Griffin Museum of Photography

The Griffin Museum of Photography takes its name, indirectly, from the mythical and majestic beast that blended the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle – the king of the beasts and the king of the birds. The griffin's job was to be "the guardian of the divine," and though the name of Winchester, Massachusetts' Griffin Museum is that of a human photographer, anyone who ventures inside this jewel box of light and shadow will appreciate, instinctively, this special setting for of the few things on Earth touched by divinity, and that is art.

From the back of the museum there is a lovely pond, that offers a setting
that inspires a variety of portfolio-worthy images.

In this room, exhibitions are regularly organized of some of the world's
most accomplished photographers, most recently "New Yorker Photographer,
Martin Schoeller, with 30' x 40' close-ups of the luminaries of the world.
Sometimes alluring and other times startling!"

So what better place in the Boston area to lend teaching space for the Digital Photo Academy? The students under DPA instructors Steve Dunwell, Frank Siteman and Kathy Tarantola not only get a master class in photography, but in a place where they are surrounded by some of the most inspiring photographs ever taken.

We're not schnorring here. The Griffin's exhibitions have included such masters as Edward Weston, Sebastiao Salgado, Edward Curtis, Larry C. Volk, contemporary iconoclast Jan Staller and celebrity photographer Peggy Sirota in the Main Gallery. And the aptly named Griffin Gallery showcases the museum's founder, Arthur Griffin (1903-2001), one of the country's first photojournalists. Known as "New England's Photographer Laureate" to such friends as the author John Updike, Griffin was a renowned force for the likes of The Saturday Evening Post, The Boston Globe and Life. He shot every major Franklin from Roosevelt to Sinatra, and landmarks from the Taj Mahal to Ted Williams – snapping the first color photo of that baseball legend in 1939, The Kid's debut season in the majors.

"The Griffin Museum has a great energy and it is a very creative setting," says DPA instructor Frank Siteman, who suggested the venue to Digital Photo Academy director Richard Rabinowitz. "I knew it was exactly what Richard was looking for as the classroom setting – the photo exhibitions and lectures will enhance what we're doing with the Academy."

Founded as the Arthur Griffin Community Center in 1992, and formally becoming a museum after executive director Blake Fitch took her post 10 years later, the acclaimed space covers the medium from photojournalism to surrealism. In addition to showcasing established lights, the museum uses its Emerging Artist Gallery to review works by new photographers – providing a rare museum setting to the greatest of the latest to display their work. The Griffin holds such high-tech workshops as "Photography, Visualization, the Zone System and the RAW file" while also reaching out to the community with its Senior Sunday program – leisurely lectures by such photographers as Jim Luedke, Ed Roche and Paul Wainwright, free to seniors, with the museum even arranging transportation for the homebound. Finally, the nonprofit organization also sponsors the annual Focus Awards, honoring the likes of curators, photo editors, organization heads and others who help give photographers a forum.

A couple examples of the picturesque architecture from yesteryear, enabling a myriad of photo ops.

Recent Griffin exhibitions and programs have included the second annual "PhotoSynthesis," in which students from the Boston Arts Academy and Winchester High School participate in a unique, five-month collaboration with professional photographers. The museum also held its 13th Annual Griffin Juried Show, and in addition bestowed its Joan Johnson Scholarship for High School Seniors.

"The museum," says DPA instructor Kathy Tarantola, "is a real tribute to everything photographic. Just a couple of weeks before, I had visited to see the Martin Schoeller exhibition, which is really quite wonderful."

Museum director Fitch spent a day in Winchester with Academy director Rabinowitz, "talking about the possibilities of our collaboration and how we clicked on program ideas," Rabinowitz says. Adds Academy program director Jennifer Warren, "Richard told me about Blake and her proactive energy, and I had the chance to witness it myself when she came to New York last month."

So why shouldn't it all be located in a postcard-pretty suburb of Boston? "When I visited Winchester," says Rabinowitz, "it brought to mind those old Douglas Sirk movies set in a picture-perfect town, with a lovely church and steeple and a collection of vintage buildings from yesteryear. It's really like a movie set." Tarantola agrees. "The classes are enhanced not only by the museum setting," she says, "but also by the picturesque suburb of Winchester, which offers endless photo opportunities in itself."

In the Griffin area there are also many landscapes, park and water scenes
that change with the seasons, each more beautiful than the last.

Clearly, there's nothing chimerical about this Griffin.

