Post-war NYC photos featured at UM museum

BANGOR – Last winter, Wally Mason made a list of all the artists he wanted to show at the University of Maine Museum of Art. He let his imagination run wild – in his dreams, money was no object.

Mason’s interests lie firmly in photography, and the museum specializes in works on paper, so it’s no surprise that Saul Leiter topped the list.

Leiter, who photographed New York in the years that followed World War II, approached the medium with a painter’s eye. At a time when black-and-white was the fashion for art photographers, Leiter captured the city’s soul in vibrant, breathing color.

“Most of the photographers of the time were trying to capture the urgency of the city rather than trying to humanize it,” Mason said last Wednesday in the UMMA’s main gallery. “When the history of photography is rewritten in the next 25 years, someone like Saul Leiter will finally get his due.”

Mason didn’t have to wait a quarter-century for his dream list to come true. Through a series of fortunate events, Mason was able to secure “Saul Leiter: Early Color,” which is on view through April 14.

Accompanying exhibits include “Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky: British Pop Art,” which highlights playful highbrow-lowbrow gems from the museum’s permanent collection, and “William Greiner Blogs* Katrina,” an interactive exhibit that sprung from an ongoing e-mail exchange between Mason and Greiner in the weeks that followed Hurricane Katrina.

“He was so taken by what had happened that he had to document it,” Mason said. “I started following this blog every single day.”

Greiner, an acclaimed photographer and longtime New Orleans resident, used imagery and writing as a means to come to terms with the disaster. Through his blog and an in-gallery message board, viewers of the exhibit can respond to and reflect on what they’ve seen.

“When you look at it in the papers or on TV, you’re looking at the same medium that would give you the Iraq war or ‘American Idol,'” Mason said. “If you print these photographs on something larger than a postcard, suddenly you get another meaning. Hopefully there’s this sense that by looking at these objects and looking at this Web site, it’s human.”

Though he was dealing with a far different set of circumstances, Leiter’s lens also sought the humanity in the bustle of midcentury Manhattan.

He focuses on small, quiet scenes – “slits of information,” as Mason calls them. His subjects, mostly unaware of the camera, are shown through windows, reflected in glass or between buildings. His colors are rich and saturated, his images timeless.

“He was not content to just put his subject matter in the middle,” Mason said. “It’s very similar to what Miles Davis was doing at the same time. It was all about the space between the notes – not just the notes.”

“Saul Leiter: Early Color,” “Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky: British Pop Art” and “William Greiner Blogs* Katrina” are on view through April 14 at the University of Maine Museum of Art, 40 Harlow St., Bangor. For information, visit www.umma.umaine.edu, or call 561-3350.