When Sandra Matthews began teaching photography at Hampshire College in the early 1980s, pictures still were developed on something called film, and most of the photos of Asia that she saw had been composed by non-Asian photographers.
Now, as Matthews gets set to call it a career at Hampshire, a new era of photography, very much of the digital age, is being written by Asian photographers — and it’s one that Matthews is busy chronicling as the founder and editor of an online journal, the Trans-Asia Photography Review, that’s devoted to the subject.
And Matthews has also been chronicling the passage of time in her own life, both at Hampshire and at home. The college is now hosting an exhibit of her portraits of friends and colleagues, some from the college in South Amherst, that she began taking back in 1989, in which her subjects are shown in “then and now” double poses — sometimes many years apart.
The “In Time: Hampshire family Portraits” exhibit is on display through April 15 at the Leo Model Gallery at Hampshire’s Jerome Liebling Center. The show is paired with a second group of photographs by the late Hampshire alum David Rosten, a former student of Matthews who took extensive portraits of Hampshire personnel for his senior project in 1983-1984.
Matthews, who began teaching at the college in 1981, said Rosten died two years ago after a long illness, so this second part of the exhibit, titled “Reclassification,” is designed both to reprise his work and honor his memory.
“He was one my first students here, and I really admired his work,” Matthews said during a recent interview in her Northampton home. Since her photos are a reflection of the passage of time, including her years at Hampshire, she added, “I thought it would be nice to show David’s pictures alongside mine.”
In her own black-and-white photos, Matthews has put together not just portraits of people at different stages of her life: She’s also captured different generations. In one photo, she shows her friend Brown Kennedy, a professor of literature at Hampshire, with her daughter, Gabriel, then about 11 years old. In the second part of that picture, she shows Gabriel, as a student at Hampshire, in 2008.
Then, in a second double photograph, Gabriel is seen in June 2012, pregnant; in the second image, from September 2012, she holds her infant daughter, Isabel.
Matthews began the project in 1989 simply as portraits of women — friends, family members, and some acquaintances — but in 2007, she expanded the effort to include multiple generations and men, with a new focus on the passage of time. On her website, www.sandra-matthews.com, she notes that many of her subjects “have experienced illness, violence, disability and loss, and also have grown, survived, met challenges and thrived.”
She’s also photographed many of her subjects against a backdrop of newsprint-covered boards (some Daily Hampshire Gazettes are part of that collage, she notes).
“Since these images are all about the passage of time,” she said, “it seemed like using newspapers, that sort of daily record of time, was a good way to symbolize that.”
Her double and sometimes triple portraits are straightforward, with people mostly looking directly into the camera or slightly to the side, but they’re also quite intimate in their simplicity. What’s particularly engaging is the way in which pictures of the same person, taken years apart, somehow seem like a single image, as if taken simultaneously. There’s often no border or visible line separating the two pictures, with many using similar backdrops, including the newspaper collages.
For that, Matthews credits Northampton photographer and printer Stan Sherer, who printed the images. “There’s [digital] manipulation, but no tricks involved,” she said. Sherer was able to print the double photos in a way that makes for a seamless transition when looking from side to side, she added.
One of the most striking photos is a triple image. On the left is a portrait of her son, Matthew, in 1993 when he was about 11; to the right, he’s shown as a grown man today. Between those portraits is Matthews herself, her face blurred as if in motion — as if she’s looking from one image to the other, in disbelief at the dramatic transformation of her son.
Matthews’ photos are part of a larger book project, with many more photographs, that explores the same theme (her Hampshire exhibit mostly features colleagues from Hampshire and their family members). It’s one of the things she’ll be devoting more time to now that she’s retiring.
She’ll also continue to spend time heading the Trans Asia Photography Review (TAP), which she started in 2008 as an outgrowth of her longstanding interest in the history of photography in that region. The bi-annual online magazine examines both current and historical photography in Asia, with essays and articles by historians, photographers, anthropologists, art historians and others.
Matthews, who received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a master’s degree in fine arts from SUNY Buffalo, says she had long wondered why most of the photography she’d seen of Asia during her studies — in fact, most photography in general that she’d seen — had been the work of western photographers.
“It was very curious,” said Matthews, whose father was born in Hong Kong. “It seemed that only Japan had some history of its own photography. I thought there must be more that I just hadn’t been exposed to.”
In 1980, she spent several months in Hong Kong and China researching that history and studying Chinese photographic aesthetics. She notes that she’s long had an interest in photography not just as an art form but as a means for shaping cultural perceptions — and that perceptions of Asia had primarily been set by western photographers, many of whom first worked in the region during the 19th century and early 20th century, when significant parts of Asia were colonized by European nations.
Given that, she eventually conceived of the idea of a journal that would be dedicated to the history of photography in Asia and the work of Asian photographers.
The TAP Review, which is a collaboration between Hampshire College and the University of Michigan Library, now has an editorial board of more than 30 people. Members represent some of the leading Asian photography and art scholars worldwide, Matthews says, including a contingent from the Valley, such as Young Min Moon of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Samuel Morse of Amherst College, and Anthony Lee and Ajay Sinha of Mount Holyoke College.
The peer-reviewed articles cover a range of topics; the most recent issue included reviews of Asian photography books and catalogs, interviews with contemporary Asian photographers, historical photos from China and India, and an article examining photo manipulation in China during the reign of Mao Zedong.
Though she’ll be working mostly from her home after she retires in May, staying involved with the TAP Review will also maintain her connection to Hampshire. And that’s all well and good, Matthews says, as she looks back on her career at the college.
“It’s been a very rich experience, very rewarding, because I’ve had the opportunity not just to teach but to learn from so many of my students and other faculty,” she said.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
“In Time” and “Reclassification” are on view through April 15 at the Leo Model Gallery, Jerome Liebling Center for Film, Photography and Video, at Hampshire College. The exhibit also includes video footage of some of the photo subjects. To view the TAP review, visit tapreview.org.