Ten Piscataqua Photographers
First edition hardcover, with portfolios by:
Carol Van Loon
Philip Case Cohen
Gary Samson
Rich Beauchesne
Cheryle St Onge
Bear Kirkpatrick
Rob Karosis
Doug Prince
Charter Weeks
Karrah Kwasnik
128 pp, 9” x 9,” $60 (Free Shipping!)
About the Book
The first title in a series in our series of coffee table books to discover, explore, and celebrate local genius focuses on fine art photographers from around the region. We’d all like to know what the difference is between a snapshot and a fine art photograph. These photographers have some profound things to say about that, just not in words.
Our first crowdfunding in the summer of 2018 raised close to $9K, a thousand more than our $8000 crowdfunding target—the amount we needed to pay all our upfront expenses, and put the book onpress to print, and bind, and ship 500 copies. Copies are still available in our Shop or by supporting one of our local Retailers, or through Amazon.com.
For a sneak peek inside the book, Here are the chapter opening spreads for each of the ten photographers’ portfolios. Note there’s a gutter down the middle and you are looking at 2 square facing pages. Our books do not target the tourist market with a variety of scenic landscapes, that’s only one aspect of fine art photography in the region, which we include alongside portfolios of portraiture, nature, architecture, still life, journalism, documentary, abstraction, and digital wizardry. Our books are more focused on the portfolios of fine artists working in the region, and are aimed toward art lovers and the regional arts community rather than tourists.
Carol Van Loon is a black and white photographer from Dover, NH. Her intimate portfolio All About Me, is an evocative exploration of her body at age 60—fearlessly taking the selfie to another level. This one is titled “My Father Always Wanted a Boy.”
Philip Case Cohen‘s portfolio features a selection of architectural and scenic landscapes from his popular photoblog, The Daily Portsmouth. This untitled image is taken from the interior of Portsmouth Light.
Gary Samson is a fine art photographer, photography educator, and New Hampshire’s 7th Artist Laureate. His portfolio Unburdened Beauty samples a decade of portrait and figurative work with women. This detail is from an image titled “Maya, Manchester, New Hampshire”
Peripatetic and prolific, Rich Beauchesne is chief photojournalist for Seacoast Media Group. His portfolio Motorcycle Week tours the spectators and spectacles of Laconia’s annual bike rally. His cover thumbnail is a detail from an image titled “Hearty Cheer.”
Frog eggs, nests, tricks of light, and all manner of creepy-crawlies populate Cheryle St. Onge’s portfolio titled Natural Findings. These images evoke a powerful nostalgia—discovering, or rather rediscovering, the wonders of nature through the curious eyes of children.
In The Old Ones, Bear Kirkpatrick‘s portraits of men and women are multilayered wonders. The subject is first decorated in fantastic costume, often made from natural props like mud and feathers, and then layered within a contextual background drawn from the old masters. The results are portraits unlike any you’ve ever seen before.
The work of Rob Karosis exhibits a consistent aesthetic, no matter what the subject. His choices are guileless, authentic, and without gimmick. His portfolio The Texture of Light draws from the natural world with images in both b&w and color, above is a detail from “Tumbled Stones.”
Digital innovator Douglas Prince juxtaposes diverse visual elements to conjure up a surprisingly new photographic world, not unlike a visual poem. Images from his portfolio Panaesthetic explore the numberless possibilities offered by digital image making tools and processes. Detail from “Coalescence 34.”
Charter Weeks has been documenting America for nearly five decades. His portfolio of that name introduces you to people and places around the country you might think you know, but then you’re surprised with a gritty revelation or a powerful juxtaposition you didn’t notice at first. Detail from “Preacher Man.”
In her photo essay The Organic Year, Karrah Kwasnik captures both the romance and the hard labor of clean sustainable agriculture. She takes us beyond the produce label for a taste of what organic really means in terms of farm life at Tuckaway and Sheltering Rock Farms in Lee, NH. Detail from “Alfred & Gonzo.”
