“Making a Nature Friendly Garden” will be presented on Saturday, May 14 at 4pm by naturalist Marlene A. Condon, who is the author and photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People.

Friday, November 19 at 5:30 PM

Photographer and artist

John M. Hall will discuss

Private Gardens of Connecticut

will discuss

Private Gardens of Connecticut By Jane Garmey

Photographs by John M. Hall

Connecticut is uniquely rich in beautiful landscape, encompassing more than six hundred miles of serene shoreline along Long Island Sound, untold acres of open farmland, and the rolling hills and lakes of the famed northwest corner on the New York/Massachusetts border. The varied topography and microclimates have given rise to an unusual range of gardens.

Twenty-eight are presented here, a rare and privileged glimpse of the private retreats of prominent members of the fashion, design, arts, and business communities, such as Oscar and Annette de la Renta, Bunny Williams, Robert Couturier, Lynden Miller, Edward Lee Cave, and Anne Bass. Private Gardens of Connecticut features gardens from all across the state some that have never been professionally photographed with a diversity of styles from formal to small, contemporary, wild, and old fashioned. Some are grand in scale, others exceedingly modest, but all have been cared for and tended with great love. None of these gardens was made overnight and many have taken years to come to fruition. The garden of the Greek god Adonis may have “one day blossomed and fruitful were the next,” but not any of the gardens featured in this book.

In an engaging and highly anecdotal text, Private Gardens of Connecticut, author Jane Garmey tells the story of the creation of the gardens and the pleasure the owners take in them while John Hall’s magnificent photographs of sumptuous flowers and luxuriant foliage bring them to life.

Private Gardens of Connecticut offers an exclusive glimpse in to these cherished private retreats creating a lush portrait of this unique landscape that will inspire committed gardeners and engage all who appreciate natural beauty.

“Garmey and Hall only chose gardens where the owners were fully invested in their land, even if they have a full-time staff…. Garmey and Hall also chose mature gardens that have stories about their growth and evolution. ‘You don’t make a good garden overnight,’ says Garmey. ‘Well, you can, but I didn’t want that type of garden in our book.’”—Rural Intelligence

“You may have noticed that autumn is upon us, and it’s probably dawned on you that—well, the garden isn’t going to be what it has been much longer. Sadly, all those flowers and lovely vibrant green leaves are already showing signs of falling. Luckily for us, though, a newly released book, “Private Gardens of Connecticut,” celebrates the beauty and bounty of summer and gives us something to look forward to and contemplate.”—New Haven Register

Jane Garmey is a noted garden writer and a contributor to the New York Times. Born in England, she is the author of The Writer in the Garden, Great British Cooking: A Well-Kept Secret, and Great New British Cooking. She lives in New York and in Cornwall, Connecticut.

John M. Hall is a photographer and artist based in New York. He regularly collaborates with architects, interior designers, and garden designers for publication. His books include Greek Revival America, Fresh Cuts, Designing Women, and Adventures with Old Houses.

Related Articles

• Connecticut’s Poshest Private Landscapes (luxist.com)

Jeannette Montgomery Barron will present selections from her memoir

My Mother’s Clothes

Wednesday, April 21 at 11:00 AM

In My Mother’s Clothes photographer and author Jeannette Montgomery Barron creates an inspiring and true story about the connection between fashion and memory. For five years, Barron witnessed her mother’s suffering from Alzheimer’s. Barron’s mother Eleanor had an undying love for clothing from high-end designers. As her mother started to fade, Barron began a unique visual album as a way of both sparking her mother’s memories and coping with her own sense of loss. My Mother’s Clothes is part fashion diary, part personal memoir, part loving memory, and part life celebration. A story which can be cherished by those grieving the loss of a loved one, and especially by fashion lovers and photography fans.

The book features an introduction by former Arts Editor at British Vogue, Patrick Kinmouth, and preface by private art dealer and New York Times bestselling author, James D. Barron who is married to Jeannette.

Jeannette Montgomery Barronstudied at the International Center of Photography, and became known for her portraits of the New York art world in the 1980s, which were later published in her monograph, Jeannette Montgomery Barron. This was followed by Photographs and Poems in 1998, with text by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham (Scalo), Mirrors, a collaboration with renowned author Edmund White (Holzwarth Editions, 2004), and Session with Keith Haring in 2006 (Holzwarth). Her work has appeared in publications around the world, including Vogue, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, and her prints are held in numerous museum collections, such as The Houston Museum of Fine Arts, The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and The Andy Warhol Museum. Jeannette Montgomery Barron lives and works in Rome, Italy and Connecticut with her husband and their two children.

For more information, see http://www.mymothersclothes.com.

To Catch the Lightning is the story of a forgotten America, a bittersweet sepia-toned exploration of the intertwined plights of Edward Curtis, a real-life frontier photographer, and the American Indian. This engrossing novel is based on the true story of Curtis’s lifelong passion: to photograph and document every Indian tribe on the continent. Following Curtis’s sojourn through the Western states, this stirring saga reveals the double-edged sword that is the frontier spirit, telling a remarkable tale of a quest made all the more powerful by its historical roots.

