And such fascination is often translated into provocative images by painters and photographers alike, notes City Lights Gallery board member Margaret Bodell of Stratford and Manhattan.
"From the raw to the historic" — it's all in Bridgeport, says Bodell, who owns a Manhattan art gallery, Umbrella Arts, and serves as public art coordinator for the city of New Haven.
Bodell is in the process of putting together "Lost & Found: Photos and Paintings of Bridgeport," which will open at the downtown Bridgeport gallery on Friday, Aug. 15, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.
The reception, which is open to the general public free of charge, will honor the gallery's former director Billie Jean Sullivan, of Fairfield, who departed Aug. 1 to become executive director of the Fairfield Arts Council. Sullivan is credited with galvanizing Bridgeport's art scene and guiding the gallery during its transition, begun in 2006, from a commercial enterprise to a nonprofit community facility.
The event will feature an organic wine tasting, sponsored by Black Rock Wine & Spirits and Organic Vintages.
The exhibition, Bodell says, will celebrate "Bridgeport's lost past and its found future" — hence the title of the show, which will feature scores of works from about 20 area
On view will be cityscapes past and present, portraits of Bridgeport's residents and notables, images of historic buildings and quaint sites, and slice-of-life scenes of people at work and play.
Another subject that will be showcased is Pleasure Beach, a city beach and the site of a former amusement park on a peninsula that juts from Stratford. The bridge connecting Bridgeport to Pleasure Beach was damaged by a fire many years ago and never repaired; consequently, public access to the beach is generally limited to boaters and those who hike in from Stratford.
The site is captured by two photographers: Bridgeport native and former lifeguard Bob Rudolph, of Florida, and Dan O'Brien, of Lake Peekskill, N.Y., who was born in Bridgeport and reared in Stratford.
Rudolph, who last week was scaling Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and unreachable by e-mail, will display photos that capture "personal spaces and lonely landscapes," explains Bodell, who is volunteering as gallery curator until a new director is appointed.
O'Brien said last week that he plans to have eight photos in the show — all taken over the last several months. His project was to document Pleasure Beach's remaining structures "before they disappear" using a Holga camera, which itself is on the verge of extinction.
Holgas, he explains, are "cheap, toy cameras" that are made in China with a simple meniscus lens. Because of their inexpensive construction, the cameras often produce photos with blurs, light leaks and other distortions. These very flaws have made the camera — and its surrealistic and impressionistic effects — especially dear to many fine art photographers. "I grew up hearing stories about Pleasure Beach. It's part of my family's history; they all seemed to have such fond memories of the place," O'Brien says.
O'Brien, who still has many family members in the area, says he "wanted to capture whatever structures I could" (including the remains of the carousel building) "before they're gone, to capture the reality of what they have become."
O'Brien blows up all his prints to about 17 inches square.
The Holga is known for its "more saturated, more intense" colors than more conventional cameras. Consequently, the artist reaches for the Holga when his goal is to produce fine art prints that "have a painterly effect — they're more like a painting than a photo.
"Of course, you're always looking for good composition" and contrasts of light and shadow. "I'd shoot in different light and at different times of the day," he adds.
Another artist in the show is Yolanda Petrocelli, a resident of the former Read's department store, which has been transformed into artist apartments commonly known as Artspace. A native of Mexico City, Petrocelli lived for decades in Ridgefield before relocating to Bridgeport's Artspace a few years ago.
"I needed [to see] a little more concrete," she says, laughing.
A printmaker, painter and documentary photographer, Petrocelli says she will exhibit several photographs from her series, "Urban Bridgeport Archaeology," which focuses on "people, portraits, objects and finds" of the Park City. (More from this series will be on view at the Bridgeport Public Library in October.) At City Lights, she intends to exhibit mostly portraits of artist friends and neighbors.
"I've been documenting Bridgeport's art scene — inside and outside of Artspace — since I moved here," she says.
"Living in Ridgefield, I spent a lot of time looking at trees . . ." and ultimately "looking at myself.
"It was as if my mind was getting moldy. I felt I needed the urban experience — the diversity of Bridgeport, the mixture of its people."
"Lost & Found: Photographs & Paintings of Bridgeport" will open Friday, Aug. 15, and run through Sept. 13 at City Lights Gallery, 37 Markle Court in downtown Bridgeport. Summer hours, through the run of the show, are noon to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, or by appointment. For additional information, contact the gallery at 334-7748.
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