Edward Boches

EASTHAM, MA, (October 24, 2024) –  Inspired by Place: Three Projects by Edward Boches, featuring 22 images by the Boston/Cape Cod documentary photographer, opens Friday, November 8, at the Workspace Gallery in Eastham. 

The exhibit brings together Women of Wellfleet, a collection portraying women shellfishermen and foragers who make a living off the tide and the land; Postcards from Allston, documenting the change and gentrification transforming a gritty Boston neighborhood; and Somewhere Along the Curve, recalling the emptiness of Boston during the Covid lockdown of 2020. 

“What attracted me to this combination,” explains gallery owner Bob Korn who curated the exhibit, “is that all three projects are about what happens or is happening in these places. They differ in subject, style and execution, but place is an important element in each of them."

While all three projects have been exhibited or published elsewhere, this is the first time they’re being seen together.

"I liked Bob's idea when he approached me," said Boches. "He saw a unifying factor I'd never really thought about. Place wasn’t the driving idea motivating me, but it was clearly a constant presence."

The show will kick off with an opening and artist talk, from 4-7 pm, on Friday, November 8, at the Workplace Gallery at 3 Main St. Unit 16 in Eastham, and will run through the New Year. A closing reception and talk will be announced at a later date.

Interested in how photography can connect us to each other, Boches has photographed such diverse communities as inner-city boxers, former gang members, Black Lives Matter activists, transgender men and women, pro-life and pro-choice advocates, and homeless writers. 

His work has been shown in museums and galleries that include the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester; the Bronx Documentary Center in New York City; the Plymouth Center for the Arts; and numerous other venues. Photographs by Boches have also appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Sun Magazine, Zeke Magazine and the Provincetown Independent, where he is a regular contributor.

The Workspace Gallery at Bob Korn Imaging is a place of creative exposure and dialogue for great photography and the printed piece. Korn, who prints the work exhibited at the gallery, has produced work for artists including Joel Meyerowitz and Richard Avedo. His prints can be found in every major collection throughout the world, including the Getty, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian.

For more information contact:

Bob Korn Imaging:  bob@bobkornimaging.com   (508 255-5202)

Edward Boches:     edwardboches@gmail.com  (978-473-6140)

“We’re going into the belly of the beast,” claimed one pro-life marcher, knowing that Boston remains among the most pro-choice cities in the country. 

That was in 2022, when the second annual Men’s March, organized by the Catholic radio host Jim Havens, brought 200 mostly white men to one of the country’s most liberal cities to spread their message that life begins at conception and that the Constitution must protect all “persons.” 

In the first three years of the march, which began in 2021, few counter protestors, save a small cadre of kazoo blowing clowns, showed up to confront the pro-life men. But in November 2024, that changed. A combination of continued outrage over the denial of abortion rights and the re-election of Trump seems to have energized young pro-choice activists, who showed up en masse to disrupt the planned march from Planned Parenthood on the border of Boston and Brookline to the Boston Commons, three miles away.  

As the confrontation grew a bit tense,  a Boston Police motorcycle escort, which annually leads the men to their downtown destination, appeared caught off guard by the counter protestors and called out the SWAT teams from both the Boston Police Department and the Massachusetts State Police. While there was a lot of shouting, shoving, profanity and threats, and a number of arrests, no one was hurt and with a reinforced police escort the Men’s March did make it to the Commons for their speeches and rally. 

These images, all from a one day march in November 2024, are part of an ongoing project on abortion rights.

The weather can be harsh, the winds frigid, the tides so early it’s hard to get out of bed. The work can also take a toll on the body. Lifting sledge hammers to pound hats into Chipman’s cove, hauling canoes piled high with gear, constantly culling oysters from grow bags that can weigh upwards of 50 pounds all call for strength and fitness. So it’s understandable that when most people picture the traditional oyster farmer they visualize a man. 

But that just means they haven’t been to Wellfleet. According to the town's shellfish constable Nancy Civetta, more than 30 percent of Wellfleet's oyster farmers are women.

(Read the full story in the Provincetown Independent.)

Having documented Wellfleet's oyster growers and the lives of one particular family in a project called By the Tide, I thought it would be interesting to explore new stories about a community I've come to know and admire. So in the summer of 2024, I made images of Wellfleet's women "oyster men."

Over the past year, I have had the good fortune to become a member of the Black Seed Writers: poets and story-tellers from the homeless community of downtown Boston. I scribe, type, occasionally write, and collaborate with the writers on making text and image portraits.