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Directions

http://www.griffinmuseum.org/directions.htm

Conveniently located near Winchester Center, 3 miles off routes I 93 and I 95, only 15 minutes north of Boston by car, bus or train, and a five minute walk from the train station. For MBTA train and bus information:

Lowell and other commuter rail lines
Winchester bus service
- Route 350
- Route 134

FROM RTES #128/ #95
Take exit 36 Washington St./ Woburn or exit 37A Rte #93 S.

Washington St. Exit

Go up ramp. Take Right. Follow Washington St. 3 ½ miles to Winchester Center [going through 6 sets of lights].
At 7th light bear Right, keeping Town Hall on your left.
Take Right just before rotary [see sign for Griffin Museum]. This is Shore Road.
Go ¼ mile. The Griffin Museum will be on your Right. Parking is available.

FROM RTE #93 S

Continue on #93 S. Take the 2nd Winchester exit- exit 33.
Merge into rotary, and take Right at first opportunity. Follow sign for South Border Rd., Winchester.
Continue for 2.2 miles to traffic lights (Highland Ave). Look down hill, see Winchester Center. Continue through intersection toward center, .2 miles to next intersection.
Continue through next intersection, keeping Town Hall on your Left.
This becomes Mt. Vernon Street. Follow to rotary.
Take Right just before rotary [see sign for Griffin Museum]. This is Shore Road.
Go ¼ mile. The Griffin Museum will be on your Right. Parking is available

FROM BOSTON/RTE #93 N

Continue on #93 N. Take exit 33- Fellsway W, Rte 28, Winchester.
Almost immediately, go around rotary bearing Left, cross over #93.
Take Right at first opportunity. Follow sign for South Border Rd., Winchester.
Continue for 2.2 miles to traffic lights (Highland Ave). Look down hill, see Winchester Center. Continue through intersection toward center, .2 miles to next intersection.
Continue through next intersection, keeping Town Hall on your Left.
This becomes Mt. Vernon Street. Follow to rotary.
Take Right just before rotary [see sign for Griffin Museum]. This is Shore Road.
Go ¼ mile. The Griffin Museum will be on your Right. Parking is available.

Ample parking spaces are available.

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Take a look at this satellite view of the Winchester community, where you can see lots of photo ops close by:

Tuesday - Thursday: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
(Thursdays free)
Friday: 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Saturday & Sunday: Noon - 4 p.m.

Griffin Museum
67 Shore Road
Winchester, MA 01890
(781) 729-1158

Feature written by Frank Lovece

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

GRIFFIN MUSEUM ANNOUNCES 3RD ANNUAL FOCUS AWARD RECIPIENTS

May 8th ceremony honors contributions to the promotion of photography

April 10, 2008 (Winchester, MA) With its annual Focus Awards, the Griffin Museum of Photography recognizes the work of people who are not photographers, but who have been instrumental in increasing awareness of the photographic arts among the general public.

Awards are presented in three categories: Lifetime Achievement, given to an individual whose ongoing commitment to photography has far-reaching impact; Rising Star, awarded to an emerging force the photographic community is watching with interest; New England Beacon, recognizing an individual whose work brings prominence to the local photographic scene; and the Spotlight Award, given to an entity that consistently shines a light on photography and enhances the art form.

Recipients of the 2008 Focus Awards are:

Lifetime Achievement: Deborah Willis, curator, author, educator, historian, photographer, and chair of the department of photography and imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU

Rising Star: Jen Bekman, innovative owner of the Jen Bekman Gallery in New York

New England Beacon: Henry Horenstein, photographer, educator, and author

Spotlight Award: Nikon Corporation

Master of ceremonies for the evening is Brian Clamp of ClampArt in New York. Presenting the awards are Anna Maria Horsford, acclaimed television and feature film actress; Omar Wasow, cyber guru; Tom and Ray Magliozzi, award-winning hosts of Car Talk on National Public Radio; and Rick Friedman, photographer, educator, and president of the Boston Press Photographers Association.

The Focus Awards are presented at a reception at the Griffin Museum, 67 Shore Rd., Winchester, Thursday, May 8, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $45. Space is limited. For reservations, call 781-729-1158.

Photographs available upon request

About the Griffin Museum
The Griffin Museum of Photography was founded in 1992 to provide a forum for the exhibition of both historic and contemporary photography. The Museum houses three galleries dedicated solely to the exploration of photographic arts: the Main Gallery, which features rotating exhibits from some of the world’s leading photographers; the Emerging Artist Space dedicated to showcasing the works of prominent, up-and-coming artists; and the Griffin Gallery, home to the extensive archives of Museum founder and world-renowned photojournalist Arthur Griffin. For more on the Griffin Museum of Photography, visit www.griffinmuseum.org

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New England in Focus: The Arthur Griffin Story by Arthur Griffin, with Herbert A. Kenny and Damon Reed; intro by Jon Updike - Reviewed by Daniel S. Burnstein

New England In Focus provides a wonderful retrospective on "New England's Photographer Laureate" Arthur Griffin.

