Even though North Adams is considered the Poorest City in Massachusetts which you can read about here, there is extensive history behind it.
According to Historic North Adams, The history of 19 and 21 Eagle Street dates back to the 1800’s. The 21 Eagle Street portion was the first to be built as a criminal lockup between 1864 and 1869. In 1869, bought by the Tower Brothers, Horace and Henry Tower due to the building being unfit for a criminal lockup. The two brothers renovated the building including the construction of the 19 Eagle Street Portion in 1870 which was completed in 1872, and started using it as a butcher shop in 1876 (100 years after The Declaration of Independence).
KEEP SCROLLING TO VIEW THE BUILDING’S CURRENT STATE:
Courtesy of the North Adams Historical Society
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The Tower Brothers ran their successful butcher shop until Henry decided to sell his stake in the business to his brother. By 1901, the company unfortunately went bankrupt, and Horace Tower sold the building over to a woman by the name of Amelia Hodskins. It is unknown what she used the building for during that time period but it is believed the place was used as a residence for either herself or other tenants.
By 1915, she then sold it to Charles Kronick where he opened up a shoe store in the building in 1920. Part of the advertising could still be seen recently. The building went through various shops through the years but it was very well known as ‘Moderne Studios Photography.’
Courtesy of the North Adams Historical Society
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The shop was very popular during the 1960s as most schools in the area would have their student’s yearbook pictures taken there. ‘Anne’s Kiddie shop’ also had a spot there and sold a variety of Children’s Goods. In the late 1970s, the 21 Eagle Street Building was used as at a pet store known as ‘Tropical Gardens’ until a fire broke out in 2008 causing heavy damage to the building according to Iberkshires. The building was demolished a few years later and is currently a small park area.
So, where the does 19 Eagle Street building stand?
Photo Credit: Nick Mantello
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According to Iberkshires, on Tuesday, March 05, 2024 at around 11:33 PM, Moderne Studios may be just a memory as the rear of the three-story brick building collapsed and officials deemed it a public hazard that needed an emergency demolition. The full story can be read here.
Ryan Pause
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As I’m writing this on May 3, 2024, this is how the property currently stands as Moderne Studios is now just a memory that will live on forever.
Gallery Credit: Stacker
Some are no surprise, but some may shock you.
Gallery Credit: Maddie Levine
Gallery Credit: Google Maps
Nan Goldin’s sincere and often explicit style of photography is mesmerizing and polarizing, revealing the deeply personal and disclosed facets of the American society of the past decades. During her long and fruitful career, Goldin has shared stories of her own loss and heartbreak, along with many harrowing accounts of illness and addiction. Read on to learn more about the key topics of Nan Goldin’s art.
Nan Goldin is a famous American photographer mostly known for her snapshot-style photographs grouped into consecutive narratives. Her works tell stories about her friends, often stepping into the territory of political commentary through personal issues. For her, photography was the way to maintain relationships and document the lives that were never accepted by the mainstream. Official American culture never had a place for people like Goldin, so she occupied it on her own terms.
Goldin’s childhood was far from picture-perfect suburbian prosperity. Oppressive parenting style was doubled by restrictive 1950s morals. Goldin’s older sister died by suicide and the future artist left home. At the age of only thirteen, Goldin started selling drugs on a playground and, by her late teens, she became addicted to heroin. She lived with hippies and squatters, forming artistic communes with those rejected by the mainstream normative society. She started to show her work through projected slides accompanied by music and poetry to her friends, most of whom were also her models. Gradually, the immense artistic quality of Goldin’s work leaked to the outside world, making her one of the most sought-after contemporary photographers. Here are 6 themes that dominate her artistic work.
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The concept of the Other is important in art, literature, and politics. Otherness remains in inherent opposition to one’s self and serves as a tool for self-recognition, structuring the world, and, in some cases, finding an external enemy to blame. Nan Goldin’s work, focused on marginalized communities, AIDS patients, drag queens, drug users and homeless bohemians is the epitome of Otherness if regarded from the perspective of a normative member of society.
Documenting Otherness was hardly a new idea, even in Goldin’s time. Photographer Diane Arbus created portraits of drag performers and gender-nonconforming people in the 1960s, yet there was something radically different in her work. In the images of Arbus and her colleagues, Others are presented as curiosities, with photographers desperately trying to find normative language for non-normative subjects. New York drag queens hated Arbus’ works with passion, but they were mostly delighted to see themselves in Nan Goldin’s photographs. The difference was in the author’s relation to their subjects. Goldin was neither a spectator nor a passerby but a part of this community of Others. Instead of imposing Otherness on her subjects, she imposed it on herself, never dissociating from her models through the camera lens.
