Anne Day to be honored at ‘Salisbury’s Own’

SALISBURY — Anne Day thinks she’s been in The Lakeville Journal too many times, and unfortunately for her, it is entirely her own fault. Where there’s interest, Day’s lens follows. In 2016 she was the first photographer to take home the Arthur Ross Award for Fine Arts, an honor duly noted in her local paper.

Later that year she gave The Journal front row coverage of the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pa., with a then-joyous Hillary Clinton amid a sea of confetti. In February 2017 she took readers to the front lines of a protest (and into the VIP section), capturing the human moments in the larger-than-life Women’s March in Washington, D.C. 

This year, on Sept. 23, Day will be honored by Salisbury Family Services, with a show of new work at Salisbury School’s Tremaine Gallery.

Kim Fiertz, along with her Salisbury Family Services co-president, Helen Scoville, described the nonprofit charitable organization’s mission as “helping people in the community help themselves. Whether their need is for fuel, or sending a child to camp or paying rent. Our services are confidential; even board members don’t know who our clients are.” 

In an effort to raise funds, every two years Salisbury Family Services hosts Celebrating Salisbury’s Own, a tribute to a local resident whose artistic pursuits have left the town in awe. Past honorees include the late satirical cartoonist Robert Osborn, painter Thomas Blagden, author and beloved barnyard animal illustrator Sandra Boynton and Academy Award-nominated actress Laura Linney, who held an acting master class to help students from The Hotchkiss School, Salisbury School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School in the plays they were rehearsing. 

“It was so interesting,” said Fiertz. “By the end of the 15 minutes with each student, the scenes were so much better.”

For the board at Salisbury Family Services, Day was the clear choice for 2017. 

“She really is a full-time town person,” said Fiertz.

“You set your clock to her getting coffee outside each day,” said Scoville, speaking to the regular morning crowd that fills the cafe tables outside Sweet William’s Bakery on Main Street. 

“And the work is wonderful. The show will give us a chance to see not only her view of this area, but the pictures that she’s taken all around the world — some really iconic photographs that are pretty amazing.” 

“I was very honored to get the call. It’s a big deal,” Day said, surveying her work in her studio at home, a key setting for the photographs that will appear in her new show. With a magnificent view of Salisbury’s hills from her balcony, the home provides plenty of subjects, even just the fog rolling through, low and dense, in the morning. The landscapes shot around town depict the undisturbed quiet of rainy back roads and solitary American flags. Day was debating showcasing one of her more famous shots — the profile of a lone dairy cow, wading in a lake with its head tilted up like a pensive yodeler.

The shadow over the show is the other story of Day’s home: the fire in 2013 that fully engulfed and leveled her family’s house. Day is still sorting the boxes of charred film negatives that survived. 

“There are really amazing interesting things that it turned out I hadn’t lost. The Duvaliers leaving Haiti in their BMW,  Nelson Mandela when he came home from prison.” She held up a shot of her with French photography master Henri Cartier-Bresson.

But it is the snapshots of her children, old Christmas cards, that she cares about most. Through a process called drum scanning, which renders the highest possible quality for digital production of film negatives, a once-singed portrait of her children, eerily at rest as a summer sunset filters a chiaroscuro effect over their faces, looks like it was taken yesterday. 

“You’d never know it had been in a fire. You’d never know.”

Day will be joined by Sally Spillane, host of WKZE’s The Garden Show for an in-depth interview as part of a gallery show and cocktail reception on Sept. 23 at Salisbury School. Tickets for the photo exhibit are $35, with a dinner hosted by Scott and Roxanne Bok to follow for $250 (which includes admission to the photo show). For more information, call Pat Best at 860-435-2888, ext 101.