The writers I’ve met have endured, survived and experienced life in ways many of us will never know. Some have overcome addiction, struggled with mental illness, served time. All have known the challenge of finding a doorway or bench, subway station or makeshift tent, to spend the night. While many are in various states of transition, more than a few remain rough sleepers.

But every Tuesday morning, they descend upon the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, opposite Park Street Station. In verse, narrative and stream of consciousness, they relate their travels, travails and time on the streets in ways that make a reader wonder, ponder and understand, at least a little, what it’s like to be homeless or unhoused.

Behind their struggles, I have found some of the most intelligent, interesting, and yes friendliest, people I have ever met. They have shown me both warmth and kindness. Geno, with his huge smile, greets me every week. Richie rushes over with news of his latest volunteer work. Bryant chimes in with some clever comment from his endless arsenal of wisecracks. Jan shares a new political insight. Laurel wants to know if I brought her cigarettes and often has a gift for me.

For welcoming me into their space, sharing their companionship, showing me their trust, and collaborating with me on the images you see here, I owe the Black Seed Writers a debt of gratitude.

Note: this is early work from an ongoing project on the Black Seed Writers.

Allston remains one of Boston's most authentic neighborhoods. A combination of small businesses, bodegas, and ethnic restaurants, its storefronts alone convey "melting pot." Its population of white, Asian, Hispanic, and Black residents makes it more diverse than many of its bordering towns. And its relative affordability, in one of the country's most expensive cities, has made it a magnet for a young creative community—musicians, dancers, and, of course, the street artists whose murals populate walls and electrical boxes throughout the neighborhood.

However, Allston is in the midst of a burst of development. And with that comes new challenges. As hundreds of new, high-end apartment units and condos near completion, the question becomes,

'How much will this neighborhood change?'"

Renee Loth, one of the Boston Globe’s most respected columnists, had this take on the exhibit and the thinking behind it.

The gallery here includes only a sampling of the 54 images from the exhibit at Harvard’s Crossing Gallery.

For me, making photographs is as much about connecting with people as it is about creating images. In recent years, I've photographed amateur boxers in the old mill towns north of Boston, young activists in the Black Lives Matter movement, volunteers working in food pantries, Trump supporters and Bernie devotees.

Most of those projects took a documentary – photo journalistic – style approach, where my objective is to be present and invisible, hoping my subjects remain unaware of me and my camera so that the images will feel natural, and take the viewer someplace they may not have been able to go on their own.

But here on Cape Cod, I took a different approach. I sought out farmers and foragers, actors and authors, chefs and shellfish farmers, artists and artisans – people who grow the food we eat, play the music we enjoy, write the books we read – and made portraits of my subjects in the places where they live and work. Never asking anyone to pose, or offering direction of any kind, I simply tried to make a picture at the moment I felt I could reveal some small truth about the person in front of the camera.

The exhibit, July 22 at the Brewster Ladies Library, is dedicated to my good friend the late Richard Payne, of Brewster.

We had hoped it was over. We somehow believed that with the arrival of vaccines we could quickly resume life as we once knew it.

Instead, we discovered that while vaccines and masks protected us from the virus, they were powerless against the trepidation, suspicion, fear and distrust that lingered even beyond the boosters.

The incubation period for normal was a long one. Lasting almost a year.

This project, a sequel to earlier pandemic project Somewhere Along the Curve, documented the strangeness of 2021 – what life felt like to many of us – as the pandemic began to slow down, yet never quite departed.

As part of an ongoing, long term project on the farmers of outer Cape Cod, I’ve been photographing Jason and Elisabeth Weissman and their boys Leif and Loki, who farm oysters on Loagy Bay in Wellfleet.

It takes a certain kind of person to be an oyster farmer. You may not have to answer to a boss, but you do have to answer to the tide, working your grant when the tide is low, whether that’s 5:30 am or 7:30 pm. Scheduling your chores, deliveries and offshore culling when the tide is high. In the spring, when it’s time to return rebar racks and grow bags to the water, you have to struggle with the tide’s pull or endure the biting rains and harsh winds that blow across its surface. Forget to secure a canoe, or oyster hats, and the ebb may quickly take them away.

In the best of years, you have six short months to make a living, dependent on the seasonal water temperatures and the summer market.

But Jason and Elisabeth would never do anything else. They have no control over their work environment, nor can they count on a regular paycheck. But every day, as they divide grow bags, cull oysters for market, prepare hats to catch larvae, they’re breathing fresh air, hearing the cries of hungry seagulls, and taking in views that most people only see on Instagram. As hard as the work may be sometimes, they feel grateful every day to live, work and play in Wellfleet, on Loagy Bay, by the tide.

