“Something is wrong with this picture,” Sam Abell said to his audience on May 9, during the final Photographers’ Lecture Series of the 2012-11 season.
Projected on the screen in the darkened Dodge Room was a photograph of two coffee cups on a tray and a glass of water. What was wrong? The audience strained to see.
Then the next slide appeared. Abell had turned the handle of a coffee mug, ever so slightly, to create a sliver of space between it and the shadow cast by the water.
Such small details have obsessed Abell throughout his long and illustrious career as a documentary photographer and on in-depth projects for National Geographic. As he noted in his artist’s statement, Abell “explores ways in which places can be purely recorded, with images simultaneously shaped by the photographer’s imagination.”
Photographer Susan Falzone, the next speaker in the Photographers’ Lecture Series, will visit The Williston Northampton School on Thursday, April 12.