center. What makes this exhibition unique is the fact that Gaumond never intended to show these pictures publicly to anybody - he took them primarily as personal reminders of the places he had seen.

Gaumond got his picture-taking start in 1953, while stationed on a restricted US Air Force base in Korea. Worcester-born Gaumond bought an inexpensive 35 mm Zeiss Contessa at the PX and began taking pictures. For the past 20 years, he has relied on a Canon AE-1 to document his travels throughout Europe. Because he was shooting just for himself, he found that this fully automatic camera and the local photo shop were all he needed to know about picture making, and he could simply focus on capturing the particular image in his viewfinder.

Partly because of this technical naiveté and partly because of his inquiring mind, honed for 36 years as a teacher (now retired), along with his well-known acting and poetic sensitivities, Gaumond often finds beauty in the most mundane settings. An excellent example of this is Ladder, with its weather-beaten rungs extending upward out of the frame, standing alongside an aged and broken wheelbarrow, in front of an elderly stone wall. The setting is all angles and monochromatic tones that form a cohesive and peaceful composition.

Gaumond's take on historic ruins is different than that of the typical tourist. While most folks would keep backing further and further away in an attempt to squeeze Rome's entire Colosseum into their viewfinder, Gaumond gets in tight, pitches his camera upward, and concentrates on a small portion of the famous wall. For The Colosseum he waited until the morning light was just right and then captured the sweeping curve of the backlit wall punctuated by sun-filled arches and Corinthian columns that make the scene look as if it was painted against a brilliant cerulean sky. Instead of trying for a wide-angle shot of the entire Roman Forum, Gaumond chose an up-close view of one of the few intact buildings, the Temple of Antonius and Faustina. While walking the length of the Forum, looking through the various archways, he came upon a particular place that caught his attention. View of Via Del Fori Imperiali from the Forum focuses on a distant Italian national flag standing upright in the midst of sunlit ruins, all framed by an ancient stone arch.

Because he feels that it is an invasion of privacy, Gaumond rarely takes pictures with people in them. One of the few images that is populated is Piazza del Duomo, San Gimignano. Here we see a priest followed by two men carrying something across the sun-struck brick plaza. Besides the various architectural angles, textures, and colors, what makes this image more pleasing for Gaumond is that when he took it, a choir was rehearsing off-camera, so now each time he looks at the photo "the voices are there as well." Another picture, Piazza Venezia, shows a white-helmeted traffic cop in action while a second waits to take over the little elevated post in the middle of the plaza. Interestingly, it turns out that the tiny balcony in the distance is the very one from which Benito Mussolini gave a speech at the dawn of WW II.

For someone who never expected to show his work, Gaumond acquits himself quite well, using modest double mats and thin black frames to anchor each of his pleasant, placid, and engaging photographs - all uniformly presented in a comfortable 8 by 12-inch format. As Gaumond says, "I just want to keep it simple" -- and that applies to his poetry, his life, and his photography.

The IACC gallery is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.. Call (508) 754-7100.