In Boston, a typical spring brings the city to life. Tourists clog the Freedom Trail. Students emerge from their dorms to sun themselves along the Charles River. The well-heeled residents of the Back Bay fill outdoor cafe tables along Newbury Street. But when the pandemic struck, Boston changed overnight.

The ubiquitous duck boats disappeared. Thousands of students never returned from spring break. And instead, empty streets, shuttered businesses and vacant subway cars became the new landscape.

While most people sheltered in place during the lockdown, I ventured out every day. With a small Leica monochrom camera over my shoulder, I rode a folding bike throughout the abandoned city seeking to document the changed landscape.

Intentionally stark, these black and white images also reflect what it felt like to be living Somewhere Along the Curve.

To date, this project has been exhibited at Panopticon Gallery in Boston, and featured in the Boston Globe, the Social Documentary Network, WGBH and BU Today.

Fame, success, even self-respect can be elusive goals for many young men and women who grow up in the inner city.  But the boxing gym, as it has for decades, promises a way up for some, a way out for others. It offers young boxers a home where they can find support and community. It builds character. For many it's also the source of discipline needed to avoid the ever-present lure of gangs or drugs.

During 2017 and 2018 I spent a lot of time in the gyms of the old mill towns north of Boston and at many of the local amateur boxing matches, including The Golden Gloves. I got to know many of the boxers -- and the trainers committed to them -- and found them to possess an inner strength as well as a physical one. It takes both to step into the ring. To put the body through the punishment boxing demands. To make the sacrifices needed to achieve a few moments of glory.

These images, part of an ongoing project, celebrate the strength and courage it takes to be a fighter. 

Recognition

Social Documentary Network

10th Anniversary Exhibit 

Bronx Documentary Center 

October 2018

Stand Magazine

Featured Photography

Issue 09

Fall 2018

Griffin Museum SoWa Gallery

Solo Exhibit

Spring 2018

Lowell Sun

Featured Slide Show

August, 2017

Griffin Museum of Photography

Atelier Group Show

September,  2017

On May 2, 2022, a leaked document revealed that the US Supreme Court would soon overturn Roe V Wade, sending women's rights in America back 50 years. Within days, women's groups, social justice organizations and activists of all kinds had organized protests and taken to the streets. In Boston, Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights NE, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU had succeeded in rallying thousands of abortion rights believers — women, men, nurses, patients, mothers, daughters — to attend events throughout the city. Speakers energized crowds with condemnation of the Supreme Court for what appears to be a political act with no respect for precedent; the Republican Party for its misogynistic ways; and the Biden administration for for not doing enough. Anger, fear, frustration and sadness was palpable everywhere.

When the lights go down and the play begins, a great theater production transports the audience into an imaginary world that often feels real. What the viewer witnesses is the culmination of hours, days and weeks of work. Set construction, sound and lighting design, technical reviews, and countless rehearsals that went into creating an experience that usually comes off without so much as a missed cue or a flubbed line.

But if you were allowed into theater anytime before opening night, it would often appear that nothing is ready and everything is far from perfect.

For the last three years, I’ve had the privilege to witness the process at the Harbor Stage Company in Wellfleet. Set construction. Readings. Conversations and collaboration between director and actor. The invisible but essential role of the stage director. The coordination among all those who never get to take a bow but are equally deserving of credit.

These photographs, and the book they appear in, were created at the final dress rehearsal of Bryony Lavery’s Frozen. Theater credits to: Jonathan Fielding, director; D'Arcy Dersham, Stacy Fischer, and Robert Kropf, actors; Evan Farley, stage design; John R. Malinowski, lighting; J Hagenbuckle, sound design; Adam Foster and Alison Greene, stage management.

I had the privilege of making these portraits and posters for the Cambridge Community Center for MLK Day 2022. CCC is one of many organizations to which I donate photography and creative services. My way of giving back — and still creating. The center was founded 90 years ago to serve the Black community of a section of Cambridge known as the Coast. At that time the Cambridge YMCA would not allow Black kids or families to join or use the facilities. CCC is an amazing place. It serves local kids with afternoon programs; provides free fresh food daily to people in need; teaches kids art, hip hop music and technology skills; and brings people together. To visit this place is to experience love, joy and community the way it should be for all of us.

