The one element missing from Jessica Boudreau’s nature photos at Morristown’s 70 South Gallery is frustration.
Like virtually every other shutterbug in the world, this senior from David Brearley High School in Kenilworth captures, edits and shares her images digitally.
“I can’t imagine doing it without a computer. I’m almost sad I’m doing it like that,” Boudreau said at the opening of People, Places and Things, an exhibition that runs through June 2017 and also features Cuba photos by Patricia Galagan and Karen Novotny.
Boudreau wonders what it was like in the 20th century, when photography was a trial-and-error affair involving finicky film and noxious chemicals in lonely places called darkrooms.
“I heard it can be frustrating. I want to know that: ‘Damn, why’s it not coming out?’ With a computer, you can just start over,” she said.
Indeed, Boudreau is such a creature of computers that she was stunned to see her macro closeups of trees, flowers and drain pipes hanging on a wall instead of flashing on a screen.
“I was floored. These are my pictures? I was in tears,” she said of 70 South’s giant framed prints.
Slideshow photos by Kevin Coughlin
Yet pondering the mysteries of film is not really so strange for Boudreau. The daughter of an electrician, she will study mechanical engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology this fall.
“I really enjoy building things, seeing how they come together,” she said, explaining that it worked in reverse when she was younger. “I would take toys and [toy] trucks apart.”
At her high school, she works behind the scenes in the drama department, making productions come together with the stage crew.
Danielle Wilkinson, Boudreau’s photography teacher for the last four years, marvels at the student’s creative eye, which finds natural beauty even in urban corners of Kenilworth.
“It’s just a gift to have her in class,” said Wilkinson, whose photos also have been exhibited at 70 South.
Boudreau may by a child of bits and bytes, but her quest to shed new light on the world is as old as photography itself, according to Gallery Director Ira L. Black.
“Her images are a statement about things we don’t really pay attention to in our daily lives,” Black said. “She brings you into her subjects in ways you don’t normally see them.”
You’ll have to stop by the exhibit for those. 😉
Do you have any pictures of her pictures?