Anti-busing proponent and City Counselor, Louise Day Hicks, had hosted a group of students in the Chambers for a salute to the flag, served with cookies and milk. Pouring onto the Plaza steps after the reception, this group of demonstrators confronted a second group of students invited to tour the Hall. Tempers flared and some shoving began.

I had a 135mm lens and motor drive on one camera and a 35mm on the other. As the shuffling began I switched my 35 mm lens to a 20 mm. Over my shoulder I saw a Black man (later identified as Ted Landsmark) approach the Plaza from Washington and State and immediately thought he would be a target.

I felt like I was watching a Clint Eastwood movie, witnessing the slow-motion moment when the gauntlet is tossed before igniting the outbreak of violence. I started taking photos with the 20 mm lens. Detecting a sound I realized the motor wasn’t transporting  film. I stopped shooting continuous shots and pressed the button for one frame at a time. 

The victim, Ted Landsmark, was transported to the Mass General Hospital. The crowd worked it’s way to the Federal Court House in Post Office Square. Once there I was told to run my shots into the Herald by reporter, Joe Driscoll. I did not grasp the magnitude of what I captured until later that day.

AP and the Globe had tried to cover it from a bad angle and before the real action began. I had the best shots. The demonstration had come to me. I took my chances and developed my film in the unreliable Kodak Versamat at the office, known to shred film like a pasta-maker. It developed just the way it should have. 

The editors were very frightened by the series of images captured on my contact sheet. It was a volatile situation, it was busing, and this was Boston.  As fate would have it, Howard Hughes had died that day. Appeased by sharing front-page space with other big news, they no longer feared showing the racism that rang out that day on the top of page one.  

We were the first paper in Boston to get motor drives and the whole staff got one Nikon F with a motor drive and 4 lenses: 20, 35, 135 and 200.  We had community lens in the locker for longer telephotos.  I bought my own second Nikon F camera. I was always prepared and I got my shot.

Working with Digital Silver Imaging I have reprinted the original contact sheet. It allows me to show the full impact of the photo series. The full story did not run then but can be viewed in new light today. For prints contact www.digitalsilverimaging.com.

Gallery Talk

Join accomplished photographer and guide Ron Rosenstock. Ron started leading photo tours in 1967. In those years he has led more than 200 tours to many destinations worldwide. Ron retired from Clark University after teaching photography there for thirty years. His published books include his exquisite black and white photographs: The Light of Ireland, Chiostro (Cloister), and Hymn to the Earth; and color
photographs in Journeys. His photographs are to be found in the permanent collections of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts, The Polaroid Collection in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the International Center of Photography in New York City. Ron’s striking; one-of-a-kind photographs can be seen at www.ronrosenstock.com.

• Morocco:  February 23-March 9, Sold Out, please call for waitlist
• Iceland:  May 13-23 
• Ireland:  St. Patrick’s Day March 13-23, Accompanied by Paul Caponigro May 31-June 10, Exclusive Camera Club Members August 29-Sept. 8, Photo Workshop with Peter Cox August 20-30
• Venice:  September 21-30
• Prague:  October 1-11
• Death Valley:  October 20-26
• Bhutan:  December 1-13 
• 2011 Tours to be announced including Santorini-Greece, New Zealand

Digital Silver Imaging has worked with Ron on his Black & White digital infrared series.  Ron came to us and we helped convert his Canon 5D to infrared.  The Griffin Photo Gallery at Digital Silver Imaging exhibited his new series of Infrared prints that were printed at the lab, Digital Silver Imaging.  The images were all from the Infrared digital files, but printed onto true Ilford silver gelatin  paper. 

Contact Strabo Tours for complete details:
607-756-8676      www.phototc.com

In his series of photographs Romancing Σtone, Jonathan Spath unifies two areas of deep personal interest – math and photography.

The photos, taken in a former granite quarry on Cape Ann, MA, also reflect his style of photographing which “looks further and deeper into everyday surroundings to discover what singular perspectives may exist both in the object and the space around the object,” he says.

“The stones’ shapes, tones, textures, and scale were all of initial interest to me,” Spath says. “I then spent time sitting, being in and getting a sense for the place and its formations. After some time passed, I began seeing the distinct geometric shapes, the spheres, the many triangles and other polygons. My natural inclination to uncover the order, even the mathematical, within the randomness of the stone piles emerged.”

Spath adds that the photographs’ titles also describe a mathematical quality he sees or feels within the stone. In the photo Inscribed, for example, Spath says “the oblate stone is positioned to almost touch the exterior triangle in three locations. The egg shape is therefore ‘inscribed’ within the triangle.”

“As an educator I love to take opportunities to teach through the arts,” says Paula Tognarelli executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “Jonathan Spath has woven and integrated some enduring lessons on math into the exhibition of his photographs that can long outlive the classroom. Learning through the arts is learning that lasts a lifetime.”

Romancing Σtone is featured at the Griffin Museum at Digital Silver Imaging in Belmont, MA, January 21 through March 28. An opening reception with the artist at Digital Silver Imaging is January 28, 6-8 PM.

All framing at the DSI Gallery is provided by Kathy Skarvan from Ava Art Custom Framing.

From The Wall Street Journal.
by William Meyers
January 16th, 2010

My older brother, Leonard, idolized Ted Williams. Growing up in Providence, R.I., in the 1940s, and a good schoolboy baseball player himself, Leonard regarded Williams with something like awe. He wasn’t the only one. Arthur Griffin, a longtime sports photographer for the Boston Globe, was asked by Kodak in 1939 to try its newly developed color film; he used that 4-by-5-inch film to shoot pictures of Williams. In 1939 Williams was Rookie of the Year—young, personable and eager to oblige the press. (Later his relations with the press and his fans would sour.) The color pictures Griffin took show the Splendid Splinter in various stages of his incredibly accurate swing.
Griffin also took black-and-white pictures with his 35mm camera of Williams in the outfield leaping for a ball—his feet high off the ground, his body twisted but relaxed, and a great smile on his face. There is a picture of the Fenway crowd, all the men wearing Panama hats or straw boaters; the women, too, wearing hats. A large-format color picture of Williams at rest is a quintessential portrait of a young man for whom things are going well. In 2002, when Williams died, Sports Illustrated used one of Griffin’s 1939 color photos for its cover.

Arthur Griffin: Ted Williams, The Splendid Splinter
The Cambridge Homes
360 Mount Auburn Street
Cambridge, MA
Through February 7th.

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