Bankrolled by J.P. Morgan, befriended by Teddy Roosevelt, and a towering figure in his own right, Curtis sees his epic work consume his life. Cheuse skillfully portrays the mounting tension as Curtis’s quest to keep the Native American alive threatens to destroy his own family. It’s a story of the disintegration of the Indian people, of a massacre, seen through the eyes of one white man, and how the real personal cost of his determination to make a difference, to somehow save them, could mean the end of his family as he knows it.

With the ear of a poet and the eye of a historian, Cheuse has crafted a masterwork of American historical fiction. Lyrical, beautifully written, and impressively researched, To Catch the Lightning is a novel of the American spirit, sure to engage and enlighten.

I first encountered Curtis’s photographs of the American Indian while I was in college — in fact I remember the first time I saw them. The Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Mass., a great old rerun house, mounted an exhibition of them in the lobby in the late nineteen fifties. That was the first time I saw Curtis’s work. I have long forgotten what movie I saw that evening in Cambridge, but I never forgot the faces and tones and settings of those portraits.

Curtis’s struggle to help open the eyes of all Americans to the power, dignity, and beauty of the old Indian ways, in the face of family difficulties, financial upsets and psychological turmoil, serves as the focus of the novel. An authentic American hero of his time — and ours. — Alan Cheuse

Acclaimed author Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio’s longtime “voice of books,” is the author of four novels, three collections of short fiction, and the memoir Fall Out of Heaven. As a book commentator, Cheuse is a regular contributor to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, The Idaho Review, and The Southern Review, among other places. He teaches in the Writing Program at George Mason University and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

New Dominion Bookshop will again host
Sam Abell
for a repeat presentation of his slide show and discussion
of his new National Geographic publication
THE LIFE OF A PHOTOGRAPH
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 5:30 PM

via The Beiderbecke Affair: Oozing the Energy of Cool

via One Reason Magazines Are Suffering: Their Covers – The Daily Beast

Sam Abell, one of the foremost photographers of our time, shares some of his most powerful and unforgettable images and answers the question, “What gives life to a photograph?”

Drawing on 40 years of Abell’s fieldwork, the book takes readers on assignment and inside the heart of this master photographer to witness the making of nearly 200 truly great images. Abell has selected photographs that speak most powerfully to him. They include notable images that he has made for National Geographic magazine and books, as well as photographs from his personal body of work that are published here for the first time.

THE LIFE OF A PHOTOGRAPH is organized around Abell’s perspectives on landscape, still life, street scenes and the photography of daily life. Selections cover geography and wildlife from the Arctic to the Amazon, and cultures from Australia to the American West.

In an original concept for a photography book, images are displayed in a unique, highly involving way that allows the viewer to be engaged in the photographic process. By showing similar images side by side, or sequences of photographs of the same event, the viewer is placed in the field and in the editor’s chair. Displaying images in this way allows the viewer to see how a setting appears before the subject enters, like an actor on a stage, and how subtle differences in point of view, framing, timing and perspective can lead to strikingly different photographs.

By presenting alternative images and clear, compelling text, Abell describes that act of seeking the picture — “a process with no absolute ending, as time and thought continue to shape the life of a photograph.”

With each image Abell presents a master class in photographic thinking. Through his lens, even the most mundane sights — a puddle of water, a bathroom faucet, a circle of laundry drying on the line, a plate of baked beans and toast — are transformed into artful, meaningful creations. Many photographs are complemented by text from Abell, providing background on the photograph and how he crafted the image.

“As a photographer my intent is to bring the world under my aesthetic control,” he writes. “Making a picture just right takes time even when the thing you’re photographing isn’t moving. Instead you do the moving — closer, not so close, change lenses, commit to a tripod, micro compose some detail, step back, reconsider, recompose, step back. And when it looks right, it also feels right — just so. Therefore it’s not only things that have made their way into my photography, but also the poetics of them in their setting.”

THE LIFE OF A PHOTOGRAPH is part of National Geographic Books’ new Focal Point imprint, which draws on National Geographic’s legendary photographic archive of more than 10 million images and the work of distinguished photographers around the world. The imprint will present the finest in documentary photography past and present, and monographs will celebrate individual photographers’ unique style, vision and skill.

Abell, who learned his craft from his father Thad S. Abell, has photographed for National Geographic magazine for almost 40 years. He is the author of the National Geographic book “Seeing Gardens” as well as “Stay this Moment,” a mid-career retrospective accompanied by an exhibition at the International Center of Photography, New York. His retrospective “Sam Abell: The Photographic Life” was accompanied by a traveling exhibition that opened at the University of Virginia Art Museum. Abell also collaborated with Stephen Ambrose on two best-selling National Geographic books, “Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery” and “The Mississippi River.”

Award-winning photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson showed images from his coverage of the Iraq War and described the war’s toll on the homefront to a meeting of the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society on October 10, 2008. This presentation was jointly sponsored by the Jefferson Society and the Virginia Quarterly Review to mark the publication of his article, “The Life and Lonely Death of Noah Pierce,” in the Fall 2008 issue of VQR.

via Charlottesville Podcasting Network » Blog Archive » Photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson speaks to Jefferson Society

I attended and recorded this very moving presentation by Gilbertson. It’s well worth your time to listen — you’ll hear a side of the War on Terror that’s not being presented by the popular media.

Click to listen