The Historical Society of Woodstock’s opening exhibition of the season is “Woodstock Personalities: 40 Years of Photographs by John Kleinhans,” an exhibition of 94 photographs, taken over a span of forty years featuring pictures of local personalities.
Seldom seen without a camera in hand, Kleinhans considers these photographs to be what he refers to as “a visual diary” of casual meetings and unexpected encounters with local friends and associates.
A Pittsburgh native, he set up his first darkroom in 1965 in New York City. After a 12-year academic career specializing in visual perception, he settled in Woodstock in 1979. He was drawn mainly to landscape photography and, commercially, he specialized in photographing artwork and architecture.
During the 1980s he was a photographer for the Woodstock Times and other publications. A casual meeting in 1983 with Robert Angeloch, founder of the Woodstock School of Art, led to a life-long involvement with the school where he was a student, handyman, and board member. He also served on the boards of the Woodstock Artists Association and the Center for Photography at Woodstock.
From 1988 to 2007 he worked as a designer and product developer at Woodstock Percussion. With his wife, artist Paula Nelson, he founded Precipice Publications which released his books: An Image of Monhegan (1997) and Woodstock Landscapes (2000).
The exhibit will open on Saturday, June 8, 2024, at 20 Comeau Drive in Woodstock, NY, with an opening reception on Friday, June 7 at 7 pm. It will run through July 28 and is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 1 pm to 5 pm. Admission is free.
A 64-page illustrated catalog is available for purchase. Gallery walk-throughs with John Kleinhans will take place on Sunday, June 23 at 2 pm (with art historian Bruce Weber) and Sunday, July 14 at 2 pm (with artist Paula Nelson).
The public is invited to these events at no cost. For more information: (845) 679-2256 or info@historicalsocietyofwoodstock.org.
The Historical Society of Woodstock was founded in 1929 by a group of artists, writers, academics, and local citizens. In addition to the exhibition space, which is located at the historic Eames House on Comeau Drive in the center of Woodstock, the Historical Society has an extensive archive consisting of paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture, textiles, photographs, books, manuscripts, correspondence, documents, film/sound recordings, and antique tools. The archive serves as a resource for a wide range of exhibitions, public programming, and research.
John Kleinhans photos from above: Bob and Mara Angeloch, 1991; and Claurice Fuller at the Woodstock School of Art, 2009.
Leave a Reply