"Kathleen Connally: A Walk Through Durham Township" Kicks off Wine & Arts Weekend in Frenchtown NJ

The dinner is the opening of the show "Kathleen Connally: A Walk Through Durham Township" presented by The Indian Rock Inn and Frenchtowner.com. The Wine & Art Dinner celebrates fine wine, great food and incredible art, which is the focus of this unique Delaware Valley arts festival and wine tasting that runs October 8th and 9th.

The exhibition that runs through December 7 features the photographic work of Kathleen Connally, a resident of Bucks County. Ms. Connally has been taking photographs for 30 years. Her current work is a photoblog entitled A Walk Through Durham Township that can be seen at: http://www.durhamtownship.com. A photo-documentary started in January 2003, Ms. Connally’s blog features the wondrous beauty of upper Bucks County, Pennsylvania and west Hunterdon County, New Jersey near the Delaware River. Most of the photos feature rural landscapes and portraits taken within ten miles of the artist's 230 year old farmhouse in Durham Township.

Ms. Connally's internet diary began with a desire to share the beauty that surrounded her with her friends and family. From this simple, honest and modest beginning the photoblog has become an incredible success. The site now attracts tens of thousands of regular worldwide visitors and fans on a weekly basis. Ms. Connally’s work is now beginning to collect awards and recognition also. This year she received the 2005 Photobloggies Award for "Best Landscape Photography in a Photoblog" and "2005 Photo of the Year" for an image of the old Bethlehem Steel plant at sunset.

Tickets to the October 7th wine dinner are $30.00 each and are available by calling the Indian Rock Inn at 610-982-9600. Reservations are required and a limited number of tickets are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. The Indian Rock Inn is located in upper Bucks County in Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania on River Road, Route 32.

The event begins at 7:00 p.m. with a wine and cheese reception followed by a three-course Mediterranean dinner prepared by Executive Chef, Val Roy Gerischer.

On Sunday afternoon October 9 the artist will be at the Indian Rock to talk about her work and meet the public from 1 till 4 pm.

The exhibition runs through December 7, 2005.

For more information about the exhibition contact John Stringfellow of Frenchtowner.com at 908-996-4500, or go to Frenchtowner.com: The Definitive Guide to NJ and PA getaways along the Delaware River

For reservations for the opening Wine and Art Dinner call 610-982-9600 or toll free: 877-888-7555.

This event is generously sponsored by the Indian Rock Inn and Frenchtowner.com

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Kathleen Connally Biography

Beginnings
I became immediately hooked on photography at age seven when I got a Polaroid Land camera for Christmas. Shortly thereafter, I was borrowing my father’s AGFA for slides and his Super 8 film camera to make movies of my friends and family. I received a 35 millimeter camera as a birthday gift a few years later and became further engrossed, documenting friends and family at length (much to their chagrin, at times). I got my first digital camera three years ago, and I’m now shooting with both a digital SLR camera and a traditional 35mm film camera.
I’ve been photo-documenting the life around me for over thirty years. There are tens of thousands of photos and slides in my archives, and digital files are running a close second now.

Current Work

A Walk Through Durham Township is an internet photoblog, a daily journal filled with images instead of words. I started in January 2003 to show my friends and family the beauty of Durham Township and the surrounding countryside, as well as to practice my photography on a daily basis. (The photoblog format is a great framework to apply discipline to the craft of photography.) But my inspiration, at its core, was the simple loveliness of this area.
Landscapes dominate my archives because I’m surrounded by them, I am drawn to them and I want to document them before someone builds housing developments or strip malls on them. Perhaps when I feel that I’ve rightly acknowledged each landscape I encounter I’ll move away from photographing them.
But my blog is really a photographic documentary of where I live and what and who is around. That’s what I want to photograph. I doubt I will ever move into photojournalism or studio work, although I wouldn’t mind setting up an impromptu portrait area in my house using natural light. I’d like to do more informal portrait work of the residents of this area.
I think I’m good at photographing "ordinary" scenes or objects and bringing out the beauty or interest in them through the use of ambient light and a variety of post-processing techniques.
If you look at my photos, you’ll notice I don’t use any flash or studio lights of any sort. My focus is always on ambient light.
I rarely think in terms of an object or a place or person I’m photographing - I think of the light that is reflected from the object, place or person. I want to use the light that’s naturally available to portray ambience, atmosphere, and environment. When I take a photo, the light is always the subject.

Influences

I’m equally drawn to photography, cinematography and the works of painters such as Vermeer and Caravaggio, where light, color and atmosphere are everything.
I go through life with certain photographic images in the back of my mind — the drama and ambiance created by Dorothea Lange and Diane Arbus; the naturally-occurring atmosphere in the early pictorial photos of Alfred Stieglitz; the landscapes of Carleton Watkins; the remarkable captures of movement, life, environment and humor of 1920s Paris in the works of Jacque-Henri Lartigue and Robert Doisneau; the moody, contemplative portraits of Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and French photographer Nadar; and the humor of Lee Friedlander.
I am most deeply moved by the combined aesthetic and emotional effect of films, especially by director / cinematographer collaborators such as Woody Allen and Gordon Willis (Manhattan, Broadway Danny Rose, Zelig); Peter Weir and John Seale (Picnic at Hanging Rock, Witness); Tim Burton and Stefan Czapsky (Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood), and in particular, director John Ford and cinematographer Arthur C. Miller in the 1941 film, How Green Was My Valley. Every single frame of that film is a photographic masterpiece of light, contrast, composition and atmosphere — I recommend studying it frame-by-frame!

Mission Statement

I want people to know, in this era of urban sprawl, disappearing farmland and vanishing wilderness, that there are still opportunities, many of them in our own backyards, to see creatures and plants in their native habitats, witness breathtaking sunrises and sunsets, view magnificent landscapes, and imagine life as it used to be. Nature, simplicity and beauty are in every neighborhood, in some form, if you take the time to find them.
I hope to inspire people to support open space programs, wildlife sanctuaries, nature centers, arboretums and parks, and invest in and vote for preservation and conservation. Also, I hope that people will think about buying their food from local farmers whenever possible. I believe it’s a matter of survival - physically, we need the food and clean water that comes from our farms and undisturbed watersheds, and spiritually, we need the beauty and variety, and the touch of poetry that exists in such places.

Awards

A Walk Through Durham Township received the 2005 Photobloggies Award for "Best Landscape Photography in a Photoblog" and "Photo of the Year" for an image of the old Bethlehem Steel plant at sunset.

About Me

I grew up in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, often referred to as "Wyeth country," because it’s the home of the Wyeth family of painters, N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth, among others. They’ve been a huge influence on my life and my work.