Arts & Entertainment
Southbury Library Features Panoramic Photos of New York
Brooklyn Photographer Captures His Fascination with Coney Island and City Life
Photography has become something just about anyone can do today, but not everyone does it with the care and expertise of Ron Meisel of Brooklyn, N.Y.,whose images fill the gallery at the Southbury Public Library’s Gloria Cachon Gallery. He started photographing in the late 1960’s, developing his black and white work in a darkroom.
“Darkrooms have slowly gone away,” Meisel said. “I used a darkroom up until three or four years ago.”
Some people consider images from a darkroom to be superior, but Meisel has made the transition to scanning his digital images.
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“I still shoot a lot of film,” he said, “and take it for one-hour processing.”
Otherwise he takes the images from his Hasselblad X-Pan, scans them and uses an Epson printer with archival inks to print them on Hahnemuhle paper.
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While his early work was done on 35mm film, medium format, and view cameras, he got a 35mm panoramic camera about six years ago and simultaneously discovered Coney Island. When the exhibit went up at the Southbury Library, he found viewers wanted to reminisce about early days there.
“I think the panoramic views of Coney Island are much different than what anyone else is doing,” Meisel said. “Anyway they are unique to me.”
Among his 26 panoramic images are prints of South Street Seaport, Central Park, Rockefeller Center, New Year’s Day in Chinatown, the Time Warner Center, and Apple Store. He plans to continue photographing the city, especially Central Park.
Meisel is a member of the Soho Photo Gallery in New York City. He has shown work at Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, the New York Historical Society, and at Philip Williams Gallery, New York, and Phyllis Stigliano Gallery, Brooklyn.
His photographs are also in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Public Library, New York Historical Society, and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Meisel, who previously worked as a computer programmer, is studying now to do something else in computers, perhaps website design. His photography, he said, has always been a hobby. However, his work is for sale, and the prints in the Southbury Library are all available.
“Greetings from Coney Island and Sightseeing in New York” will be on display during the Library’s regular business hours through Jan. 30.