Arthur Griffin, with co-authors Kenny and Reed, produced this 128-page, 250-image retrospective of the photographer’s 60-year career in photojournalism on the heels of the Arthur Griffin Center for Photographic Art’s 1992 opening in Winchester, Mass. The center displays some of the 75,000 pictures left behind by a pioneer in photojournalism and “New England’s Photographer Laureate.” It also exhibits the work of famous, established and emerging artists, offering scholarships, talks and workshops. Its mission—the true Arthur Griffin Story—is to advance appreciation and understanding of the medium, in his words, “a profession that beats the outright pursuit of pleasure and is rewarding physically, mentally and spiritually, and can even be profitable.”

Arthur Griffin was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1903. A paperboy for the Lawrence Tribune and Boston Globe, he would attend design school on a paperboy scholarship, studying drawing and later commercial art. The Globe would hire him as an illustrator in 1929, before photography had even entered the commercial mainstream. On a hiatus from that job, Griffin toured Europe in 1932, shooting pictures from which he believed he would create drawings upon his return. The book underscores Griffin’s progression, indeed that of representation itself, with a section on his experimentation with an intermediate medium called the bromoil print. Using shots from the 1932 tour, he laboriously combined painting and photography to produce such soft, romantic images as that of the Hemingwayesque old Frenchman reproduced in the book’s third chapter.

But Griffin would quickly realize the possibilities of the newer, more efficient medium and by 1935 help launch the Globe’s picture-heavy Rotogravure Section. The rotograv process made high-volume photo reproduction practical, thus initiating the field of photojournalism.

Soon Griffin would be the first photojournalist to shoot black and white exclusively in 35mm. The format would allow pictures to be taken in rapid succession, by which Griffin experimented with action shots. In July 1938 the Globe ran a composite of 12 of Griffin’s shots of Red Sox legend Jimmy Foxx hitting and running to first base. At the behest of Kodak, for whom he would experiment with new products, Griffin also shot Foxx in color, capturing the slugger in mid swing at a time when color film was slow and good action shots almost impossible.

A year later, again with experimental film, Griffin would capture the first color images of a 19-year-old Ted Williams, a playful rookie as yet unsoured to the press. As the Globe required only black and white at the time, these were set aside and lost for 50 years until the Griffin Center opened, also gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated when “The Kid” died in 2002. Griffin’s images of Williams comprise eight pages of New England in Focus, alongside an account reprinted from The New Yorker of “The Splendid Splinter’s” final at bat written by John Updike. The writer, a longtime friend and golf partner of the photographer, perhaps comparing golf and photography, remarks in his introduction that Griffin “takes a lot of shots to get to the green.”

griffin5 arthur new england in focus ted williams

That formula would reemerge continually throughout Griffin’s career: combining pictures with top-notch writing (often by writers he knew well) and New England subject matter. Taking note of Griffin’s work at the Globe, as early as 1938 Life magazine had offered him a job in New York. But he refused to leave his beloved New England, opting instead to contribute from there to Colliers, The Saturday Evening Post, Yankee, Life and other publications, many of which used Griffin for their first foray into color.

griffin6 arthur new england in focus trees foliage road

Griffin observed: “New England offers more for artists, photographers and lovers of beauty than any other section of its size in the world.” As The Arthur Griffin Story illustrates, the region presented Griffin with such favored subjects as boats and winter landscapes. These would also figure heavily over the years (1946-1995) into six books of Griffin’s New England scenes, this the last before his death in 2001 at age 97.

griffin7 arthur new england in focus boats bay

Arthur Griffin’s sea and landscapes are without question romantic and beautiful. To remark that many of them look like they belong in a calendar probably would not have fazed him. (After all, it was Griffin’s idea for his images to grace the covers of New England telephone directories throughout the 70s and 80s). But it would be to lose sight of the fact that he helped set the standard for what have become ubiquitous images of snowy barns and fall colors, which never even existed in photographs before pioneers like Griffin.

griffin8 arthur new england in focus snow house winter

A section of New England in Focus juxtaposes photos of Boston that Griffin shot in the 40s with the same locations shot in the 90s. Highlighting the city’s obvious development, Griffin raises questions about how technology—clearly increasing capacity—contributes to quality.

griffin9 arthur new england in focus seascape

67 Shore Road
Winchester, MA 01890

http://www.griffinmuseum.org