MHC Through the Camera Lens

Reflecting Pool in the Botanic Garden, by Anna G. Hewitt '02, gelatin silver print photograph, 2000.

Last fall ten Mount Holyoke students participated in a unique six-week photography workshop with visiting artist Michael Jacobson-Hardy. Jacobson-Hardy was invited to the College in conjunction with President Creighton’s initiative to launch a comprehensive campus master-planning process. The goal was to engage students in an examination of the campus environment using photography as a tool. Beginning March 26, the MHC community will have the opportunity to view photographs by students who participated in the workshop, images by Jacobson-Hardy, and historical photographs of the Mount Holyoke campus. The exhibition, Through the Camera’s Lens: Seeing Mount Holyoke College, will be on view at locations across the campus, and will open with a reception at the Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership Thursday, March 29, from 4:30 to 6 pm.

The exhibition runs through May 27 at the Weissman Center, the Blanchard Campus Center, and the Streeter Lounge in Kendall Sports and Dance Complex. Historical photographs drawn from the holdings of Archives and Special Collections and selected by Elise Karas Kenney ’55, will be on view in the area adjacent to the main reading room of the Williston Library.

“Since the art museum is closed for a major renovation/expansion project, this exhibition will be on view at alternative locations on campus,” says Marianne Doezema, director of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. “We thought it would be appropriate for an exhibition about the landscape to be installed at four cardinal points of the compass.”

The exhibition constitutes the second of two project components. During the fall semester, Jacobson-Hardy introduced the concepts, techniques, and materials of photography, and provided instruction in the developmnent of black-and- white prints. In November, he delivered a slide presentation on issues of race, class, and gender in social institutions, and on his experience photographing in factories, schools, and prisons. For the fifth and sixth weeks of the project, Jacobson-Hardy lived on campus as an artist-in-residence, working intensively with students in the darkroom and also taking his own photographs.

Student Reading Near Mary Lyon Hall, by Michael Jacobson-Hardy, gelatin silver print photograph, 2000.

“The students accomplished a great deal,” says Jacobson-Hardy, who encouraged them to pursue their own independent interpretations of the campus and to build a portfolio of prints, from which selections were made for the exhibition. “I am very pleased with their work and look forward to meeting with people at the reception on March 29.”

For Nicole Zerillo ’03, the workshop provided a fresh appreciation of the artful nuances of picture making and what it means to dedicate one’s life to the profession. “We learned that photography is not only a vehicle to capture beauty or a passing moment, but a way to create art, fusing the aesthetic with the real,” she says. “Being able to ask what makes a memorable picture, or how to illuminate an almost insignificant detail in a black-and-white print not only helped me improve my portfolio, but helped me see the world in a myriad of different tones.”

Christopher Benfey, professor of English and codirector of the Weissman Center, who participated as a guest faculty member in the workshop, also gained a new perspective working with Jacobson-Hardy. “He brought a fresh and informed eye to campus and encouraged us to look at the complicated weave of people and buildings and trees that make up a college,” he says. He cites as most memorable a session in which he and Jacobson-Hardy photographed “the haunted room” in Wilder. “Photography is a good medium for finding ghosts,” he says, “and I think we caught a glimpse of the Wilder ghost.”

Jacobson-Hardy is a self-taught photographer and the author of Facing Education: Portraits of Holyoke Schoolchildren; Behind the Razor Wire; and The Changing Landscape of Labor. He uses his camera as a research tool, in the tradition of Lewis Hine, who brought students into the landscape of Central Park in New York in the early part of the century to examine the environment. Jacobson-Hardy’s work includes landscapes and images of social documentation, several of which are part of the permanent collection of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.