Zoom in on photography The art of taking pictures goes way beyond black-and-white By Lynda Morgenroth CLICK! The world changes when you take a picture, or when you look at one. Messy everyday life is stopped, frozen, captured. "You can take a photograph of someone you see every day and find in their face something you never saw before," a photo teacher once told us. "It's something real, something true, but it's only in the picture." Fortunately, in Boston, as befits its artsy academic lineage, photographs are everywhere. So, too, are photographers - stalking the streets at odd hours, pulling murky prints from darkroom tubs, teaching, squinting, critiquing, perennially drinking coffee (or so it seems), alert to what's out there. You could walk our streets for days, scoping out photographs. You could drive to exhibitions in Lincoln (American photographers' takes on Europe), or Wellesley (color portraits of Chinese village life), or take a train to Providence to see the work of a master, Harry Callahan. You could bring your camera - Brownie, digital, disposable - and take mucho pics enroute. Here are some photo troves - all enriching, enjoyable, and easy to find. And please, no carping - our suggestions are selective, not comprehensive. But we promise, if you start scouting and shooting, you'll find much more. Around Kenmore Square For the visually hyper, Kenmore Square is where it's at. It looks like a photograph - a surreal, dysfunctional urban intersection of three wide streets (Commonwealth, Beacon, Brookline) with an architectural hodgepodge of brownstones, storefronts, a looming Barnes & Noble, Boston University students on cell phones, frank-eating fans from Fenway Park, and above it all, the neon Citgo sign glows. The Charles River and the flexible boughs of willow trees on the riverbank are a block away. There's a lot to see inside, too: the motherlode of the Photographic Resource Center, the New England School of Photography, and BU's Mugar Memorial Library. Photographic Resource Center, 602 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. 617-353-0700. The Photographic Resource Center is one-stop shopping for the photo buff. The nonprofit organization offers changing exhibitions (generally two at a time), a library, lectures, classes, and a bi-monthly newsletter, "In the Loupe," that alone is worth the annual $45 membership. The September/October edition features everything from articles on exhibitions and background on workshops, to announcements about members' shows and books. You can time-travel through the Center's current exhibitions, both running through Dec. 17. "Photography in Human Experience: Photographs from the Collection of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities" features century-old photos of families, including artfully posed gatherings on special occasions that reveal how people wished to be remembered. "Gathering Information: Photography and the Media," which opens tomorrow (reception tonight, 5:30-7:30 p.m.), zeroes in on how information overload numbs us to images of violence, tragedy, and suffering. Guest curator Susan Erony invited 11 photographers, including Lee Barron and Nadine Boughton of Boston, to contribute work. Boston University Mugar Memorial Library, BU Department of Special Collections, 771 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. 617-353-3696. Boston University's Mugar Memorial Library, courtesy of BU's Department of Special Collections, is a kind of mini-Smithsonian close to home. Anything interesting and imaginative goes - from Dennis the Menace to Gertrude Stein (and that was just September). Starting Nov. 18, "Bradford Washburn: Papers of the Eminent Cartographer, Explorer, Photographer," begins an extended run. Washburn, 89, director of the Museum of Science for four decades, is a mountaineer. New England School of Photography, 537 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. 617-437-1868. Back in the automotive mayhem of Kenmore Square, visit the sprawling New England School of Photography, often called NESOP ("knee-sop"). The building's humdrum exterior leads to a lively interior. Over 100 full-time students are enrolled in NESOP's two-year Professional Photography Program. Scores of others take workshops like basic photography, platinum printing, and advanced color darkroom. Explore NESOP's Gallery One, where photography shows change every six weeks. Keep an eye on the school's lecture schedule, too; sometimes the authors are photojournalists such as Marilyn Root, who recently presented her book on women and their cars, while other readers are poets, essayists, preachers. The gallery's current show, "Creatures" (through Dec. 10), showcases the black and white photography of Henry Horenstein - enigmatic, elegant, organic forms of animals in zoos and aquariums. The creatures are captive, often artificially lighted, and convey an eerie quality. Horenstein is professor of photography at the Rhode Island School of Design. The Art Institute of Boston, 700 Beacon St., Boston. 