Exploration of gender is one of Goldin’s favorite topics. It emerges over and over in her work. In her late teens, her friend and fellow photographer David Armstrong introduced her to Boston’s drag queens. She quickly became part of the family, living with them, attending their performances, and documenting their daily lives.
Goldin believes that drag queens are neither men nor women but an entirely different gender. Unlike many other photographers, she refused to let binary standards dictate her treatment of the subject. Her Boston and New York drag queens are ambiguous, different, and hypnotizing in their unusual and non-normative beauty.
Another exploration of gender boundaries by Goldin had a surprising source. Her book Eden & After focuses on children, mostly exploring their pure emotions and sheer indifference to societal constraints like gender norms, colors, makeup, or fashion. For her, children’s refusal to play by the rules is the absolute and inherent norm that later gets ruined by society.
Nan Goldin never takes photographs of strangers or people that she doesn’t like. A portrait by Nan Goldin is a letter of acceptance into the big and diverse Goldin family, which the artist constructed on her own. After leaving her biological family as a teenager, Goldin managed to find a sense of community in the company of other social outcasts around her. Self-proclaimed artists, sex workers, drag performers, and all sorts of bohemian youth gathered together in one big commune, living and working together and attending each other’s makeshift shows. Nan Goldin’s friends often say that she has a unique gift of highlighting others’ personalities, daring people around her to be themselves to the fullest possible extent.
Part of Goldin’s appeal is that her works are full of love and empathy, especially when they feature people who are in physical pain or emotional distress. Despite the sometimes shocking subject matter of her images, Nan Goldin has a strict work ethic. She never publishes photographs without her models’ approval and she never forces them to endure anything they are not comfortable with. Perhaps Goldin’s work ethic came from her deep admiration and personal connection to the subjects.
Many of the topics and situations explored by Nan Goldin focus on the aftermath of trauma and the ways of coping with it. Abusive relationships, domestic violence, physical scars, and mental breakdowns are all present in her work, but her photographs never cross the line of putting shock value over empathy. They may be shocking to some—namely, to respectable gallerygoers—but they never lack compassion and love.
One of the most heartbreaking pieces by Goldin is her video titled Sisters, Saints, and Sibyls. The video is a heartbreaking tribute to Goldin’s elder sister Barbara, who was institutionalized for refusing to conform to the gender norms of her time. Barbara died by suicide at the age of eighteen, and this tragedy finally brought the already barely functioning family to a collapse. Goldin’s memory of her sister is scarce, yet she understood and shared her feeling of being trapped in a restrictive and hostile environment. Apart from Barbara’s life and death, the video documents Goldin’s path out of drug addiction and depression in a psychiatric hospital.
The narratives constructed by Goldin often transgress the limits of the personal towards the political. Over the years, she has covered the AIDS crisis and drug addiction epidemic and raised money to help Ukrainian artists affected by the war. One of the latest battles won by Nan Goldin is her take on the pharmaceutic industry—namely the influential Sackler family.
After her wrist surgery in the mid-2010s, Goldin was prescribed a painkiller OxyContin. The addiction came almost instantly, with Godin taking as many as twenty pills a day instead of the prescribed three. In 2016, the artist ended up in rehab after an overdose. As she found out, OxyContin was a highly addictive opioid created and distributed by Purdue Pharma, a company owned by the Sackler family. The company knew about the highly addictive effect of the medicine yet nonetheless advertised and sold it without warning the patients. Some experts call OxyContin the most addictive substance in the history of the pharmaceutical industry. As a result, since 1999, more than 200,000 people in the USA have died due to overdoses and side effects of OxyContin.
Aside from their pharmaceutical business, the Sackler family is famous for their philanthropic work. The cultural institutions financed by the dynasty include the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, the National Gallery in London, and Tate Modern. Goldin and her activist organization P.A.I.N (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) staged protests in Sackler-funded institutions. While several institutions agreed to severe financial ties with the clan, drug distribution was hardly affected. Purdue Pharma simply moved the distribution from the American market to developing countries. Goldin’s ongoing battle against the pharmaceutical industry was documented in the 2022 documentary film All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.
Over the decades of her career, Nan Goldin lost countless friends. As the artist said, initially she believed taking many pictures of them would help her feel like her friend would never fully leave her. But as many of them passed away from drug-related conditions, AIDS, or other causes, the photographs became a sobering reminder of how much she actually lost.
Goldin’s work documents fleeting moments and the passage of time. Most of her subjects appear in her works over and over again. Some turned from unresting partygoers to happy parents, some lost their ethereal androgynous beauty to addiction. Others simply did not survive the decades of their youth. In her work, Goldin is equally a narrator and an actor, never excluding herself from the picture but letting her characters tell their stories.
