From Night To Day

Darkness ebbs slowly. Especially for a reticent fellow like John Atchley. In recent years this Salisbury resident has suffered fire, losing his house; flood, losing his stored photographs; and, after rebuilding, a plague of carpenter ants. “They were dropping from the ceiling on us. “Biblical,” he called it. Then Atchley did something brave. “I just got over my block about being in public.” He entered a Housatonic Camera Club show, the first photograph he had exhibited in decades. Not that he had quit shooting, of course. It’s just that after graduating from Yale with a master’s degree in photography in 1971, he lost the thread. He had been photographing “rocks and trees and water,” using a big clunky view camera. But for a man who likes the outdoors, graduate school required much too much time indoors. “Two years in a darkroom almost killed me.” Also, he had no interest in commercial photography, so he considered the kind of work his friends were taking: Teaching. In his case, teaching photography. Not a good move. “I was way too shy,” he says. Also, “I had no tolerance for people who were not like me. Over serious.” So he became a carpenter. A carpenter who stored his photographs of rocks and trees away. That’s the story until photographer Cassandra Sohn saw his work in a couple of area shows and asked Atchley to put an exhibit together for her new gallery in Stockbridge, MA. There had to be a theme, of course, Atchley told me. “You can’t have a show without one.” His: Out of Darkness. Still rocks and trees and water, but more painterly than earlier work, he says, more abstract, more reckoning with movement and light. Most striking is a black-and-white shot of the Housatonic River in Falls Village. Standing on the river’s edge he photographed the falls straight on, a vertical storm of silky white water, hand-holding his Canon 5D MK II and using a slow shutter, a small aperture and a wide lens. The result is, well, abstract. And beautiful. He has color in this show as well, a subdued amber, really. A fine panoramic shot of hills is memorable for a couple of birds overhead. Anyone who shoots knows it’s hard catching birds on the wing. But not so hard in Florida, evidently. “Flamingos just fly into view. They just keep coming,” Atchley says. Now he never leaves the house without a camera, and he is working in his own style, panning with a slow shutter, slipping sideways and vertically to give his shots a lovely, veiled look. “At 64,” he says, “I’m an emerging artist.” “Out of Darkness” runs at Sohn Fine Art Gallery, 6 Elm St., in Stockbridge, MA, through Nov. 19. For information, telephone 917-849-9193 or go to www.cassandrasohn.com.

Latest News

Join us for


 

  

Keep ReadingShow less
Summer Nights of Canaan

Wednesday, July 16

Cobbler n’ Cream
5 to 7 p.m.
Freund’s Farm Market & Bakery | 324 Norfolk Rd.

Canaan Carnival
6 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park

Keep ReadingShow less
When the guide gets it wrong

Rosa setigera is a native climbing rose whose simple flowers allow bees to easily collect pollen.

Dee Salomon

After moving to West Cornwall in 2012, we were given a thoughtful housewarming gift: the 1997 edition of “Dirr’s Hardy Trees and Shrubs.” We were told the encyclopedic volume was the definitive gardener’s reference guide — a fact I already knew, having purchased one several months earlier at the recommendation of a gardener I admire.

At the time, we were in the thick of winter invasive removal, and I enjoyed reading and dreaming about the trees and shrubs I could plant to fill in the bare spots where the bittersweet, barberry, multiflora rose and other invasive plants had been.Years later, I purchased the 2011 edition, updated and inclusive of plants for warm climates.

Keep ReadingShow less
A few highlights from Upstate Art Weekend 2025

Foxtrot Farm & Flowers’ historic barn space during UAW’s 2024 exhibition entitled “Unruly Edges.”

Brian Gersten

Art lovers, mark your calendars. The sixth edition of Upstate Art Weekend (UAW) returns July 17 to 21, with an exciting lineup of exhibitions and events celebrating the cultural vibrancy of the region. Spanning eight counties and over 130 venues, UAW invites residents and visitors alike to explore the Hudson Valley’s thriving creative communities.

Here’s a preview of four must-see exhibitions in the area:

Keep ReadingShow less