617-262-1223. Just west of Kenmore Square, visit the Art Institute of Boston - now officially known as the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley College - for its impressive gallery offerings and visiting artists lecture series, as well as to learn about degree and non-degree photography programs. The institute is a four-year college offering degrees in design, illustration, fine arts, and photography, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The school's gallery mounts changing exhibitions, including those of historic and contemporary photography. "Stamps, Cinderellas & Artistamps," a show on alternative stamps (they won't go through the mail, but they're offbeat, inventive, and a lesson in small-scale composition) opens Nov. 12 (reception Nov. 18, 5-7 p.m.). In February, just as the MFA's new "Pharaohs of the Sun" exhibition closes, the Art Institute's gallery will show "19th and 20th Century Photographic Views of Giza" (Feb. 3-March 19). The school's far-ranging duPont Lecture Series features sculptors, photojournalists, designers, and photographers, often using BU venues to gather an eclectic audience. On Nov. 18, you'll likely find people interested in art, anthropology, drama, and photography at a presentation by Korean artist Hae-Won Won; it will be 7-9 p.m. at BU's Photonics Center, 8 St. Mary's Street. Back Bay Boston Center for Adult Education, 5 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. 617-267-4430. Board the T at Kenmore for the Back Bay (Arlington or Copley stops) or hoof it through this photogenic sector of the city. If you're a beginner in photography, the Boston Center for Adult Education is a fine place to get your F-stops straight. Most of your mates will be novices, especially in the introductory 35mm camera and darkroom classes. More advanced workshops include nature photography, creative photography lab, and all-day weekend classes in digital photography. One of the center's best instructors is Charles Hrbek, a pro who has taught at BCAE for almost 30 years. Robert Klein Gallery, 38 Newbury St., 4th floor, Boston. 617-267-7997. Around the block on Newbury Street, the Robert Klein Gallery beckons. Several local galleries show photography occasionally - including the Bromfield, Barbara Krakow, Howard Yezerski, Creiger Dane, Stebbins, and Bernard Toale - but only one shows photography all the time. Established in 1980, Robert Klein has over 3,000 images in inventory, the work of 19th and 20th century photographers that are household names (Ansel Adams, Irving Penn, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bernice Abbott, Diane Arbus, to name a few), along with younger artists. Through Nov. 13, the gallery features the work of Michael Kenna, a British photographer in his 40s who specializes in black and white images of settings and details of settings - landscapes, architectural complexes, formal gardens, canals, and parks. The show centers on photographs Kenna shot in Russia this year, including Smolny, a Russian Orthodox monastery in St. Petersburg that emerges over the horizon like Xanadu. Institute of Contemporary Art, 955 Boylston St., Boston. 617-266-5152. Keep an eye on the Institute of Contemporary Art, which presents the environmental photography of New York based-artist Shimon Attie Nov. 17-Jan. 16. Outdoors, Attie uses pictures in unusual ways, such as a project in Berlin where he cast images of the pre-war Jewish community onto the disintegrated buildings of the city's old Jewish quarter. Similarly, in New York City, Attie projected handwritten memories, prayers, and songs onto tenement buildings on the Lower East side. Here in Boston, trading on the ICA building's past as a police station, he'll project text and images from the old division's case files onto the ICA's exterior. Indoors, the ICA galleries present Attie's photographs and public projects from 1992-1998. As is the gallery's custom, informative "walk-through-talks" by local culture mavens will be offered. Huntington Ave. Museum of Fine Arts, 45 Huntington Ave., Boston. 617-267-9300. For the urban traveler, Boston seems organized into cultural villages - the Theatre District, Newbury Street, and Fort Point Channel. One more village, on Huntington Avenue, stretches from Symphony Hall to the Museum of Fine Arts and Massachusetts College of Art. Just a week after the Bradford Washburn exhibition opens at BU, "View from Above: The Photographs of Bradford Washburn" opens at the MFA (Nov. 24-Apr. 30). Explorer climber and scientist Washburn donated 80 black and white images to the MFA. "View from Above" - peaks, glaciers, canyons - is the first major exhibition of Washburn's work in an art museum. In recent years, the MFA has staged glamorous photography shows by celebrity portraitists Herb Ritts and Yousef Karsh. In March, the work of the great American photographer Edward Weston goes on view - less glamorous, more beautiful, and engrossing. "Edward Weston: Photographs and Modernism" presents 140 vintage prints by Weston - still lifes of seashells, portraits, abstract close-ups of nudes, rocks, trees - and 60 works by artists of his era, including Willem de Kooning, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Diego Rivera. Mass. College of Art, 621 Huntington Ave., Boston. 