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Here are two reviews for "Grunts: The GI Experiece", the exhibition I curated at the Panopticon Gallery in Boston. Seeing GIs fight the good fight. “Grunts” depicts both sides of military life Mark Feeney © The Boston Globe, December 13, 2011 Philip Larkin may never have worn a uniform or seen combat (other than the domestic sort). But he offered what must be the pithiest, most accurate description that’s yet been written of military service. “Life is first boredom, then fear,” says the narrator of Larkin’s poem “Dockery and sons.” The relevance of fear to being a soldier or sailor, airman or Marine is obvious. The relevance of boredom is less so – until you recall that most expressive of military commands, “Hurry up and wait.” The things that happen in war are terrible. The things that don’t happen can be terrible in a different way. Both the fear and the boredom of life in uniform are on display in “Grunts: The GI Experience,” which runs at Panopticon Gallery through Jan. 10. Is the show’s title a hint of things to come? “Grunts” didn’t come into common use as a term for foot soldiers until the Vietnam War. Yet all the photographs here are from the Korean War era and World War II. Might there be a subsequent show on the Indochina conflict? If it is as good as this one, it will be worth waiting for. To read the full review, click here. Grunt’s-eye view of war Exhibit captures unfiltered images of life on the battlefield Chris Bergeron © MetroWest Daily News, December 22, 2011 In 1950, an ambitious, 19-year-old photographer from Coney Island, N.Y., Harold Feinstein, was drafted into the U.S. Army after war broke out in Korea. Following basic training, he was shipped to South Korea where he spent the next seven months snapping photos of fellow recruits dozing in their bunks, reading comics and waiting in line in the drizzling rain. Feinstein’s 21 black-and-white prints convey the mid-century innocence of the Boy Next Door sent to fight in a foreign land. “We were all innocent kids,” says Feinstein, who now lives in Merrimac. “I had my 35 mm Leica with me all the time. Taking pictures has been my whole life. “More than six decades later, Feinstein’s sharp-eyed images of the tedium and camaraderie of military life are showcased in “Grunts: The GI Experience,” an exhibition that reveals the ordinary men inside the uniforms, at Panopticon Gallery in Boston. His grunts are fresh-faced teenagers, probably away from home for the first time, hanging out with buddies in the barracks, doing pretty much what they’d have been doing back in Any Town, U.S.A. Drafted just two years after President Truman integrated the military, he photographed white and black soldiers sharing the democracy of identical uniforms, bad haircuts and bland chow. Organized by Jim Fitts, this involving show ambushes familiar stereotypes about the military and shoots down misconceptions about the men serving in it. An educator and curator, Fitts has complemented Feinstein’s Korean War photos with 32 photos, including three by Robert Capa, of World War II combat, front-line soldiers and portraits. Taken mostly by unnamed photographers of the Acme Photo Service and Army Signal Corps, the World War II photos document in gritty, black-and-white images combat’s impact on American soldiers, civilians and, in a few cases, the enemy. To read the full review, click here. |
 I recently worked with my long-time friend, Rick Ashley on the design of his new book, "94 Pleasant Street". You can see a number of the images on Rick’s website here and purchase the book on Blurb here.  Artist Statement for 94 Pleasant Street:The money was raised; construction proceeded on schedule. The new YMCA on Leggs Hill Road opened to great fanfare. On January 13, 2009 the doors of the old YMCA at 94 Pleasant Street were locked and memories quickly began to fade. Some items had been sold, but most of the facility looked as if someone just walked out the door. Water was still in the aquarium. The pool was dry. Dust marked the footprint of the Nautilus equipment. The squash court looked as bad as it had for the past 15 years. As there were no buyers the building sat as if in some form of suspended animation. On that same day in January, I went into the YMCA and began to photograph the facility where I had spent some part of nearly everyday for the past 31 years. I never saw its color until I photographed it. I never took the time to take note of the odd juxtapositions and the play of forms, the stuff of photography. For the next 13 months the building was mine. “The compelling clarity with which a photograph recorded the trivial suggested that the subject had never before been properly seen, that it was in fact perhaps not trivial, but filled with undiscovered meaning, If photographs could not be read as stories, they could be read as symbols.” John Szarkowski, "The Photographer’s Eye". In January of 2011 the building was finally razed and by Christmas, a parking lot. The photographs become our memory.  |
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