Black & White And Dramatic

In a world of color on television, in movie theaters and, of course, on computer and cellphone screens, you can forget the high drama and beauty of black and white images. Two exhibitions make that drama clear.

   At Joie de Livres Gallery at Salisbury Wines,  Merideth McGregor is showing a small collection of photographs by Esther Bubley, the first woman to win first prize in Photography magazine’s annual contest for best photo of the year. Bubley, who died in 1998, was one of a handful of photographers who worked for the great illustrated magazines — Life, Look and others — and for large corporations such as Standard Oil, which commissioned picture stories from around the world for their public relations and advertising efforts.

    The Salisbury show is quite small, unfortunately; but it gives a taste of Bubley’s mastery of composition and developing.  McGregor has chosen images from Bubley’s justly famous Life article on Marianne Moore, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet (1951) now largely forgotten except — by those of considerable age — for her marvelous personal eccentricity.

   Moore became a beloved fixture of both Greenwich Village and New York City itself. Diminutive and dressed always in a black three-cornered hat and long black cape, she threw out first pitches for her beloved Yankees, acted as unofficial hostess for mayors and posed for many photographers. But Bubley’s images are iconic: Moore with a white cockatoo on her hand or with the most charming of baby elephants.

   The Moore photos are joy captured forever.

   There are also images from a series Bubley did of a girl’s school in England.  The freshness, inquisitiveness and mixed nationality of the girls is striking. Prices for all the Bubley prints are high:  $6,000 and up.

   Quite different, but also black and white, is Leonard Ragouzeous’ show at Hotchkiss School’s Tremaine Gallery.  A retired professor of art in Pennsylvania, Ragouzeous now lives in Vermont, where he draws and paints with India ink on paper.

   These are mostly enormous pictures, the majority five feet or more in height and width. The result is always dramatic and arresting, if not always appealing.  Best are a wonderful horizontal picture (most of the works are vertical) of two World War II-era airplanes, silvery, as if moonlight is reflecting off their metal bodies in an otherwise inky black sky; and two haunting portraits:  “Doubt,â€� clearly a study of the artist, and “Angie at 87,â€�  a straightforward look at a woman in spectacles who is very much alive and connected to the world no matter her age. There are studies of fruit and vegetables, three small pictures of a paintbrush — the first of which I found oddly compelling — even a quiet picture of a Hamilton Beach milkshake blender.  And there are more portraits, a couple very good.  There are only 20 pieces in the show, but the impact is great indeed. The large images are $5,000 to 7,000.

    

 Joie de Livres Gallery at Salisbury Wines is at 19 Main St.  Hours are Monday - Saturday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. 860-248-0530.

     The Tremaine Gallery at The Hotchkiss School is open Monday - Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. The show remains through April 25.  (860)435-3663.

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