Hosmer Gallery

Mandana Marsh
photography

Making photographs has served as solace and a source of satisfaction throughout a life that has presented me with great gifts, losses and everything in between. The black and white prints are moments I want to preserve by way of a composition that pleases me.  I consider them meditations with my eyes open.  I appreciate how black and white images bring out the essence of a subject and evoke a timeless quality. 

 I found my place in the world through a camera viewfinder. My lifelong devotion to photography lifts me up when I need it. It’s a way to share and remember joy. It connects me to the world. Traveling whether near or far gives me psychic energy and a refreshed perspective of our world’s vastness and variety.

Western Massachusetts holds deep meaning because many of my formative life experiences took place here: working at my first newspaper job after college (Valley Advocate), getting married in Chester, raising a family and establishing a network of friends. The sight of the Connecticut River itself serves as a touchstone of my past and my present. Bodies of water, salt or fresh energize and inspire me. A river bordering my childhood home on a dairy farm in New Hartford, CT was a magnet and playground. I am very grateful my life is here now. 

My photojournalism career led me to small daily newspapers in upstate NY, RI, NH, MA and VA. Editorial work was cited by the New England Press Association (1983), the Virginia Press Association (2008) and featured in a Kodak-Parade Magazine contest which culminated in a photo book, The American Woman (1989). Over the last five years, I’ve gone on photo retreats to Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, the Wooden Boat School in Maine and to the island of Molokai in Hawaii. words, images, book titles or ideas.

Eileen Claveloux
LIFE STORIES

Life Stories is a series I have been working on for several years that combine photo collage with writing. Each image consists of as many as 10-100 photos or pieces of photos that I combine to create a somewhat seamless looking, somewhat skewed image. Once printed, I hand write a stream of consciousness piece that includes family story and history, concerns, thoughts about my children and grandchildren and memories of people no longer here. The text essentially becomes a visual layer as it is mostly indecipherable. I relate these thoughts to the places, ranging from a bridge in Holyoke and other places along the Connecticut River, to the Bosphorus in Istanbul. When I started taking the photos for this project I had recently moved and was ruminating on the temporary nature of my moves and the moves of my ancestors. In the family members I have knowledge of, there are no ancestors who have lived in any one

place for more than a generation. From Armenian genocide survivors on one side, to westward travel on a wagon train on another, they seemed to keep moving. Perhaps because of this I am drawn to creating a record of locations that have meaning to me. These pieces are portraits of places as well as of myself. They often portray me in some form, whether as shadow, feet (homage to David Hockney’s photo collages from the 1980’s), as well as in the writing about myself, my family and the places we have become a part of and that have become a part of me. This Life Stories body of work shifts the viewer into an interaction with the natural world through both image and text. The work provides my perspective about my connection to landscapes that are part of my world and my history.