To the average driver, Deerfield Street in Greenfield might appear as more of a blur of vacant storefronts, dilapidated properties and overgrown shrubbery. But through the lens of local photographer Geoffrey Bluh, the neighborhood’s weathered exterior peels away to reveal a hidden, subtle beauty.
Bluh, 64, has been a photographer for more than 40 years, both for the Recorder between 1995 and 2013 and for personal projects. He moved from Conway to his first apartment on Deerfield Street in Greenfield in 1980 to study photography at Greenfield Community College. His photo exhibit “Positively Deerfield Street” opened at the LAVA Center on Feb. 7 and will run throughout the month of February.
Shot on a mirrorless Nikon equipped with a 35-90 mm lens — a choice that Bluh said attracted less attention than the large, standard telephoto lens he used to tote — the 25 tight-angle images depict the charm, grit and everchanging nature of the neighborhood.
“It [Deerfield Street] is a salty kind of place. It’s got some rundown properties, the old factory. It’s very mixed … It’s also a drive-through place. Most people are hastily leaving or coming to Greenfield without taking a peek; and yet, a lot of people live there and have grown up there,” Bluh said, pointing out a number of his photographs hanging at the LAVA Center. “It’s visually interesting and if you like the gritty, the humorous, the constantly changing aspects of a place, it’s kind of emblematic of Greenfield and also the mayors and [town leadership] of the past.”
The 25 photographs, each depicting vignettes of Deerfield Street, include a shot of the Wiley-Russell dam, one of a children’s play structure and swing set fully encompassed by weeds and an image capturing a scaffolded building with two lamps stationed in the windows.
While Bluh said he struggled to choose his favorite photograph of the exhibition, mentioning that he had trouble deciding which one spoke to him the most, he said he particularly enjoyed his shot of a lamp post outside a Deerfield Street home that had artificial blue flowers seated at its base.
“The lamppost with the artificial blue flowers has been my most emblematic picture of the group. I stumbled upon that, and I just couldn’t resist it, and I think it’s one of my favorite as well as the one below it with the lampshades,” he said. “A lot of these are tight and closed. You’ll notice they don’t show a lot of horizon. These are little windows or vignettes … I love the brilliance of the artificial blue flowers and I recently photographed them again in the snow. It’s typical, I think of Deerfield Street having these quirky things, and that’s just one of them.”
Bluh’s earlier bodies of work include portfolios of large format black-and-white landscape images, documentary images of Greenfield’s old factory neighborhoods and portraits.
“Positively Deerfield Street,” Bluh added, stood as a break from his typical black and white repertoire, standing as the artist’s first color photography exhibit.
He has previously exhibited photographs at Greenfield Community College, ZONE Art Center, GCTV, Artspace, Forbes Library, McCusker’s Market, Vermont Center for Photography and the Salmon Falls Gallery.
Pointing to a photo of fresh asphalt on a freshly paved parking lot, Bluh explained the exhibit works simply as an ode to the everyday.
“I like to think that these are, how Seinfeld said it, ‘A show about nothing.’ These are about everyday life — the mundane,” Bluh said. “But they’re funny at the same time, you know, there’s humor in the day-to-day.”