OUT-TAKES by photographer Jack McConnell

Exhibit at Heirloom Market at Comstock Ferre

For 10 years I’ve been shooting New England stone walls, building an archive of hundreds of photos that hint at the four billion years of interplay between fire and ice. I was drawn at first by the form, the quiet criss-crossing of piled stone against the surrounding woods and fields. The scurf of lichen against granite stone. Fiddleheads nestled within a niche of sun-baked rock. The puzzling presence of glacial erratics in an empty field.

To know New England well, one must know its stone walls. Forged at scorching temperatures deep within the earth and brought to the region by huge glaciers, each stone is the result of both fire and ice. Today’s stone walls continue to be transformed by biological processes. Bacteria tarnish them; lichens dissolve them. Vines penetrate and loosen their stones. Trees blown down during hurricanes knock large gaps in walls, as though taking bites of the earth. Left untended every wall will come apart, tumble to the ground, disperse over acres of soil, and be buried by encroaching vegetation. Although inanimate, stone walls have an important story to tell.
They give us a clock by which we can judge the passage of almost unimaginable time.

When I come upon a stone wall, and bend to adjust my camera and focus my lens, I can’t help but feel the presence of the original hand that first stacked stone upon stone, maybe 200-300 years ago. I think of the generations of stewards and caretakers since, who have mended the wall and kept Nature’s cruel intentions at bay. I examine stones dropped here 20,000-30,000 years ago by the roiling glacial turmoil of the last Ice Age. And I think of the hot furnace that forged these stories millions of years ago in the belly fires of Earth. By stopping here to tinker
with my cameras, I become part of the history, and connect to that long line of events.

Thirteen of my stone wall photographs are on display and for sale this spring at the Heirloom Market at Comstock Ferre at 263 Main Street, Wethersfield, CT. The renovation of the old Comstock Ferre garden center into a café, specialty food shop, and seed emporium, is a great place to rendezvous with family and friends. Spiro and Julia Koularis and their band of merry barristas produce an array of pastries, sandwiches, salads, soups and specialty drinks that are beyond amazing.

Before you go, check out my website: JackMcConnellPhotography.com and click on Collections – Stone Walls and Farms P1-6. If stone walls are not your thing, find other art that speaks to you by browsing through my twelve Fine Art Collections and select inspiring photographs for your office or home. Go to the Purchase Page to order prints at many custom sizes. Call me with any questions at 860.563.6154 or send me an email to jack@jackmcconnellphotography.com.

Soldiers & Sailors Arch

Don’t miss my new Hartford Parallax: City Abstracts collection displayed at the Gallery at Stackpole Moore Tryon* at 242 Trumbull Street in Hartford from October 7-November 30.
Artist Reception Thursday October 20 from 5-7pm.

There are 38 prints displayed at various sizes: 8 36×54 prints in the display windows; and in the gallery are: 6 vertical 24×36, 9 square 14×14, 9 vertical 14×21, and 6 horizontal 14×21.

*Stackpole Moore Tryon has been voted Best Men’s and Women’s clothing store in Connecticut for the past three years by Connecticut Magazine. Be sure to see their new Fall collections.

Conversation with Jack McConnell:

The Hartford Parallax:City Abstracts Collection represents a huge departure from the way I’ve worked throughout my commercial career.

For 45 years I traveled through the United States and Europe shooting annual reports and advertising campaigns for Fortune 500 clients. Along the way, I always took personal time to do
street photography, catching moments in the lives of city dwellers and passersby–a walk through Lisbon, Venice, London—wherever I was sent to work.

Now, I’m busy re-interpreting a city only five minutes from my home. A city so familiar to me I wonder if I can possibly see it with fresh eyes.

So I prowl the downtown streets and neighborhoods armed only with an extreme telephoto 400-550mm lens, an extreme wide angle 8-15mm lens, and a multi-colored polarizing filter.
I challenge myself to find details and compressed layers of line, form and color that convey the legacy of 300 years of architecture within the bounds of one of the oldest cities in America. Sometimes I’m standing one-quarter mile from my subject, other times my nose is pressed to window glass.

