Boats
I just added a very early series of mine from the 1970's to the site. Called "Boats" the photographs are black and white photographs made in 1978 and 1979 from two marinas: Martha's Vineyard, MA and Berkeley, CA
They are here on the site.
I made the pictures two years before the Nantucket pictures (1981) and as such, they don't have the emphasis on sequencing and narration that later works did.
Made six years after getting my MFA degree from the RI School of Design the prints show a predominant concern with design and have a full tonal range from 2 1/4 inch negatives. I almost always used Kodak's Rapid Selenium toner. This is evident in the Boats prints' neutral to cool blacks. By this time I had devised a unique system for agitating the film during developing. This resulted in exceptionally smooth tonalities in areas like open sky. The prints are in perfect condition after all these years and are about 12 x 12 inches.
With so many photographs made over so many years, I tend to categorize my own work in a couple of different ways, mostly as A work and B work. The Boats pictures are solidly in the B column, meaning I believe they are important, but not seminal. To my eye, the concern is clear to see. This was a time of continuing development, as I was refining my own approach and deepening my understanding of the quality of light used to make my pictures. The pictures are about quality, with no interest in boats as a subject whatsoever, simply as surfaces to reflect or absorb light from the sun on early morning bright days.
Made long before those of us in the photo art community thought of editioning prints, the photographs in my studio are the only ones in existence. If you'd like to see them please email me directly: nrantoul@comcast.net
Related series
Nantucket, Massachusetts 1980
The Nantucket pictures are the first “series” I did. Made, over 30 years ago, it is amazing that making this one modest group of pictures began a whole career.
I was teaching a summer photography workshop on the island of Martha’s Vineyard and took the students on a field trip to Nantucket for the day for a change of pace. When the ferry landed, I told the students to go make pictures and I would see them late in the afternoon to head back to Martha’s Vineyard. Off they went and so did I.
I had no real idea that something major was going to happen but it was one of those times when much of the work I had done until then was preparing me for how I would photograph that day. It was right: the light, the scale, the camera, my seeing, my effort to try to make a group of pictures that would connect to each other in a specific sequence to make a whole that was larger than its individual parts. After a few hours and several rolls of film I knew I’d had a breakthrough and broke down in tears when telling my experience to a friend on the ferry ride back home. Several months later the prints were finished and the next year they were shown in a summer group show at Light Gallery in NYC and in a one-man show at the RI School of Design Museum in Providence, RI. But more important to me was that I had found a way to make pictures that still serves me well today.
Fences and Walls 1979
Spanning two years, 1978 and 1979, Fences and Walls is pictures made mostly locally in and around Bostoon where I live.
The prints are about 12 inches square and are archivally processed by me in the darkroom.
As always, if you should like to see the prints, please contact:
Maru Rantoul at Insight Art Managment:
m.rantoul@gmail.com
I wrote a blog post about the series:
https://nealrantoul.com/posts/fences-and-walls-1979
Menemsha 2018
Made in the early summer of 2018 of the small fishing village on Martha's Vineyard called Menemsha.
To contact the photographer about these photographs or any others on the site please email Neal Rantoul directly at:
nrantoul@comcast.net
Related blog posts
Nantucket 1980 Part 1
Nantucket 1980 Part 2
Nantucket 1980 Part 3
