Small Photo Gallery Shares First Event
It really looked like there weren’t going to be any speeches.
For the first half hour, the opening reception Thursday night for the new Gonzaga University Student Photography Gallery was all small talk and sparkling cider.
“We have name tags over here,” the director of the Crosby Student Center announced.
“I know who I am,” said one student.
“Not everybody does,” replied the director in the patient tones of someone accustomed to dealing with 20-year-olds.
Over by the nine matted black-and-white photographs that were the tiny gallery’s first offerings, the critiques were coming in.
“This is my favorite,” said one young woman. “Lightning striking the Martin Centre.”
Among the other pictures were one featuring an old man feeding a pigeon and another called “The Twins,” showing an extremely pregnant woman in a topless (arms strategically folded) pose.
“You should try some of this cheese,” a young woman with a backpack said to a friend.
A fiftysomething guy in a crewcut hovered near his photograph, taken in a remote Nevada town. “Can I help you with some background?” he said upon seeing someone taking notes.
About two dozen people filled the gallery, which is really just a well-lighted alcove off a foyer across the hall from the Crosbyana Room.
A CD or tape player nestled by a fake plant provided a musical backdrop. Sounded like Streisand.
A framed Tolstoy quote hung on the wall: “All art has this characteristic - it unites people.”
Shortly after 7 p.m., the student center director gave an earnest little speech that, despite starting with “Tonight is a very exciting night,” was actually fairly painless.
Then another guy gave a short talk about the cultural importance of photography. And several of the photographers were introduced.
The woman who had shot “The Twins” was accompanied by the mother captured in the photograph. (It was impossible to not glance in the direction of her now standard-dimension abdomen.) Occasionally students would come through the center’s front door, see the gathering off to the side and initiate an exchange that went pretty much the same way every time.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s the opening for a student photo gallery.”
“Cool.”
, DataTimes MEMO: Being There is a weekly feature that visits gatherings in the Inland Northwest.