HEART AND EYE: World Photography by Elliot Burg

Feast your eyes. And put together to be drawn in.

The works of photographer Elliot Burg will take you in lots of instructions and to numerous elements of the globe. From Mardi Gras in New Orleans, to public parks in Brooklyn, to the streets and barbershops of Havana and to his personal retracing of his Grandpa Eli’s journey via Ukraine, Elliot has eschewed repetition and has continually searched out new vistas for his work. That contains our personal Upper Valley.

“Heart & Eye: World Photography by Elliot Burg” is a retrospective now on exhibition on the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery in Montpelier. It’s a set that includes choices from his a number of initiatives. Elliot, who lives in Middlesex, Vermont, has lengthy had a pictures observe that kicked into excessive gear when he retired a decade in the past from a regulation profession that included 27 years within the Vermont Attorney General’s Office, in addition to a stint at Vermont Law School as a regulation professor and director of the South Royalton Legal Clinic. (He has been featured on Artful in a earlier publish, Lawyers Then, Artists Now, out there right here.)

Two immense images are juxtaposed within the exhibition and kind an unlikely pair, all of the extra compelling for his or her variations. “Mardi Gras Indian” (photograph, prime) is vibrant with colour and sample; the occasion of Mardi Gras, although considerably spiritual in origin, initiatives enjoyable, play, costume—at the same time as Burg caught the topic in a extra somber second. The different is Gambian ex-soldier Abdoulie J. Barrow (photograph, beneath): crisp white shirt, stark, elegant.

The Gambia is a West African nation that succeeded in deposing its authoritarian dictator in 2017. In 2025, a human rights museum referred to as Memory House invited Burg to journey to The Gambia to doc survivors’ tales.

All of Burg’s portraits are highly effective, encouraging contemplation; a mere hasty look proves not possible. To view his work is to really feel a connection. The similar is true for the photographer as he creates the picture. In one other review of this exhibition, Alice Dodge of Seven Days wrote: “

While Burg enjoys the “eye” a part of his observe, true portraiture — providing a glimpse into somebody’s story — is clearly the place his “heart” lies.

“People are infinitely diverse and beautiful,” he stated. “When I’m approaching someone on the street in Havana or a volunteer in Montpelier after the flood or one of our neighbors in Bolivia, I feel drawn to that person.”

Closer to residence? He’s captured the soul and grit of Montpelier, Vermont because it got here collectively to rebuild following a flood that swamped town. Asked to decide on a favourite from his sequence Recovery, Elliot selected “Vinyl” (beneath), describing it as:

“. . . a tribute to the small army of volunteers who helped Montpelier come back from its devastating flood in the summer of 2023. It shows a young woman carrying a cardboard box out the front door of Buch Spieler, the city’s iconic music store, surrounded by water-damaged merchandise and watched over by the poster-sized image of a black musician at his keyboard.”

And right here within the Upper Valley, he has recorded the essence of the Tunbridge World’s Fair in a sequence of photos, stating: “Camera in hand, I walked the grounds, the midway and the exhibits for hours and into the night, an eye out for the kinds of faces and scenes that make the [then 150 year-old] Fair memorable . . .” These included “Heather and Tara.” (photograph, beneath)

Wait, what? The Vermont Supreme Court has an artwork gallery? Indeed. Established over twenty years in the past, it was the brainchild of then Associate Justice Marilyn Skoglund. It levels quarterly exhibitions of Vermont’s finest creatives. Elliot Burg has appeared within the constructing in each capacities: as a lawyer and presently as an artist. He now prefers the latter.

This exhibition is on view till June 26, 2026. The gallery is within the public foyer of the Vermont Supreme Court constructing situated at 109 State Street, Montpelier, Vermont. For additional details about the gallery and this exhibition, together with hours, click on here. Elliot’s web site is elliotburgphoto.com.

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And in case you’re questioning . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong profession as a regulation professor to proceed an curiosity (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance enterprise, The Next Word, contains literary and have writing; her work has appeared in quite a lot of lit mags and different publications together with Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, Next Avenue, Image Magazine, and Persimmon Tree. She connects along with her neighbors via Artful, her weblog about arts and tradition within the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written phrase.