Exhibit LVIV

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1 April - 31 August 2023

In memory of recently departed friends at RW-C, including: Marge Alderson, Tanya Bohlke, Dick Brautigam, Mal & Dee Brown, Mildred Christensen, David Davies, Sandy Decker, Bucky Deihl, Marilyn Edmunds, Betsy Elliott, Billy Ellyson, Nancy Galloway, Bunny Gibson, Jim Harnsberger, Art & Mary Hicks, Jan Hollberg, Charlie Johnson, Marcus & Pam Key, Bill King, Bill & Joye Pregnall, Sallie Rankin, Frank Schaff, Bob Schultz, Edythe Simmons, Ed & Zena Smith, George & Naomi Urban, Nina Walls, Peter Weil, Ethel Wiley and Helen Withers

Last Portrait

First Portrait

Portraits of Rappahannock Westminster-Canterbury III


"I learned in the doing how ready I had to be. Life doesn't hold still. A good snapshot stopped a moment from running away. Photography taught me to be able to capture transience, by being ready to click the shutter at the crucial moment, was  the greatest need I had. Making pictures of people in all sorts of situations, I learned that every feeling waits upon its gesture; and I had to be prepared to recognize this moment when I saw it."

Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings, 1984

      These exhibits have the distinction of representing the first of my photographic projects to be well underway before I even knew it was one!

  When my wife Til and I moved to the lovely continuing care retirement community with the rather imposing name of Rappahannock Westminster- Canterbury (or RW-C for short) it was for several reasons. Not the least of our reasons for the move from our home of thirty years in northern Virginia was to free up more of my time for the completion of a number of photographic projects which have been in the making for many years. I had no intention of initiating any new projects, at least not before I had completed the ones already on my slate. 



 

Dance!. Alice Blumenfeld, then with Flamenco Vivo Dance Company, conducting a flamenco dance workshop at RW-C on 20 March 2014. The Andalusian stallion, Halagador, completes the portrait.

       So when I began taking pictures of some of my fellow residents and members of our very friendly staff, it was only with the idea of making quick studies of them for their more or less immediate enjoyment. It was only after I had taken a number of pictures of Christina Rick, a member of staff dancing at one of our several resident-staff activities, yet being dissatisfied with the background for her, that I found myself drawn into composing more complex and fanciful portraits through the magic of Adobe’s Photoshop software program. Eventually, the portrait of Christina dancing through Orion’s Nebula, with Christmas tree lights became just the first in a growing number of fancifully altered portraits, but it was not until I had completed more than a dozen such portraits that I finally realized I had yet another photographic project on my hands!

 As with my more conventional portraits, my objective continues to  be to expose the nobler, more attractive, or wholesomely amusing aspects of my subjects.

The great majority of the principal subjects of these portraits will have been taken somewhere on RW-C’s lovely 165 acre campus. The few portraits taken off-campus were done so nearby and are so noted in their respective captions.

At this writing, I have now completed enough portraits for a third web site exhibit; they are simply numbered consecutively and presented in any order that whim dictated. I hope you will enjoy viewing them as much as I had in making them!  

Last Portrait

First Portrait