A couple of days each week, I go looking, looking, looking—seeing Hartford anew. I use a multi-color polarizing filter to emphasize the differences in warm and cool light. I go at 6 am and 8 pm to capture the best possible light. I go on rainy days and sunny days to find reflections of buildings in other buildings. I look for signage, statues, friezes, graffiti, all the details that make Hartford distinct from other cities. I’m amazed by what I can find in these compressed spaces. I like the simplicity of the images. In many of the photos, even though there’s barely anything to give away the identity of the buildings, there’s just enough, and most viewers seem to know that it’s City Place, or the Goodwin, or the back of the XL Center.

Blue, Mauve & Gold

The color comes from the shadows and light of early dawn or dusk, and the reflections of one building in another, or the clouds and sky, or by tilting the angle of my camera, or by rotating the polarizing filter on my lens. When I process the files I can push or pull the overall color tones to make the color stronger or softer; but I’m not changing any one portion of the image as you might expect. It’s trusting the serendipity and enjoying the moment of tripping the shutter and processing the file.

I want these energetic photos to help Hartford re-introduce itself to visitors from away, and to neighbors from the suburbs. I’d like to plaster the photos on billboards along I-91 and I-84, wire them to chain link fences surrounding construction sites, project them onto buildings and play a sequence to music every night at 9pm. Or have them accompany a music or dance performance, or have them magically appear as action-triggered images on iPhones as folks walk by a Welcome to the new Hartford sign.

Not the same-old, same-old, beige and gray Hartford, but a warm, exciting place to live, work and play. It would be my dream if these photos could help create the buy-in that’s needed to create a new reality here in Hartford.

Now that I’ve taken the time to discover a new way to interpret my favorite city Hartford, I need to see it through, to continue finding new shots on my walks through the city streets. And to find unique ways to share this work with the community and groups that could benefit by using the photography to re-introduce Hartford to its neighbors and visitors.

From my years living in downtown Hartford and my more recent life in Wethersfield, only five minutes away, I’ve always been optimistic that Hartford would step up to the plate and come into its own. With all the good things on the horizon, from the new ballpark, the five downtown college campuses, the new energy as developers from New York and Boston take another look at Hartford’s potential, the 17 new housing projects throughout downtown for students and young professionals, and retail improvements in neighborhoods like Parkville and DoNo,
this could be Hartford’s moment.

If I can push through to find the right focal point that will create excitement about Hartford through new imagery, I’ll feel I’ve accomplished a Parallax shift in the way folks interpret our Capitol city. In all the photos I’ve taken of Hartford through the years, I feel this recent work is my best work. A supporting grant at this point would give me the ability to continue to explore my vision and see what I can yet discover about this city I love.

My own experiment in “seeing” comes at a pivotal time. Because this new work focuses on Hartford, which is approaching a critical moment in its history, I feel an urgency to complete this collection of photography and bring it to the attention of folks who need to see it, and share it as widely as possible. I think the photography will delight and help define a more
upbeat view of Hartford.

Cityscape #1

While I make several photo forays to the city each week to continue the work of exploring at dawn and dusk, I am also taking steps to meet with marketers, event planners, artistic directors, corporate communicators, space planners—people working on Hartford
from many different angles.

I am contacting museums, galleries, building owners, developers and leasing agents for the 17 renovated buildings providing apartments to young professionals and students attending the five downtown college campuses; and property managers for the 15 office towers that are changing hands, providing new energy to the city as tenants move in and out of downtown office space.

Hopefully some of the thousands of workers who drive in and out of Hartford every day, will think about bringing their families into the city to participate in the many activities that go on here daily in theatres, parks, museums, restaurants, clubs, and neighborhoods.

I’d like to think that the new City Abstracts can be the catalyst for cross-promoting among all these organizations as Hartford works to become its best self, and finally grabs the brass ring.

If not now, when?

After photographing Hartford for 45 years for corporate and tourism clients, last summer I challenged myself to create a fresh perspective on one of America’s oldest cities. I use an extreme telephoto 400-550mm lens, an extreme wide 8-15mm lens, and a multi-colored polarizing filter. A couple of times a week, I wander downtown streets and neighborhoods, looking, looking, looking. By drastically changing my point of view, I create a Parallax effect and an energetic profile of Hartford. This is an exciting time for Hartford, and I hope my parallax view of the city will help skeptics set aside the same-old, same-old, beige and gray ideas, and embrace a new Hartford identity.

