Linda Alpern. Photo: Mark Segal
In conjunction with the exhibition, A Creative Retreat: Portraits of Artists, Guild Hall collection artist Linda K Alpern will join Director of Visual Arts Melanie Crader in conversation about Linda’s career, her works in the exhibition, and the stories behind her photographs.
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Linda K Alpern
Linda K. Alpern was born in Long Beach New York and raised in Fort Lauderdale Florida.
Her self-taught career in photography spans 25 years. Alpern’s work appears in three permanent collections: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York and The Parrish Museum, in Watermill, New York, where she has participated in many group shows. In 2003, she was an Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome. In 2005, Linda entered one photograph in a Guild Hall competition that featured a variety of art forms.
Tracey Bashkoff, a curator at the Guggenheim Museum, found it the best in any medium: the award was a one woman show of 65 photographs; including silver gelatin, black-and-white prints, with a few color ink-jet images – almost all of which were portraits.
A contemporaneous review by Robert Long in the East Hampton Star compares her to major photographers. He writes of her work with reflective mylar for purposes of distortion: “Eccentric Weegee,” she has a fondness for funhouse images. ..The artist Chuck Close, floating on his back, seems to be wearing a life mask, for only the front portion of his face breaks the surface and is sharply focused, while the rest of his head, underwater, seems unreal.” And comments on her photographs from Rome. “Ms. Alpern does as the Romans once did - the Italian filmmakers of the new wave, that is, and their colleagues in the Magnum school of photojournalism.”
Long concludes ,”Ms. Alpern is a photographer who not only has produced enough first-rate work to fill a gallery, but who leaves us wanting more.” Ms. Alpern’s work has become a staple in group shows on the East End of Long Island. – including Juried and Invitational Exhibitions.
Her current photographs reflect affinity for places and subjects from which many look away. Her particular penchant for photographing children is evident in the” Laundromat Series” taken in a resort area where children play as their immigrant parents do their wash and find community, respite from their service jobs.
Photo: Jenny Gorman
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