PhotoPlace gallery opens ‘Made by Hand’ analog images exhibit

On Friday, April 3, the PhotoPlace Gallery opened the ‘Made by Hand’ exhibition, an analog exhibit curated by juror Christina Anderson, a professor at Montana State University. The exhibit’s opening reception drew native residents, Middlebury College college students, and a number of other artists featured on this month’s exhibition, and is on show till April 25. 

Zach Hoffman, the proprietor of the PhotoPlace Gallery, hosts openings at the beginning of every month.  He shared that final month’s exhibit, “Cut, Paste, Transform,” targeted on collage images. 

This month, the theme is analog images, often known as movie images, which is a conventional course of that makes use of light-sensitive, chemical-based movie to seize pictures as a substitute of digital sensors. 

“Some of them are created with the digital images but printed in chemicals and processes that aren’t printed,” Hoffman stated, in reference to the items hung within the gallery. “Some are made without cameras, so they are just chemicals and light and substance, and then processed with chemicals that make them stay that way. It’s almost like painting with light.”

“Made by Hand” contains a complete of 75 pictures, 30 of that are displayed within the gallery, with the rest included in a digital exhibition. Each work can be documented in a small ebook organized alphabetically, with an index and hyperlinks to the artists’ private web sites, making certain all contributors are represented no matter whether or not their work is bodily displayed within the gallery. 

Christina Anderson, who was Hoffman’s professor throughout his undergraduate research at Montana State University, explores up to date vanitas by a variety of other photographic processes, together with gum and casein bichromate, cyanotype, salted paper, and platinum-palladium. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in additional than 130 reveals and featured in over 90 publications. She has additionally authored six tutorial books on these processes, which have bought in additional than 40 international locations.

Hoffman defined that Anderson’s function because the juror within the curation of the exhibit has been essential. Generally, a juror’s place within the curation of a gallery is to pick and curate the images submitted.

“She went through all the submissions, we have anywhere from two to three hundred people each month submitting, and she goes through the images, selects what she wants to hang, and then what she wants to do online,” Hoffman stated. 

Artists featured in all the exhibit embody Ann Wenzel, Michelle Robinson, Brian Powers, Barbara Riley, and Leah Macdonald.

“Work is not chosen in a vacuum but in relation to all other entries. After multiple times of visiting all three folders to where I am satisfied with my choices, I create intermediate folders, something like Yes, If There Is Room, Maybe, Favorite Nos, and Probably OK to eliminate,” writes Anderson within the Juror’s Statement displayed on the PhotoPlace Gallery’s website.

In the gallery, a projector displayed a rotating collection of Anderson’s chosen works, casting the pictures onto a clean white wall. 

Hoffman defined that the submission course of is primarily performed on-line. 

“Everything is run through our website, so basically you make a profile, you can submit to whatever is open for submissions and then once that closes, the juror gets all the images and has two weeks to go through them all and then makes the selections, and then they get the work and then we hang the show and then we have our opening reception,” Hoffman stated.

He added that the submission course of affords artists a beneficial alternative to have their work reviewed by consultants within the discipline, resembling Anderson, and to raised perceive the place it suits inside the broader images world. The exhibit options a mixture of established artists, together with professors and lecturers, in addition to extra beginner artists exploring what it means to current their work in gallery settings.

The opening reception of “Made by Hand” drew a variety of attendees, together with native residents, featured artists, and college students from the school.

“Tonight there were, I think, four or five artists who came: some people even came from Texas,” stated Hoffman. “Some of them were just seeing the sign on Main St. and coming in, we had the a acapella group [the Mischords] here earlier tonight,” Hoffman stated. 

The varieties of people that filter by the PhotoPlace Gallery range: throughout dad and mom’ weekend, plenty of Middlebury College households and college students will cease by, and through the winter and ski season, skiers will pop in to have a look round. 

“Hopefully with all the events happening this summer, we’ll get a lot more foot traffic,” Hoffman stated.

Gabby Stuart ’26 spoke in an interview with the campus about strolling previous the signal on Main St. as nicely. 

“The other day I was walking into town, and I saw the sign for the PhotoPlace gallery opening, and it reminded me that I went to that same art gallery with my mom earlier in the year when she was visiting here,” Stuart stated. “It made me excited to go explore this month’s art exhibit.”

Since he bought the gallery in January of 2025, Hoffman has been aiming to publicize the enterprise and its normal mission. 

“Since I took ownership, I have really been pushing to reach out locally with the publications and just working on getting a flier that I can hand out to the local inns, letting them know there’s a gallery. Basically just telling them what we do,” Hoffman stated.

“I have also partnered with Little Seed Coffee, and so after each exhibit comes down, I take five or so images over to them. They are already in frames, so they don’t have to worry about it: I’ve got a hanging system, so it’s easy enough for me, and for them, they don’t have to deal with anything,” Hoffman stated.

“Made by Hand” highlights each the fascinating craft of analog images and PhotoPlace Gallery’s function in Middlebury’s creative panorama. Hoffman continues to work on his personal images tasks in addition to with different jurors on future exhibition concepts, sharing that he’s working with an area night-sky photographer to do an upcoming exhibit.

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