Stirring Images In Black And White

By Shannon Hicks

Karla Bernstein will have her first one-artist photography exhibition next month when a collection of about 18 black and white photos are shown at Tom E Toes in Wilton. The restaurant regularly serves as a gallery for artists who work in many mediums.

The restaurant will host an artist’s reception, to which the public is invited, on Tuesday, May 3, from 6 to 8 pm.

During a recent conversation, Mrs Bernstein had many of her photographs lined up along the edge of a room in the Newtown home she and her husband live in. The frames were all black wood and each of the photos was matted in white, creating a great presentation.

The photos are terrific. Also all done in black and white, the images are strong whether a wide view of a seascape or an abstract pattern formed by water, windowpanes, or anything else that catches the eye of Mrs Bernstein.

The images are enlargements of shots taken with 35 mm black and white film. They are stark, and they are very interesting. The collection will look fantastic when it is set up at the restaurant next month.

Mrs Bernstein discovered one of her favorite photographers — and that discovery has obviously led to a strong influence in her subsequent work — quite by chance. While on vacation a few years ago in California Mrs Bernstein visited one of the Ansel Adams galleries, where an exhibition by the Japanese-born photographer Ryuijie was being presented. While Ryuijie works in a much larger format than Mrs Bernstein, his abstract patterns and details captured the Newtown photographer’s imagination.

“I kept going back to that gallery almost every day that we were out there,” she laughed. “Finally one of the gallery employees asked me why I was there so often and I told them. It was this photographer’s work. I couldn’t get enough of it.

“His shadows, and the shapes that he finds — they’re so gorgeous,” she said.

One Bernstein image that will be in the Tom E Toes show, “H2O,” shows the surface of a pond. Mrs Bernstein took it on a rainy day and set her camera to get a heavy contrast.

Another image, one of her favorites, shows the detailed ironwork on one of the greenhouses in the Fairfield Hills campus in Newtown.

“The photos in the show won’t be quite as abstract. I like the abstract work, but that’s not what everyone else likes,” she said.

“I’m intrigued by the abstract possibilities of black and white photography,” she wrote as part of a press release and mission statement recently. “I especially enjoy revealing the textures, shapes and contrasts found in nature — the stark patterns of a cedar forest, for example, or the soft, flowing lines of water lilies. [My darkroom] allows me to concentrate on the evolution of the image from ‘reality’ to imagination on film, and finally to the many possible expressions of that image through the magic of developing and printing.”

Mrs Bernstein took her first photography classes about eight years ago, at Wooster Community Art Center in Danbury. That gave her exposure to properly handling a camera to achieve maximum creativity, as well as an introduction to working in a darkroom. She did not have a home darkroom at that point, however, so after the Wooster classes concluded Mrs Bernstein began using the darkrooms at Silvermine Guild in New Canaan and then at Norwalk Community College.

“I love being in the darkroom,” says Mrs Bernstein. “I just love it. I know everybody says it’s like magic when the photo comes out, but it really is. I just love that part of the process.”

Learning how to print her own photographs was a major turning point for Mrs Bernstein. In one of those life-is-funny stories, about three years ago one of Mrs Bernstein’s friends decided he was going to shift his own photography focus and to get rid of his darkroom equipment. Mrs Bernstein quickly purchased it.

“He took great care of everything, and he’s a very neat person by nature, so when we opened the packages at home it was like they were all brand new items,” she recalled. Once she set up her own darkroom, the amateur photographer was able to run her entire photographic process out of her home. If she spends hours locked in the darkroom, her husband does not generally worry.

“I get lost down there,” she said. “I’m still learning as I go.”

A few months ago Mrs Bernstein went back to school.

“I started to miss the camaraderie of being around others, and talking about experiences,” she said. So she signed up for a course at Cape Cod Photographic Workshop in Eastham, Mass., and continued her education.

“I really liked that course because the teacher was wonderful, but I also benefited from the feedback from the other students,” she said. “You feed off each other, even when you’re doing completely different styles.”

Mrs Bernstein’s photos have been shown in juried exhibitions presented by Wisdom House in Litchfield, Silvermine Gallery (where she has been included in juried shows and student exhibitions), Ridgefield Guild of Artists, Wilton Arts Council, Putnam Arts Council, and the former Evolution Studio in Bethel.

Wilton Arts Council is the sponsor for Mrs Bernstein’s exhibition at Tom E Toes.

Tom E Toes is at 5 River Road in Wilton; telephone 203-834-0733.