The Partial Observer by Chip Northrup

Pictures at an Exhibition

Northern Otsego County is home to two of the greatest living portrait photographers—Dmitri Kasterine, whose one-man show opened Friday, June 7 on Main Street in Schoharie at the SEEC Gallery, and Marc Hom, whose work is on display through September at Fenimore Art Museum. Go see both and you will see the best in post-war portrait photography. Tour each exhibit with the artists and you will get a quick lecture in how great art is made. Right here, right now.

In the pantheon of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, Kasterine took the most iconic photographs of James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, Patricia Highsmith and Anthony Bourdain. There is a story to tell about each work, and Kasterine—a White Russian whose father fought against the Communist takeover of Russia—is, like two other great Russian post-war artists, Nabokov and Pasternak, a humorously discrete raconteur. The local Russian expat community was out in force at the opening, including an Orthodox priest from the Jordanville monastery. Kasterine’s son, Nicholas, and his wife, Caroline, accompanied him.