Dropped by last night’s opening at the Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY, where former Cantabridgians Karen Davis and Mark Orton featured photographers  John Chervinsy,  John Cyr,   Elaine Mayes, and  David Torcoletti –each making powerful statements about  photography, art,  perception,  human emotion and the passage of time.

In “Studio Physics,” Chervinsky’s images challenge traditional photography by depicting not a single instant, but the passage of time.  He begins by composing and photographing a still life. Then, he crops a subset of the image sends it as a  file digitally to a painting factory in China, waits weeks for an anonymous artist in China to complete an oil painting of the cropped section and send it back in the mail, and, finally, he reinserts the painting into the original setup and rephotographs.

According to the Davis-Orton Website, “Chervinsky is interested in the tensions expressed in the comparison between reality vs. representation while adding, in this series, an unusual collaboration process with an anonymous artist half way around the world and subtle changes over time that we might otherwise take for granted.”

John Cyr’s photos of   developer trays memorialize the specific, tangible  tools used by photographer for a century–before the advent of digital media.

By titling each tray with its owner’s name–some quite renowned–” Cyr references the historical significance of these objects in a minimal manner that evokes thoughts about the images that have passed through each artist’s tray.”

While a few of the photographed trays appear relatively clean and empty, others frame beautiful abstract  patterns and formations.

Elaine Mayes,  former chair of the photography department at New York University,  takes photos of artistic and advertising  images in their  context–usually through glass–to  include not only the surrounding scene but also environmental particulars of the world beyond as reflected  in the glass.

“While thematically, the project is about how photographs and advertising imagery permeate our lives; it is also about how the flattening of space in a photograph can produce  a collage filled with unexpected content. ”

Especially moving were David Torcoletti “Soldiers”, a small portion of  hundreds photographs of U.S. soldiers that, during the Vietnam War,  were mailed to  a South Vietnamese radio and television personality known professionally as “Mai Lan.” For hours every day, Mai Lan broadcast to American troops stationed there. She also spent much time visiting wounded soldiers in hospitals all around the country.  English was her second language, but she was able to communicate very directly with her audience  Often the photos were inscribed with simple, touching and sincere declarations of appreciation for giving comfort to the subjects of the pictures. When the North overran South Vietnam, Mai Lan had to leave quickly;  she chose a small box of photographs to bring along, leaving hundreds behind.

According to  the Davis Orton Web site, ” Years later, Mai Lan, now Denise, and a colleague of David Torcoletti’s at a private school, showed him the images”–many of which were not well preserved. Torcoletti photographed all of the images and, with her permission, digitally adjusted twenty-four that he found most powerful  for  exposure, contrast, burning, dodging, color balance and saturation. All of these decisions were emotional and aesthetic. “For Torcoletti, the power of these objects was in the way they were disintegrating, barely holding on to the original image while becoming something else entirely.  They were now less specific to the individuals depicted and more about war and hope and a peculiar, distant “love” that sustained these men in impossible circumstances.”

The show closes November 11, 2012.

–Anita M. Harris

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a public relations and online marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.

        Later today, I hope to attend the Clean-Tech Meetup–an event which,  Gov. Deval Patrick, has said, “brings together innovative leaders from across the Commonwealth, the country and the globe to grow businesses, advance technologies and expand the adoption of clean energy sources.”

             As described on the Clean Tech Meetup Web site,  “through  Clean Energy Week and the Conference on Clean Energy in Boston,”  Massachusetts has been “steadily growing” a community of clean energy innovators and implementers.   “Now, we’re using what we’ve learned to bring you an event focusing on connecting people in intimate settings—instead of panels or keynotes.”

• Major Energy Consumers, Utilities, Leading Cleantech Companies, and other companies looking to form partnerships will meet providers of innovative clean energy services, products, and technologies.
• Investors will meet over 50 companies from more than 10 countries, hear from emerging clean energy companies, and talk with major energy users about their needs for clean energy technologies.
• Emerging Clean Energy Companies will talk with potential investors, strategic partners, and customers.

View the conference program.

Innovation Tour:  The conference also includes a tour of “cool companies and organizations” that will be holding open houses”from  Kendall Square to the Seaport Innovation District,” on Wednesday.  View the Tour participants.

I’m pleased that my friend and informal client, Christine Adamow, President and CEO of EuphorbUS,   announced today that her company, , a  “tree-based”  biofuel company that  has operated in East Africa since 2007,  will soon open its first operating site in North America in Hawaii.

The Meetup  is pricey, with registration $400+ for  participants and  $500-$1000 for presenters, who are selected by the conference organizations. (Might say I was surprised that the organizers called the event a meetup– because most “meetups” I’ve heard of are free or nearly so).   Held at the Boston Convention Center, it  runs through Wednesday.

—Anita M. Harris

This agreement between the Republican incumbent and his Democratic challenger comes only two years after the decision in the now-infamous Citizens United case, in which the United States Supreme Court effectively ruled — to put it rather bluntly — that money is speech and corporations are people in the realm of campaign finance law. Whatever one thinks of either Warren or Brown, they’re certainly bucking a national trend.

With an eye toward the rest of the country in this heated election season, Bierman writes that over $90 million have been in spend in 13 states with Senate races this year alone. None of this money, trickling down from political action committees (PACs) and other interest groups, has so much as paid for a sound bite in the election here in Massachusetts.

You have to wonder how the candidates are making this work in what might very well be one of the country’s most acrimonious, grudging, and competitive Senate race this year. But early on they came up with a relatively simple solution: every time a third-party group runs an advertisement, the party that benefits from the advertisement’s message must make a donation to charity directly out of its own coffers.

The Brown-Warren pledge represents a model for the rest of the country, one that should be strictly adhered to in an election season that promises to be rife with a slew of misinformation and even outright lies. And while I’ll refrain from coming down in this post for one candidate or the other, I should mention that I have a great deal of respect for both Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren in light of this agreement. At least the candidates are speaking for themselves.

–Will Holt also blogs at Letters from a Bay Stater, where this blog initially appeared.  http://williambrianholt.wordpress.com/

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning  marketing and communications firm.