[Leica] backstage photograph exhibit

[Jesse Hellman <hellman@home.com>]

The Peabody Conservatory of Music Opera Theatre in Baltimore is mounting
a show of 46 photographs I made over the last five years, taken
backstage at the opera performances. Any Luggers nearby are welcome to
attend the opening Friday evening March 2 in the Galleria Piccola of the
library. All of the photos were done with an M6 and p3200 film. My son
David, a student at Hampshire College, wrote this review of the
photographs for the Peabody News:

My father has been taking photographs all my life. Many of my earliest
memories remain most vivid in the form of an old grainy print. Sometimes

it’s impossible to be sure whether it’s the beauty of a photograph which

triggers an old memory, or if it’s the strength of the memory which
lends
the photograph an appeal beyond that of its base aesthetic components.
The
photographs in this series ring with genuine spontaneity. They speak
volumes
about an instant even as they seem to stretch on and on...

 One of the photographs shows a young man and woman romantically
entangled
while a camera flash blazes behind them. The moving shutter of my
father’s
camera shielded part of the film from the flash, creating an
“artificial”
break between light and dark. Here the themes of the series double over
upon
themselves - the tensions between reality and theatricality, between
reality
and illusion, between present and past, the dynamic between performer
and
observer, and the influence observation has upon human behavior - and
our
view of things becomes a bit murkier. This is one of my favorite photos
in
the series.

Photography is among the most scientific and precise artistic methods of

visual reproduction. Perhaps that is the source of its peculiar
melancholy -
the accuracy of the image underscores the illusion. In this series of
photographs, my father has managed to seize upon the minutia of human
expression. In contemplation, play, and transformation, the subjects of
this
series are represented with a keen eye for nuance. Their features
strengthened with theatrical make-up, their bodies frozen in action, the

moment seems so present, even though it is past.

Jesse