Between the winter of 2017 and the spring of 2018, my 87-year-old Mom, Gloria Boches Abramson, had been housebound as her physical condition slowly deteriorated. In May of 2018, pneumonia sent her to the ICU and left her even weaker, her lungs and heart both compromised.

Despite having all of her mental faculties and sense of humor, she decided enough was enough. She rejected the hospital’s recommendation for rehab and opted instead for hospice care. She was ready and eager to die, but determined to die at home.

I had been casually photographing and video recording my Mom for the last few years in an effort to capture her life’s stories and memories. But as the end became inevitable, we also began discussing death and her final wishes. In many ways those conversations and photo sessions brought us closer. Together we traveled back in time and spent days on end in each other’s company.

When I asked Mom if I could document her final days as a way to both witness her courage and confront my own fear of losing her, she agreed. She had been an artist herself -- a painter, illustrator, and musician -- and knew that this was important to me.

In hospice care, she started to improve, and we both thought this project might go on for six months. But then suddenly, her health took a turn for the worse, and in a matter of days it was over.

Slowly at First captures my Mom’s last month on earth and all the emotions it triggered.

Human Connections: Who are you, who am I

Most of us live in a bubble. We surround ourselves with like minded people. We’re friends -- offline and online -- with those who share our interests, and political beliefs and economic status. We live in neighborhoods where most people are just like us.

I do that, too. But I regret it. It’s the root of our social, economic and political divisiveness. It narrows our perspective. And it denies us (and me) the knowledge, understanding and empathy that we can only find if we venture out of our comfort zone and into worlds where people aren’t just like us.

I’m not talking about taking a photo trip to Oaxaca, or Cuba, or Africa. I’m talking about trying to make genuine human connections, if only for a day or a week or a year, with people who aren’t like me.

That’s why I take pictures. To meet and (to the degree it’s possible) understand inner city kids who’ve been surrounded by gangs or drugs. To learn about young, self-taught famers who struggle to make a living. To get a sense of what it’s like to be an unemployed restaurant worker who has to wait in line every week for handouts of food to serve her family. To talk to tow-truck drivers, homeless veterans, young musicians and dancers and aspiring actors. To meet social and political activists. To explore what it’s like to live off the grid. To observe the parenting of someone who takes their four year old foraging for the family’s food. To actually listen to Trump supporters.

With a camera over my shoulder I have a lever to open doors that lead to new and unfamiliar places. And by entering into worlds (granted not always very deeply) where everyone isn’t like me, I constantly learn more about myself, for my encounters help clarify what I believe in, reveal biases I didn’t know I had, and constantly remind me what really matters. Human connection.

If I do it well, the photographs I take share both sides of that exploration. And if I do it really well, they might even teach a viewer something not only something about my subjects, but about themselves as well.

In Massachusetts, arguably the most affluent state in the United States, one out of seven people suffer from food insecurity. The pandemic has struck immigrant families especially harsh. Many of them have lost jobs as restaurant workers and domestic employees. And with day care options virtually eliminated, they often have little choice but to stay home, dependent on social services for life’s daily essentials.

In the Allston neighborhood of Boston, the Brazilian Worker Center, an organization typically dedicated to worker rights, has had to pivot and convert itself to a food pantry. With only five full time staff and a team of volunteers the center works all week to source enough food from the likes of Boston Area Gleaners and Fair Foods Boston to serve 500 families every week.

On Wednesdays, families, many with children in tow, begin lining up at 2:00 pm and wait hours until the center starts distributing fresh produce, groceries and staples such as diapers.

By 4:00 the line stretches more than three city blocks, a visual that, in and of itself, should be shocking. Sadly, however, here are thousands of needy people standing in dozens of similar food lines throughout the city.

Paris may be the City of Lights, but NYC is the city of scaffolding. It is everywhere. When scaffolding stretches the height of a building it means repair to the facade is actually underway. But most scaffolding stands but a story high.

These sheds, as they are called, are erected to catch falling debris from deteriorating facades and to prevent injury or even death to pedestrians. In 2015 a child was killed by a falling brick and in 2019 an architect died when hit with falling debris.

However, there is a Catch 22. The sheds are needed because the buildings are falling apart. But the buildings never get fixed because paying fines for leaving the scaffolding up beyond their permitted date remains cheaper than paying to repair the building itself.

Many of the sheds have been up for five years or more and therefore are already covered with bricks and other detritus that has fallen off the building, potentially reducing their safety efficacy. They do, however, add a distinct, if unavoidable, look to the urban landscape.