Photo London, the major photography fair, is returning to Somerset House this month, and bringing with it dozens of exhibitors, talks and events.
Spread out across Somerset House’s warren of rooms and its vast central courtyard you’ll find booths by 100 galleries from 44 cities, all specialising in photography. A handful of galleries will be doing solo presentations of artists like ultra-influential David Bailey, super atmospheric Michael Kenna and pioneering street photographer Helen Levitt.
Every year, one photographer is picked out and celebrated as ‘Master of Photography’ with their own dedicated exhibition, and this year it’s the turn of florid floral French artist Valérie Belin. That show is part of the fair’s public programme, which also includes a display dedicated to early French calotype photography from the 1860s. Alongside all of that, there’s a talks programme too, with appearances by artists like Joy Gregory and Omar Victor Diop, signings by people like Martin Parr and workshops run by Nikon.
Since it’s a fair, most of the work is for sale, but probably not at prices us mere mortals can even dream of affording. Fortunately, the publishers section will have books for sale from places like Hoxton Mini Press at much more attainable prices.
Photo London is at Somerset House May 16-19. £35. More details here https://photolondon.org/.
Want more photography? Here are the best photography shows in London right now.
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Monadnock Ledger-Transcript – New photography studio opens on Jaffrey Main Street
Kassia Oaks, accompanied by her parents, cuts the ribbon on Corner Oak Studio on the corner of Blake and Main streets during the studio’s opening on April 27. STAFF PHOTO BY ASHLEY SAARI
Kassia Oaks uses her camera to capture major milestones in her clients’ lives – sometimes following them through multiple major life events – and she said her goal is to always capture people’s “authentic energy.”
Oaks opened her first solo studio, Corner Oak Studio, on Main Street in Jaffrey April 27, an extension of her existing professional photography business. Oaks said while she has worked out of studios before, they have always been shared workspaces. After moving to Jaffrey last summer, she said she’s focusing on putting down roots, including a permanent studio.
Oaks grew up in central Massachusetts, and has lived in various places around New England before settling in the Monadnock region. She has been working professionally as a photographer for six years, and made it her full-time career three years ago, but said it’s an art that has always fascinated her.
“I’ve always loved art class since childhood. I think it was sixth grade, we were given all of these art books, and had to sift through them to find a medium to use as inspiration for a project. I remember going through a portrait and nature photography book, and I just thought it was the most ‘real’ version of art,” Oaks said.
Oaks said at the time, she dreamed of becoming a photographer, though in the way many middle- and high-schoolers do, she had several options she was considering, including graphic or web design. She graduated from Cape Cod Community College with an associate’s degree in liberal arts.
Oaks said she has taken some photography classes, but learned her trade mostly through apprenticeships under other photographers and self-teaching. She said one of her favorite pastimes when she was young was visiting nurseries and greenhouses with her father, and photographing the plants.
“I say I’m a nature nerd first, photographer second,” Oaks joked.
She said the creativity of the career is what appeals to her the most.
“I love the fluidity of the creativity of it, and now that it’s my career I love being able to capture people’s authentic energy,” she said.
Oaks mostly professionally photographs engagement and wedding photos, and families, and said it is that idea of “authentic energy,” rather than consciously trying for the best photo, that leads to the most-natural shots.
“That’s why I love doing wedding photography specifically. I tell my couples that on the day, the most important thing is to be present with your partner, and the good photos come from that,” she said.
Some of those couples will later return for maternity or family portraits.
“That’s one of the most-beautiful parts of this career – to grow with the client and be able to document these big milestones,” Oaks said.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172, Ext. 244, or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on X @AshleySaariMLT.
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While professional-grade lenses offer exceptional performance, they often come with a hefty price tag. For those seeking a more affordable option without compromising too much on quality, the Canon RF-S 18-45mm f/4.5-6.3 IS STM lens is a compelling choice.
Coming to you from Dustin Abbott, this insightful video review explores the features and capabilities of the Canon RF-S 18-45mm f/4.5-6.3 IS STM lens. Abbott highlights the lens’ compact size and lightweight design, making it an ideal companion for photographers who prioritize portability. The inclusion of image stabilization further enhances its appeal, allowing for sharper images in low-light conditions and smoother video recording.
Abbott acknowledges that the lens has some limitations, particularly its narrow maximum aperture and reliance on electronic corrections for distortion and vignetting. However, he emphasizes that the lens still delivers good overall image quality, especially when considering its affordability. He further suggests that the lens performs well as a video lens, especially when paired with a gimbal for smooth and stable footage.
