Light Work

"Photo gallery and lab serving Syracuse U. community. Gallery is open to the public with regular exhibitions. Photo lab is usable by those with memberships"

"I was happy for a reason to visit Light Work, a photography workshop with laboratory resources and instruction. In Japan, there's a village where a famous pottery has been made for hundreds of years. The village has run low on the clay found in the hills. Dsciplined efforts by ceramicists in the 1930s saved the traditional techniques. Thanks to Jerry Lim, I know this. Thanks to photographs by Michelle Gabel, I know the story of a woman who lives with a mask. One night, a man accidentally discharged his shotgun, removing his wife's eyes and nose. She now wears a mask that looks like a painted version of her face. Or wears a bandana to cover up her injury. The photographer documented how she copes and even achieves happiness with her children, just a beautiful series of images that left my eyes blinking. And left me feeling gratitude for my intact five senses. Keisha Scarville brought alive the gallery inside a room for small shows with images in black and white. She's attempting to bring alive her mother's memory by photographing her mother's clothing, jewelry and personal effects. Nydia Blas I admire deeply, although I'll never totally be able to decode her imagery without coming back as a woman. Emanuel Almborg underwent his transformation as an artist at Goldsmiths, in London. Give him kudos for finding archival footage of Ronald Reagan himself campaigning in the ruins of the Bronx. Not too long after Ronald campaigned, the wolves of the Bronx became a meme in the film, Wolfen. Almborg had archival footage of those wolves in an abandoned shell of cathedral. Now, even the Bronx has become rather expensive for renters with a low income. So much for the short poem by Ogden Nash, "The Bronx, No Thonx". Crystal Z Campbell was out doing some urban spelunking in Brooklyn, which still has abandoned buildings where people can live for free, squatting in the ruins. She found an open door to the Slave Theater and found a reel of old film. I'm pretty sure it was Blacksplotation film, an African American filming African Americans, and Campbell saved the footage from total decay. The film had started to turn to vinegar, and almost no one wanted to risk valuable equipment transferring it to a more stable media. And yet, Campbell found the one lab that would risk the job, the film transfer lab of last resort. And she researched the theater, and she brought alive the story of the theater with her research. A monologue told the story as the recovered footage rolled before our eyes. It's enough to make me break into the shuttered film houses in Detroit, looking for the reels in the dark places where even the bravest urban spelunkers won't go. I walked from the Marriott to the bus stop at Fayette and Salina, along Salina, still a canyon of nothing but tall buildings with no one in them. That's changing rapidly. A family foundation has plans to erect a marketplace on the parking lot where once the Hotel Mowry stood Eventually, a tower surrounded by high chain link fences will continue undegoing its renovation. The work has been stopped for a year. I once encountered a journalist with a portable television camera standing outside the tower, looking for clues on why work had stopped. I actually had a tip for him, straight from the guy who saved the Hotel Syracuse from the wrecking ball. I let the people know at the family foundation about the fire in the Hotel Mowry and the death of Hamilton Salisbury White outside the hotel after ninety guests had been safely evacuated. The writer, who never identified him or herself, asked for more information. And not even a TY for sharing a series of web links to online articles. A good architect, and I assume the new building planned by the family foundation will require teams of them, should look up all of these historical facts. Once, a gorgeous church with an extraordinary spire stood at the wedge made by Onondaga and Salina Streets. That came down, apparently, to build a banquet and conference facility onto the Hotel Syracuse, a bad call to my mind."

"Just took a tour of this place for school! Absolutely incredible.. They will teach you how to use all of the equipment that they have."

"If you love photography, this is the place to check out some cutting edge stuff."

"Great place very close to where I live. Nice for students who live on main campus. I love going here for photo projects."