About the Crew
Editor: Phillip Augusta has been publishing Portsmouth since the late 1970s when with Mike Warhurst he updated the city’s postcards for the first time since the 1950s. Soon after came the iconic Portsmouth poster of a tugboat in the fog, and then with Bill Paarlberg he founded re:Ports. arts and entertainment magazine which flourished in the 1980s. Since the 90s he’s been working in the book industry and publishes a photoblog and calendar called Birdaday.
editor@tenpiscataqua.com
Writer: Laura Pope has been involved in and writing about the Portsmouth arts scene for decades. Along with the introductions to each of the portfolios in the book, she is the author of two books of Portsmouth history, Portsmouth Women: Madams & Matriarchs Who Shaped New Hampshire’s Port City, and more recently, Becoming Portsmouth: Voices from a Half Century of Change.
popemedianetwork@gmail.com
Book Designer: Jenny Jensen Greenleaf is a book designer, artist, and photographer who studied printmaking at Pratt (Manhattan), typography at Harvard University, and received her BFA with honors from UMass/Amherst. A move to New Hampshire in 1988 resulted in her happy discovery of Heinemann publishing in Portsmouth, where she continues as a freelance book designer. Jenny has received design awards from Bookbuilders of Boston’s New England Book Show and from the National Council of Teachers of English.
jennygreenleaf@me.com
Series Logo: Gordon Carlisle is a painter, writer, actor, musician, graphic artist and amazing all around renaissance man.
www.gordoncarlisle.com
Copy Editor: Karen Billipp is the principal of Eliot House Productions, an editorial and book production shop.
kblip@comcast.net
Advice & Dissent: Bill Paarlberg is an editor, writer, watercolorist, and co-founder with Phillip Augusta of re:Ports. Arts and Entertainment Magazine of the early to mid 1980s.
www.paarlberg.com
Business Advisor: Chris Duffy is a Certified Business Advisor with the Regional Economic Development Center (REDC) in Raymond, NH. with a focus on business, finance, and market planning. He lives in Stratham, NH
chris@redc.com
Counsel: Susan Denenberg, Esq. is legal advisor for contracts and rights. She lives in Portsmouth with her family.
svdatty@netscape.net
Video: Laura Harper is graphic designer and executive assistant for the Regional Economic Development Center (REDC) in Raymond, NH.
laura@redc.com
Founding Patrons
We gratefully recognize the following Patrons for their generous support of regional fine art photography and photographers, having pledged $500 or more to our crowdfunding campaign.
Ron Bourgeault
Brigitte and George Gefrich
Susan Denenberg
Gary Samson
Joan Smith
Linda Tyring
Bob and Karen Graham
M. Christine Dwyer and Michael Huxtable
Geoffrey and Martha Clark
Founding Backers
Supporters who donated for one or more of our crowdfunding rewards. (ave = $81)
John Schnitzler
Susan Turner
Peggi McCarthy and Cary Wendell
Pete and Jan Thomas
Beth Haggerty
Jan and Blair McCracken
Elisabeth Sturges
Thomas Cocchiaro
Carolyn Kopp
Dan Gingras
Andrew Terris
Cheryl Krisko
Carol Van Loon
Steven Onishi
Carol Keyes
Marshall Carbee
Jane and Dick Kaufmann
Barbara Tsairis
J. Dennis Robinson
Lauren Augusta
Anne Post Poole
Mary Lou Monteiro
Sharon Platt Antiques
Jiff Cornwell
Charter Weeks
Alan Perry
Karen Augusta
Doug Roberts
Bill Paarlberg
Beth Boynton
Elizabeth Cronk
Michael Warhurst
Mary Liz and David Lancaster
Patricia Whitney
Elisabeth Robinson
Melissa Paly
Rick Schweikert
Guy Capecelatro III
Elizabeth Scott
Bruce C. Belanger – The Library Restaurant
John Roach
Marjorie Foote
Ann Beattie
Roger Goun
Tom Lamb
Fred Armbruster
Alan Huisman
Sebastian Matthews
Ellen Kirkpatrick
Maeve Matthews
Roland Goodbody
Jacinthe Grote
Mike Stasiuk
Judith Silver
Bruce Larrabee
Don’t see your name but you pledged? My apologies, and please let me fix that!)
THANK YOU ALL!
Community Feedback
Ten Piscataqua Photographers is a pictorial reflection of the breadth and diversity of the region’s artistic community. The volume illustrates the uniqueness of the region and its talented artists. –Jan McCracken, Portsmouth
Ten Piscataqua Photographers is not your usual photography book. It reminds one more of literature, something like Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Is it fiction, is it non-fiction, is it philosophy, is it a biography, is it an art book, is it about the known, is it about the unknown? Yes. The synergy of Laura Pope’s introductions with the portfolios presented from each photographer makes it category-defying and all-inclusive. The last great photography book to come out of Portsmouth, NH, J.D. Lincoln’s People of Portsmouth, was more than a book of pretty pictures of the seacoast too but Ten Piscataqua Photographers takes it to the next level, on steroids. —Michele Duval, Eliot