Panopticon celebration is all encompassing

Photography Review

Anniversary exhibit ranges in time, style

September 23, 2011|By Mark Feeney, Globe Staff

Steve Wilsteins Super Champ: Muhammad Ali With Superman Cape (above) and…

40TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION

At: Panopticon Gallery, 502c Commonwealth Ave., through Oct. 31. Call 617-267-8929 or go to www.panopticongallery.com.

The 19th-century British social thinker Jeremy Bentham invented the word “panopticon.’’ Coming from the Greek for “all’’ and “seeing,’’ it describes a facility Bentham proposed whose design would insure residents’ every moment could be observed without their being aware of it. Michel Foucault had a field day with the idea in “Discipline and Punish.’’

Panopticon Gallery is having a field day of a far different sort, with its “40th Anniversary Exhibition,’’ which runs through Oct. 31. If Bentham used in a sinister way the word he invented to acknowledge the power of seeing, the gallery employs it in very much a happier sense. To see, per Bentham, is to control, yes. To see, per Panopticon, is also to educate, to liberate, and to delight.

The gallery has been a very welcome presence on the local scene, even as its location has shifted from Bay State Road to Newbury Street to Bay State Road again to Waltham and now Kenmore Square. Its mission when Tony Decaneas founded it four decades ago was, as he writes in a catalog that accompanies the anniversary exhibition, “to show local contemporary photography.’’ Over the years, that mission has broadened and deepened. The roster of photographers that the gallery has shown reflects that broadening and deepening. It runs from A (Aarons, Jules and Adams, Ansel) to Z (Zabarsky, Kal and Zaslow, Francine).

Some 75 photographers have work in the anniversary celebration, which has been put together by current owner Jason Landry. That roster “only’’ runs from A (Anonymous; Armstrong, Frank; Alexanian, Nubar) to Y (Youn, Mimi). That’s still an awful lot of alphabet - and with such photographers within it. The W’s alone contain Garry Winogrand, Andy Warhol (a Polaroid of Maria Shriver), William Wegman, Hiroshi Watanabe (his “Azusa Tukamoto as Osome, Matsuo Kabuki’’ makes a woman’s neck seem like the world’s most elegant light source), Ernest C. Withers, and Bradford Washburn.

Washburn is among numerous local heroes. Others include Neal Rantoul, Stella Johnson, Rodger Kingston, Stephen Sheffield, Daniel Ranalli, Constantine Manos, Alex McLean, Dana Salvo, and that’s just for starters.