I feel an urgency to share the new photographs with folks who need to see them – city planners, dwellers, neighbors, and visitors who come to work and play in the Capital City. After all, this comes at a pivotal moment when four nearby colleges are moving campuses downtown, when 17 office buildings are being renovated to include apartments and lofts, and many office complexes are being refurbished and modernized by developers.

It’s time to celebrate a NEW Hartford, the one we’ve all been waiting for. A state-of-the-art DoNo baseball stadium, modern restaurants, clubs, music, theatre and movie venues are enlivening Downtown and the convention center corridor near the Science Center and Riverfront Recapture. I hope my reinterpretation of Hartford will ignite viewers and help define a more upbeat view of the city.

Ninety-five percent of each image is created in the camera, with a little enhancement in the computer to create a dramatic sense of the Capital City at its best. I can then use the photos as elements in collage murals, banners, billboards, and outdoor art, alongside classic Hartford images to promote and market the city and businesses.

All photographs on my five websites are available for fine art display, or for advertising and website use. You can order photos through the Purchase Page on my website, or contact me at my Wethersfield studio at 860.563.6154 or e: jack_mcconnell@msn.com .

OUT-TAKES by photographer Jack McConnell

At Water’s Edge — Is it a painting or photograph?

Special hand-painted photographs by Jack McConnell are featured at Art in the Abbey fundraiser March 10-12 at St. James Episcopal Church, 2584 Main Street in Glastonbury, CT.

Throughout my 50 years as a photographer, I’ve tried a variety of special techniques to challenge my vision and nourish my creativity. One of these is to print B&W photographs onto fine art photographic papers that have old-fashioned “tooth” that will facilitate a hand-painting process, where I use Marshall’s transparent oils straight from the tube, applied with cotton swabs, sable brushes, or by using a vigorous hand-rubbing technique.

My hand-painting style resembles the tradition of turn-of-the-century photographer Wallace Nutting, but with more gusto and energy. Instead of pastel tints and watery washes, I mingle translucent and opaque techniques with a quirky color intuition and gritty textural manipulation done with sable-tipped brushes and hand-rolled cotton swabs. By using painterly finishes like stippling, smudging and layering of color, I try to straddle the line between paint and emulsion, playing with a print’s tactile surface and asking the question, “Is it a painting, or is it a photograph.”

The tradition of hand-coloring on Black & White photography goes back to the mid-1800’s and continued for more than 100 years, until color film was readily available. In the first half of the 20th century, photographers like Wallace Nutting organized cottage workshops of painters who applied color over his prints. Nutting prints became wildly collectible, moving from country flea market stalls and garage sales, to high-priced galleries and antiques shops.

For awhile Nutting worked from the Old Wethersfield historic buildings of the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum on Main Street, only two blocks from my studio. He also produced furniture which is now in a collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford.

The traditional hand-painted photographs tended to be largely pastel tints and watery washes of color over dreamy landscapes delicately interpreted—ladies swathed in airy gauze. Mordant flowers tumbling silently from a porcelain vase. A hint of gesture. A wisp of color.

My choice was to shoot more gritty subject matter found everywhere from town dock to boat yard, from woodlot to the auto dump. In fact I have a whole series which I title Rust & Rubble, which can be seen on my website, JackMcConnell Photography.com. I also prefer to use color straight from the tube, rather than diluting it with a thinning medium. So what you see, for the most part, is a deeper intensity of color.

With certain prints, I take the process one step farther—by having the finished, hand-painted, photographic print reproduced onto Somerset Satin, an imported British fine art paper. These archival Iris Prints (also known as Giclee prints) are scanned and printed in my lab here in Wethersfield in limited editions of 25 prints.

Agriculture in Connecticut is a 3.5 billion business with 5997 family farmers.

In order to bring attention to the need to preserve CT farmland and support

CT farms, Jack McConnell has photographed 75 farm families and shows

these portraits in galleries and public spaces around the state. You can see

an 8-minute video set to music at: KnowYourCTFarmer.com.

Or browse through 16 pages of farmer portraits at:

JackMcConnellPhotography.com – click on Collections-stone walls & farms P7-23

To join Jack’s farmer collection, call to schedule a photo shoot and talk

with Paula at 860.563.6154 or email jack_mcconnell@msn.com.