BRATTLEBORO — Vaune Trachtman's “Now is Always” is the inaugural exhibit for the grand reopening of Vermont Center of Photography (VCP) in its new space at the corner of High and Green streets.
The exhibit opens during Gallery Walk on Friday, Sept. 3 and runs through Sunday, Oct. 31.
As described in a news release, Trachtman's work reveals a collaboration across time between her father and herself. Using her father's 90-year-old negatives from the Great Depression in Philadelphia and her own cell phone images shot from windows and moving vehicles, Trachtman “creates a feeling of collapsed-yet-expanded time.”
Trachtman, of Brattleboro, was born in Philadelphia and attended the Tyler School of Art and Marlboro College. She received her M.A. from New York University and The International Center of Photography.
She worked in the imaging department of Time Inc. for many years. She is a photographer and printmaker whose work honors the methods and tones of historic processes but without the toxic chemicals.
Formerly a master printer of silver gelatin prints and asphaltum-based photogravures, she began to feel that her immune-system was being compromised by those processes. Trachtman now makes gravures with little more than light and water. Her images explore the evanescence of dreams and memory.
“Now is Always” was a featured solo exhibit this summer at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston.
“It is fitting to bring Trachtman's powerful work home to Vermont for the opening exhibit in VCP's new renovated space,” the exhibit organizers write.
An Artist Talk will be given at VCP gallery on Wednesday, Sept. 15 at 5:30 p.m. Additionally, on Saturday, Sept. 18 from 1 to 3 p.m., Trachtman will demonstrate her photogravure process in the printmaking studio of Mike Smoot, adjacent to VCP.