This was taken for a studio lighting class at RISD. It was mostly a portrait class and fashion-oriented taught by Paul Krot. Anne was in Apparel Design. It was shot with a 4×5 camera and Ektachrome transparency film.
Author: Harry Bartlett
Ellen Halftone
This was taken for a printmaking class at RISD. It uses a large halftone screen to show the dots and was transferred to silkscreen for printing. Ellen was in the photo department.
Providence
Coming of age in art school can be a precarious time. Certain photos bring back the vulnerabilities and excitement of making images of friends. The one above of Ellen was shot in the Metcalf building at RISD and uses a halftone for a silkscreen class while the one below was of Lani outside the old train station downtown Providence for a photography class taught by Paul Krot.
Self Portrait
Early 80s self portrait (8” x 8” Cibachrome print) taken in the basement of house on Brown Street Providence shared with 6 friends – an impressionable art student mimicking musical influences for better or worse : )
Here’s the source of inspiration.
Bert Beaver
Bert Beaver taught photography at RISD for many years as well as at the Art Institute Chicago. He was hired by Harry Callahan and replaced him as the head of the department in the 1970s. Bert had a great sense of humor. This photo was taken in Provincetown where we headed off one day on a class assignment to see the effects of consuming alcohol and taking photos. Bert is wearing a beret and lost in thought by the waves but you can still see him smiling.
Down by the River
This is a photo silkscreen Carlo Cannell created. It’s of Tom, Larry & Bayard down by the river probably in Lawrence MA. I always associate this with first reading Jack Kerouac and the times we went to Lowell to see where he was buried. We were very inspired and influenced by Kerouac and the Beat writers.
Public Garden
This was taken in the Boston Public Garden for a class at BU taught by Steven Frank around 1981. We had moved to Boston not too long ago and the city was an alluring place. My brother and I shared an apartment in the Back Bay and we wandered the streets quite a bit. Silver gelatin print 9″ x 6.5″.
Another photo from 1981 taken in an alley in the Back Bay Boston.
Dance
Taken in an apartment around Amsterdam and 116th St in New York around 1981 of two friends – Ellen and Tom. My sister was going to Barnard and friends from high school were in town. I remember there was a large poster of Mick Jagger by Andy Warhol on the wall otherwise your typical low rent college apartment on the upper west side. A raw memory of dancing in a raw apartment – those were the days.
Al
This is a yearbook senior pic I took of a good friend at Phillips Academy Andover. It’s a double exposure with a 4 x 5 large-format camera and was taken in the basement of the Pot Pourri yearbook room which was in an old building originally the cafeteria. We were told the closets were where they stored food before refrigeration so we stashed our beer there. I’m not sure I meant to take a double exposure, I probably just exposed the Plus X film twice without knowing it which was the fun part of photography, the surprises that happened. Al chose a quote from the Velvet Underground song Beginning to See the Light which was popular back then.
Casey Blues
Casey plays the blues… Andover-Exeter weekend probably 1979. Casey was an inspired young lad – staring intently at a nerf football maybe wondering why he was wearing a coat and tie with a school flag at the big game. Not a jock by any means nor a rah rah go big blue cheerleader, more intellectual and very funny and smart. He wrote a poem called ‘Playing those Blues in D’ that I still remember. Here he’s playing the harmonica – maybe a Hohner D harp.
