Photos by Sherer and Ward featured at Forbes

by Daniel J. Fitzgibbons, Chronicle staff

Stan Sherer's "Tai Chi, Yangtze River, Zhenjiang, China, 2002" is part of his upcoming exhibition of photographs with Frank Ward at the Forbes Library Art Gallery in Northampton.

n exhibition by Chronicle photographer Stan Sherer and Amherst College photographer Frank Ward will inaugurate the opening of the newly renovated Forbes Library Art Gallery in Northampton.

     The exhibit will run from June 2 to July 27. An opening reception is planned for Saturday, June 8 from 2-4 p.m. Ward and Sherer will also give a gallery talk, "Around the World in 80 Photographs," on Sunday, June 9 at 2 p.m.
Sherer began as a professional photographer in 1972 for the Amherst Record, but switched to freelance a few years later. From the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s, he was the regional photographer for the Associated Press, United Press International and Time Magazine. Since 1985 he has been the staff photographer for the Chronicle.

     Sherer has photographed in Barbados, Europe, Israel, Russia, the Philippines and China. He spent six months in West Africa in 1979 on assignment for the London bureau of the Associated Press, and has documented life in Albania, making eight trips there since 1992. Last April, the U.S. embassy in Albania sponsored a traveling exhibition of his work, opening in the capital Tirana and closing in the northern city of Shkoder.

    Sherer is equally well known for his work in Massachusetts. A Copeland Fellowship at Amherst College in 1988 culminated in an exhibition, "Fair People," on Massachusetts agricultural fairs. His exhibition on Massachusetts family farms traveled throughout the country from 1994-2001 under the auspices of Exhibits USA. In 1991 he was commissioned by the city of Northampton for "New Visions -- the Art of Architecture, 2001." Initiated by the Northampton Historical Commission, this exhibition of photographs of significant building projects that have been thoughtfully restored or creatively reused over the last 25 years is now permanently on display at the Northampton City Hall.

"Making byrek dough, Shkoder, Albania, 2001" by Stan Sherer

     His books include "Long Life to Your Children! A Portrait of High Albania," a study of everyday life in the north of Albania, and "Founding Farms," a profile of five of the oldest working family farms in Massachusetts. Sherer did the work for "Long Life to Your Children!" through a Fulbright Research Fellowship in 1994. Earlier this year his work was featured in a special auction/exhibition at Sotheby's in New York to benefit the Fulbright-sponsored program "Art Educates the World."

     Sherer made the prints on display in the Forbes Library Art Gallery using a quad-tone digital printing process that employs archival inks. Most of the photographs are on display for the first time.

     When Ward is not working as the Amherst College photographer, he often
travels throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas on a variety of assignments. For the Forbes show, Ward made new prints of rarely exhibited personal favorites from his 30-year career in photography.

     Ward photographs refugees, immigrants, nomads, pilgrims and exiles. The images are about survivors and outsiders, students and sorcerers and also about ordinary life wherever in the world he finds it.

     Included are portraits and views from South India created under the auspices of the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International. Images of ceremonies in north India, Nepal and Afghanistan were made during two trips through Asia in the '70s with support from Earth Television in Switzerland.

     Also exhibited are excerpts from Ward's camera diaries. These casual diptychs from Tibet show consecutive film frames from his 35mm and roll film negatives. They were first made as a way to capture some of the kinetic action around him as he worked with his more static view camera.

     Northampton is also represented with a series of photographs at the intersection of Pleasant and Main Streets. These are portraits of pedestrians who become dancers, fashion models and jumpers in the evening light of their own city.

     This exhibit is a bit of a retrospective, with photo work ranging from a 1972 picture of Druids at Stonehenge to images from Ukraine taken in 2001.

     Ward has a master's of fine arts from Bard College. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for his work with the Puerto Rican community in Holyoke. More recently, he received a Packard Foundation/Friends of Bosnia grant to photograph in Kosovo.