- This event has passed.
WOODSTOCK PERSONALITIES: 40 Years of Photographs by John Kleinhans
June 7 - July 28
Opening reception
Friday June 7 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Exhibit Open – Saturdays & Sundays, June 8 through July 28, 1–5 pm
Gallery Walk-throughs with John Kleinhans on:
Sunday June 23 at 2:00 p.m.
(with art historian Bruce Weber)
Sunday July 14 at 2:00 p.m.
(with artist Paula Nelson).
The public is invited to these events at no cost. For more information: (845) 679-2256 or [email protected].
The Historical Society of Woodstock presents our opening exhibition of the season, Woodstock Personalities: 40 Years of Photographs by John Kleinhans, on Saturday, June 8, 2024, at 20 Comeau Drive in Woodstock, N.Y., with an opening reception on Friday, June 7 at 7 PM. The exhibition will run through July 28 and is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 1 pm to 5 pm. Admission is free.
This exhibition of 94 photographs, taken over a span of forty years by John Kleinhans, features pictures of local personalities. Seldom seen without a camera in hand, Kleinhans considers these photographs to be what he refers to as “a visual diary” of casual meetings and unexpected encounters with local friends and associates.
Kleinhans, a Pittsburgh native, set up his first darkroom in 1965 in New York City. After a 12-year academic career specializing in visual perception, he settled in Woodstock in 1979. He was drawn mainly to landscape photography and, commercially, he specialized in photographing artwork and architecture. During the 1980’s he was a photographer for the Woodstock Times and other publications.
A casual meeting in 1983 with Robert Angeloch, founder of the Woodstock School of Art, led to a life-long involvement with the school where he was a student, handyman, and board member. He also served on the boards of the Woodstock Artists Association and the Center for Photography at Woodstock. From 1988 to 2007 he worked as a designer and product developer at Woodstock Percussion. With his wife, artist Paula Nelson, he founded Precipice Publications which released his books: An Image of Monhegan (1997) and Woodstock Landscapes (2000).
REVIEW
Woodstock personalities highlighted in photography exhibit
by Geddy Sveikauskas
John Kleinhans has been photographing the creative people he has known in Woodstock – many of them painters and sculptors – for 40 years. Of the more than 80,000 images he has produced over the four decades, a carefully selected 94 are currently on exhibit at the Historical Society of Woodstock’s facility at 20 Comeau Drive on weekend afternoons from one to five p.m.
These are digital snapshots, not carefully staged studio portraits, “Records of unplanned encounters with friends, co-workers and casual acquaintances,” as Kleinhans puts it in the foreword of the exquisitely produced catalog entitled “Woodstock Personalities.” The expansive circle of Kleinhans’ friends and acquaintances know that he and his camera are virtually inseparable. His friends are used to him moving around or making a quick suggestion before snapping one or several shots. The result can be an extraordinary display of the social intimacy among old friends – creative Woodstock at its best.
For the creative people of Woodstock, life is a labor of love – and a bunch of other feelings as well.
The affable Kleinhans, gifted with an ability to intuit the narratives that connect people, has a doctorate in experimental psychology from Rutgers University, where he taught as a professor for a dozen years. But as he wrote, “Photography eventually triumphed over psychology.”
In Woodstock, Kleinhans also worked for several years at Garry and Diane Kvistaad’s Woodstock Percussion, Woodstock art historian Bruce Weber has contributed informative single-paragraph texts of explanation that accompany each photograph,
“Woodstock Personalities,” curated by Letitia Smith, closes on July 28. The sumptuous 68-page catalog will remain.
Hudson Valley One Review June 27, 2024