617-232-1555. Continue down Huntington until you reach the criss-crossed assemblage of new and old buildings that is the Mass. College of Art, an institution historically strong on photography, with courses for degree and non-degree students. In January, a multimedia exhibition, "Rapture," features new work by photo teacher Barbara Bosworth: large-scale images of water and clouds. Cambridge and Somerville Cambridge and Somerville don't have the concentrations of photography that Boston does, but there's often something to see at Harvard's museums (notably the Fogg, which has an extensive collection); MIT's museums; Gallery 57 on Inman Street (associated with the Cambridge Arts Council); or the galleries of the Cambridge Multicultural Art Center. Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, 41 Second St., Cambridge. 617-577-1400. Located in one of Cambridge's premier historic buildings - the red brick Bulfinch courthouse complex - CMAC is a performing arts complex with two galleries. These often showcase work thematically related to a program, such as this season's Arts and Dialogue on Race series. On Nov. 20, "The Traumatization of Art: Focus on Cambodian America" draws on the expertise of four artists and psychiatrists. For the visual component, Marcus Halevi photographed nine Cambodian women who now live in New England; his photographs are accompanied by oral histories. Cambridge Center for Adult Education, 42 Brattle St., Cambridge. 617-547-6789. In the heart of Harvard Square, the Cambridge Center for Adult Education has been a mainstay for budding photographers. Noted local photographer David Akiba began his teaching career here; he recalls it as one of his most lively gigs. The course content changes somewhat each semester, but generally offers six sections in basic photography; intermediate photography with an emphasis on content and technique; and workshops in flash, color, and street photography. There's an all-day Saturday studio course on handcoloring black and white prints. Gallerybershad, 99 Dover St., Somerville. 617-629-9400. After Harvard Square, take the Red Line two stops to hot spot Davis Square, Somerville. Gallerybershad presents its first photography exhibition, "Architecture in Mind, photographs of New York City by Donald Greenhaus and Peter Hendrick," from Nov. 13-Dec. 12. Greenhaus's and Hendrick's complex of city views offers a good excuse to check out the not-quite-year-old gallery, a 3,000-square-foot space shared with Bershad Design Associates. Photographer Greenhaus's work romanticizes New York City. Hendrick, an artist born in Dublin who now lives in New York, uses cibachrome prints in light boxes and other stagy devices that alter the appearance of architectural relics. For an evening of art, architecture, photography, and live jazz, come to the show's opening Nov. 13, 4-6 p.m. and meet the photographers. On the road We won't send you to New York City, but three remarkable regional exhibitions are worth a car or train trip. DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, 51 Sandy Pond Road, Lincoln. 781-259-8355. If you enjoy photographs of Europe, and the contrasts among different artists sizing up a scene, don't miss the group show at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, up through Nov. 28. All the photographs are from the DeCordova's growing collection - over 700 photographs thus far - and all are by American photographers. You'll see the big broad striped back of "Circus Man, Nice" (1937) by Lisette Model; a wintry stairway to a Yorkshire abbey (1990) by George Tice; and restless, evocative images of Prague (1980) by Paul Ickovic. The DeCordova Museum School is one of the most comprehensive, non-degree granting, visual arts programs in the country with offerings for adults, teens, and children. An introduction to the DeCordova community can be seen, appropriately, in the exhibit "Faces@DeCordova: Photographs by Marc Teatum" at the museum school gallery. Teatum teaches basic photography. In December, the museum opens a Photography Study Space on the second floor of its new wing. This peaceful setting is for scholars and others to learn more about photography by examining actual works. Davis Museum, Wellesley College, 106 Central St. (Route 16), Wellesley. 781-283-2051. One of the most arresting shows in the area is at Wellesley College's Davis Museum. "Village Works: Photographs by Women in China's Yunnan Province" is an astonishing, colorful, vivid picture of the way people live on China's southwestern frontier, which borders Tibet. The 75 photographs were chosen from 25,000 pictures taken by Chinese women ages 18 to 57. Many are unforgettable: a woman in a red vest planting rice seedlings in a flooded paddy; a 3-year-old boy with a manly expression feeding rice to his year-old brother; a woman hoeing corn plants wither her baby on a white blanket and an open red umbrella nearby. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 2 College St., Providence. 401-454-6500. Harry Callahan, who died recently, set up the photography department at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1961, starting with a few dozen students. Within three years it was a full department with 100 undergraduate and graduate majors. Meanwhile he kept taking pictures. Both New York's Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Art have held major Callahan retrospectives. RISD features a selection of the photographer-teacher's work through Dec. 5. Lynda Morgenroth is writing a book about Boston - and taking lots of pictures. © Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.