Alumna wins Guggenheim for photographic work

By Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

Monsieur Chaparteguy and his dog in a photograph made in 2000 by alumna Anne Rearick toward the end of her work in the Basque region of France.

ampus-connected Guggenheim Fellowship winners this year aren't limited to faculty. Alumna Anne Rearick of Gloucester received one for her work as a photographer.
Rearick, '82, who majored in English, documented the Basque region in France for a decade before turning her attention to amateur boxing.

      "In both cases I have been drawn to find, with my camera, the tenderness within a culture that is more widely perceived as brutal, whether that brutality is linked to terrorism, as with the Basques, or to pugilism, as with boxers," she said. "The human tendency to regard violence as 'other' is matched by the human tendency to enact violence, and along those poles lies an axis of tension that has me visually and emotionally riveted."

      Rearick will use her Guggenheim to continue her study of boxing in the U.S., Cuba and Kazakhstan.

     "I have found something quieter and purer that I thought boxing could be," she said. "Alongside the blood and bruises exist relationships between fighter and trainer, and among fighters and trainers, that are as true and loving as relationships can be."

      Rearick holds an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright, an Annette Kade Fellowship, three Massachusetts Arts Council grants, a Blanche Colman grant, a Janet Wu grant, a St. Botolph's Club Foundation grant and a New England Foundation for the Arts/Mass Cultural Council fellowship.

     Her photographs of the Basque country are being published in a book, "Miresicoletea," by the French-based Atlantica in June. The text will be available in Basque, English, Spanish and French.

      "The work in the Basque country rose out of a love of rural culture and a deep respect for the struggle of those trying to maintain an independent cultural identity at a time when Europe becomes more and more homogenous.

      "In continuing my work, I will go back to Kazakhstan, where Olympic boxing feels new and full of promise and children practice in large groups for hours at a time; back to New England, where the Silver Mittens draws scores of boys, and some girls, between the ages of eight and 15; back to the seedy Las Vegas boxing clubs, whose walls reek of the desperate sweat of wannabes and hangers-on," she said. "I also plan to travel to Cuba, where boxing still retains the nimbus of glory that was long ago tarnished in the United States.

      "In each of these worlds I will find the story of amateur boxing framed in images of bodies, tiredness, contact, desire, damage, relationship, violence and heart."

      Rearick won the Mosaique prize from Luxembourg's Centre National De L'Audiovisuel in 1998 and has been a member of Vu, a Paris-based photo agency and gallery, since 1992.