ONLINE February 8th, 6:30-8:30pm
Hosted by Jeff Larason, featuring PRC members Edward Boches, Peter Fougere, David Gordon, and Judith Donath
Free to attend, and open to the public.
Register HERE to receive the Zoom link.
This month we are launching a new format for PRC Nights and we have invited Jeff Larason to be our inaugural host. Jeff has chosen the theme for the evening of, “Boston Stories” and we are looking forward to seeing a range of interpretations of this theme from our members. Street photography may be one of the most well known genres related to this theme, however there is room for other points of view such as architectural photography, portraiture, and more.
Jeff Larason has been a Boston street photographer for 40 years, and his images have been in group shows around the world. In 2002, Jeff published his book, Sonder. He is the founder of the Boston Streets Collective and the host of The Crit House, a YouTube photography program. The Crit House has hosted conversations and critiques with photographers like Sam Abell, Arthur Myerson, Cig Harvey and Barbara Peacock. In his own photography work, Jeff has recently turned his eye to nighttime landscapes. He lives in Sudbury, with his partner, Marina and puppy, Tag.
In the 1980s David Gordon was a freelance photographer working with small nonprofits in Boston, which is when he began a body of work portraying the human side of homelessness in the city. In 1984 he initiated a ten-month project walking through Boston, listening to stories and making photographs to help raise awareness of why, how, and how long people experienced homelessness. The series was exhibited locally and is included in collections such as the Boston Public Library, the Fogg Art Museum/Harvard Art Museums), the Rose Art Museum, and the Portland Museum of Art. In 2021 Gordon revisited his work from the 1980s to develop new work comparing what has changed and what has stayed the same in the realm of Boston homelessness. During the height of the pandemic, he started doing extensive research and conducting key informant interviews over Zoom with more than 50 service providers, policy experts, philanthropists, and others who shared their observations and insights. He also did a new round of street outreach work, listening to stories about life without a home as shared by roughly 80 people who were living on the streets or in shelters in Boston.
Edward Boches is a documentary photographer based in Boston and Cape Cod. Interested in how photography can connect us, help us understand each other, and inspire empathy, Boches has photographed diverse communities and makes it a point to meet and photograph at least one stranger every day. He has exhibited work in museums and galleries including the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA; the Bronx Documentary Center, New York, NY; PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, Vermont; Providence Center for the Photographic Arts, Provide3nce, RI; and in Boston at the Bromfield Gallery (online) and Panopticon Gallery. Boches’s work has also been distributed internationally by the Associated Press and has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Sun Magazine, Zeke Magazine and the Provincetown Independent, where he is a regular contributor. Boches’s presentation for PRC Nights: Boston Stories, is his tribute to Boston. Of the work he says, “Instead of it being a “project” per se, I want it to be closer to how Ernst Haas photographed New York in the 50’s. Just photographs of a place, albeit with an aesthetic style that might be compatible with that place.” The images reveal a temporary moment in a particular place. This work, Boston: Out of the Shadows is in its early stages as Boches reviews thousands of images and continues to photograph every day.
From 1983 to 1986, Peter Fougere documented the monumental efforts undertaken to complete the Southwest Corridor: a new right-of-way for a portion of the Subway System and Amtrak. He captured images of the complete relocation of the MBTA Orange Line, and his series focuses on places and sites that no longer exist and locations that look completely different.
Inspired by Louis Hine, Fougere sought out laborers and journeymen (like himself, a career carpenter) involved in the day-to-day construction of these historic projects. Industrious, resourceful, and often brave, thousands of blue-collar tradesmen eventually worked together for 25 years (1982-
2007), above and below ground, to transform urban Boston’s landscape via the Big Dig. In addition to his documentation of the construction, Fougere’s work focuses on and celebrates the
people behind the scenes, the conscientious employees whose knowledge, resilience, and strength are vital to the growth of the city.
Judith Donath’s photography focuses on people—their relationships with each other, their interactions with technology and built environments, and their impact on the natural world. Her photographic work is grounded in the traditions of street photography, but she also embraces experimental processes and presentations. Donath is a well-known new media designer and theorist, and her experience with computational technologies and insights about our rapidly changing society inform her image-making practice.