|
Richard Moore's digital prints combine photographs from a century ago with contemporary images from the same or similar locations today. The result is a viewbook of time and change on New Hampshire's Seacoast.
EXHIBIT RUNS
Jan 18 – March 16
Rye NH
ODIORNE POINT: TWICE-SEEN EXHIBIT
January 18 to March 16, 2008
Seacoast Science Center
Odiorne Point State Park
Route 1A
Rye, New Hampshire
Richard Moore is obsessed. He admits it, thrives in it. Like a man in a Twilight Zone episode, he sees the past and present at the same time. His beach is populated by ghostly Victorian swimmers as contemporary children play along the shore. He sees picnickers just below the giant artillery guns long since removed from this coastal defense station. He sees bicycle racers whizzing by antique autos.
Moore’s pictures are real, separated only by time, not place. In his exhibit "Twice Seen" he digitally combines modern images with early photographs of Odiorne’s Point. The effect is powerful , but not chilling. The ghosts of the past are like us, ordinary citizens who once inhabited the space we occupy today. We feel, not only that they share our world, but that we too will soon be ghosts to a new generation.
Moore describes himself as a "serious amateur photographer". Thirty-five years ago he trained with professional printmakers, but spent his working career in the nonprofit field. These days he runs the day-to-day operations of World Land Trust-US, an organization that helps establish private reserves for critically endangered species in Latin America.
But he can’t get those ghosts out of his head. Moore is spending more and more time on his art. His Odiorne exhibit picks up where traditional "Then & Now" photo projects leave off. Instead of showing us two images comparing past and present, Moore combines the two in a gentle yet haunting double-exposure. Both worlds carry on simultaneously, caught in a momentary overlap of one dimension on another.
Richard Moore lives in Deerfield, NH in a hand-made timber frame home with his wife Emily who is a painter and registered nurse. Their children, he says, have moved on to Vermont, they have one grandchild, and nearing retirement – they find themselves thinking about raising a few chickens again. -- JDR
All colorized collages (c) RIchard Moore |
