If you’re heading to Brooklyn this weekend for the New York Photo Festival, this is an opportunity to catch Northeast Kingdom, an exhibition of black-and-white images by Andrew Frost at United Photo Industries, presented by Conveyor Arts, which continues through Sunday. There will be an artist talk on Saturday at 2 pm.

For the past two years, Frost has been making large-format photographs in and around the small town of Groton, Vermont, the town where his relations have lived for more than two hundred years. His father left to join the Navy in the 1970s, and, growing up in a military family, Frost moved quite frequently and never established a place he considered home. Partly because of this nomadic upbringing, The Northeast Kingdom, the northern-most counties in Vermont, held a mythical sense of history for Frost, having been romanced by the stories of his father's youth. "I always imagined that it would be this beautiful place, where kids ride their bikes to the town store and everyone knows each other, like something out of a Hardy Boys book."

Two years ago, after moving to upstate New York, he finally made it to Vermont. It was the first time he had felt a deep connection, a sense of real belonging, to a place. Since then, Frost has travelled back frequently, 8 x 10 view camera in tow, looking for his roots. Making photographs with a view camera is slow and gradual, much like farming or writing, the process seems to compliment the way of life in small-town Vermont.

The eleven large-scale black and white photographs on view focus on the collision of myth, place, and the notion of perceived reality. Through precisely considered elements of photograph (light, tonality, composition), Frost transcends the banal moments of everyday life and turns them into subtle reflections on a place he had built in his mind over decades. The photographs earnestly explore the beauty of rural life, while simultaneously questioning its viability.

In addition to the prints on view is a copy of the sublimely beautiful book from an edition of 4, printed on MOAB paper, stitched and bound by hand by the photographer.

Andrew Frost was selected as the recipient of the Conveyor Photo Grant by a panel of jurors which included John Stanley, Director of the Camera Club of New York; photographer Mette Juul; and previous grant recipient Jeremy Haik. The Northeast Kingdom: Photographs by Andrew Frost will mark the second exhibition organized as part of the annual Photo Grant, which awards one photographer a solo show printed and curated by Conveyor Arts. Also see Conveyor Arts blog.

The Northeast Kingdom: Photographs by Andrew Frost closes Sunday, May 21. United Photo Industries, 111 Front Street, Suite 204, Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY. Save the date: Saturday, May 19, 2 pm: Artist talk with Andrew Frost.

Above: Andrew Frost, Jeremy before he left for the Army. Copyright and courtesy Andrew Frost. 

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