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Arts & Entertainment

"Main Street, Suffolk County" on Main Street, Riverhead

Suffolk County Historical Society hosts third annual juried photography show: "Main Street, Suffolk County."

The theme of the Suffolk County Historical Society’s third annual juried photography is “Main Street, Suffolk County." The thirty-five photos the society—itself on Main Street, appropriately—chose to exhibit among those entered had in varying measure that duality of past and present.

Peter Dicke, who placed fourth in the show, took a photo of shoppers at a Huntington mall this past August. Inferring that “Main Street” is as much a concept as a place, he remarked, “The mall is Main Street to shoppers.” Dicke had placed first in last year’s show, which had had a maritime theme.

Robert Dohrenwend’s black and white third place photo, “Retired Tow Truck,” gave an image that would have been seen on Main Streets in the past, while Wendy Feinberg’s “A Bird’s-Eye View of Port Jefferson,” which placed second, was certainly of the present.

“I spend a lot of time on the ferry from Port Jeff to Connecticut,” she said. “I took it last summer from the ferry when it was docked. My husband and I are from South Setauket. We love to walk around Port Jefferson in the summer, it’s such a great town.”

Virginia Bushart of Stony Brook took First Place. Her photo, taken in Stony Brook, used an institution that every town has: the post office. The nighttime scene, taken last December, showed the pillars of the post office wrapped in spirals of holiday ivy and clearly showed the shops alongside, such as Godiva Chocolates.

Bushart said, “I’ve come to really like nighttime photography. Stony Brook is bustling during the day; at night it’s peaceful. The night I took it was clear, not cold. I took a 1.3 second exposure.”

She related that she had been taking photography under the auspices of OLLI at Stony Brook University. “That’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, school for retirees, founded by Bernard Osher. There are 118 of them on different campuses.”

If Krystle DiNicola—who writes for the Patchogue-Baypoint-Bluepoint Patch site—did not place among the winners, her “Patchogue at Twilight,” taken last summer, with Venus poised above the town, was notable: the perfect gift of a summer’s night settling in.

While not one of the efforts of the contemporary photographers exhibited here, a large black and white photo from the society’s collection was the first thing a visitor saw when entering: “Firemen’s Parade,’"taken in Sayville in 1899, by Hal B. Fullerton.

While standing by this photo, the society’s director Wally Broege said that the show, whose works had been submitted the first week of November and judged Monday, November 8, would be on display until December 20. He added, “We are thinking about extending it, maybe into February.”

The larger theme for the Suffolk County Historical Society at 300 West Main Street is “Past, Present, and Future…We Unite Them.” The current “The Main Street, Suffolk County” exhibit reflects this. The museum is open Tuesday-Saturday, 12:30 p.m.-4:40 p.m.; its library Wednesday-Saturday, same hours.

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