After his parents gave him a single-lens reflex camera as a college graduation present, Gary Duehr “dove” into taking pictures in Central Illinois, inspired by photographers like Harry Callahan, to the extent that after a year of teaching high school English, he enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts Photography program in Southern Illinois, where he studied with second generation Bauhaus artists. He came to Boston in 1984 after earning an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers Workshop.
This November, “People, Places, Things,” a retrospective featuring works from Duehr’s two decades of taking photographs in Boston, will take up the front two exhibition spaces at Bromfield Gallery, which he’s managed since 2003.
While most photographers tend to have a main beat or an extended subject focus period that follows them throughout their career, Duehr jumps around subject matters like a water bug. “I have given myself permission to take pictures of anything that interests me, from people on elevators to the messy interiors of cars, from closeups of ice cracking on ponds to blurry scenes from the Chicago El ,” Duehr explained. “Many of my projects are ongoing, but some reach a stopping point where I feel they are starting to repeat themselves.”
While there are over five dozen series of Duehr’s works documented on his website, only a dozen are represented at the Bromfield. “I quickly realized I would not be able to fit decades of work into 800-square-feet,” he said. “Maybe a floor of the Whitney could do it. So, I focused on newer work that represented my vision, and I tried to mix it up with people, places and things — my three broad categories.”