The video dives deeper into the lens’s optical performance, showcasing its sharpness, bokeh quality, and flare resistance through various sample images and comparisons. Abbott also discusses the autofocus system, noting its quiet operation and accuracy for both stills and video. Altogether, the Canon RF-S 18-45mm looks like a valuable tool for photographers seeking a versatile and budget-friendly lens for everyday photography and videography. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Abbott.
We’re headed to sunny Vourvourou, Greece for today’s Project of the Week with architectural photographer Olivier Dassance. Olivier hails from Basque Country, working in France and abroad. Olivier’s tales from this shoot are so interesting – being stuck on a boat in the bay, racing an oncoming storm, and the complexities of working with onsite staff.
Olivier kicks things off by setting the scene. He tells, “This shoot took place on a private island located in Vourvourou, in the eastern part of Greece. It involved capturing photos and aerial footage of four large villas spread across the island.”
He goes on, “This shoot was special to me for two main reasons: firstly, because it was my most extensive assignment yet; a four-day trip abroad, starting with the logistical challenges of transporting my equipment through multiple airports! The project involved huge preparation to maximise the daylight hours and ensure I was in the right location for the right light. This was coupled with the complexity and pressure of coordinating the onsite staff to ensure everything ran smoothly. A stark contrast to my usual, more quiet shoots with one designer only.
Secondly, the uniqueness of this project was amplified by its location with breathtaking landscapes and surrounding pristine beaches.”
Olivier’s compositions of the villas do a wonderful job of showing off their geometric forms. Strong leading lines guide us through the frames. Bold, sharp shapes stand out against the organic foliage. Repetitive forms move our eyes around the scenes and create a sense of movement.
“Upon my arrival, I quickly discovered that the roads connecting the villas were in poor condition, so boat travel between them was necessary, as each villa has its own private beach,” Olivier explains. “Initially, I took great care to securely pack my equipment, but there were several instances where I had to hurry, juggling my tripod and camera in one hand and my strobe light in the other. In a particularly memorable moment, we even ran out of gas in the middle of the bay, forcing me to drop anchor and wait for assistance with a mix of concern and amusement.”
I appreciate Olivier’s mix of perspectives for this shoot. One of my favorite shots is the following, where a tighter vignette of one of the villa’s pool and lounge area immerses us in the surrounding landscape. There is a sense of calm warmth here that places me right in the scene.
A tidy one-point perspective shot pulls our eyes through the frame, noticing the villa’s open air dining area, the patio and pool, and then flows to the ocean and mountains beyond. I love the bright highlight on the right-hand side of the frame, giving off a sense of heat and brightness that we would expect to find in real life.
“The connection to this project came about through a client in the real estate sector. He informed me that a friend of his had seen my portfolio and was looking for someone to shoot this project. We arranged a face-to-face meeting to go over the details of the shoot,” he tells.
“This assignment was a significant learning experience, elevating my skills beyond photography and drone footage alone. It honed my capabilities in client relations, organisation, and time planning. Essential aspects of managing a large, multi-day photoshoot. After some back and forth and iterations, the client was really pleased with the final results (around 80 shots and 4 videos),” Olivier goes on. That’s a lot of logistics, and he did an awesome job of managing things as evident by these beautiful photographs.
I asked Olivier to break down how he made one of his favorite photographs from this shoot. He notes, “One of my favourite images from this assignment was captured at a sea-view villa on a cliff’s edge, a location with all the best ingredients for great photography. However, as I prepared my gear, a member of the local staff warned, ‘Olivier, a storm is coming!’
This additional challenge reduced my photography and drone video shoot to a mere 2-3 hours. At first, it was a challenge to include the pool, villa and the sea view in one frame. After experimenting with my 2 tilt-shift lenses (19mm / 24mm) and with various angles and compositions, we opted for a frontal shot with the 24mm to maximise impact. The rest of the preparation was straightforward, involving scene rearrangement and bracketing several shots to capture the optimal lighting as the sun dipped lower. Additionally, the aerial video I filmed was one of the best I did so far.”
“I have a special thanks to Hellena, my local assistant, boat driver, and model on a few of the shots,” Olivier says. We’ll wrap up this POTW with a breathtaking view of the sunset from one of the villa’s lounge areas. How spectacular!
You can also check out Olivier’s video of the island and its villas here:
Many thanks to you Olivier for submitting this in to us!
See more of Olivier’s work at www.olivierdassance.com. You can also find him on Instagram @olivierdassancephotography.
If you have a project you’d like to be considered for Project of the Week, you can submit it here.
