The Far Horizon

At first one sees the shades of blue, grey, green – hues often opalescent, nearly transparent – and then you notice something else: the balance of sky over ocean, the intersecting of space and time. These are the impressions one may get when viewing Heather Hobler’s latest photographic project.

Hobler, whose maiden name is Briggs, is a true native daughter of Mattapoisett where she grew up along the seashore. She has spent all of her adult life deeply immersed in the world of art. As a student at the Museum School in Boston and later as a fine art student at Tufts University, Hobler studied film, video, drawing, and painting. Yet her latest body of work is none of those mediums of artistic expression; it is photography.

She says she was drawn to photography first by using a camera phone, and then through film.

The uniqueness of this particular collection of images by Hobler is their location – hundreds of pictures of the horizon as viewed from her deck outside her home on Buzzards Bay. It is the same view, yet a view that changes from moment to moment, day to day, season by season, over time.

And it is time of which Hobler spoke with great reverence during her presentation at the Mattapoisett Library on August 16 where she discussed her current photographic journey through the use of both camera phone and a film camera.

“I take at least one picture everyday … no specific time, but everyday,” Hobler said. “It’s like collecting time,” she tried to explain.

Faced with life-alerting health challenges, Hobler now finds photography the best way to explore the present, remain present, and to come to terms with the inevitability of change.

Hobler appreciates that by taking pictures of the same scene she is documenting that place … that place in time. “Each picture informs the other. The mass accumulation makes it more dramatic…. They become more and more dramatic as they come to me.”

Of the images captured on her phone, she said, “They are like little jewels.” She currently has over 1,000 such photos on her handheld device.

One of the attendees to the evening presentation asked Hobler what inspired her current work. She replied without hesitation, “I don’t know why I began doing it or what I want to get from it, but it is enjoyable.”

Hobler said that the view from her deck is a view she has been looking at her entire life and that there is a deep sense of continuity when she considers that one hundred years from now, that view will still be there.

As for the actual picture taking, Hobler was candid that she doesn’t fully understand how to use the film camera. “I just point and shoot.” She is not formally trained as a photographer. The images, however, speak, as if taken by a photographer with a deep understanding of composition, color, and love of natural elements.

Hobler has produced several pictorial books, including one that contains pictures of a seagull she has named ‘Ladybird’ and others that are collections of photographs that are much more like paintings. “I have to be very careful when selecting photographs for the books…. My mood impacts what I select.”

The meditative and yoga-like balance of Hobler’s latest photographs is no accident. She has practiced both for many years and currently teaches yoga. There is also a contemplative poetic sensation one is left with after entering the images and then returning to the current place and time.

In an interview she gave to Panopticon Imaging in January 2017 regarding her current artistic endeavors, Hobler said, “It’s reflective, rhythmic journalistic ritual. Taken from the same place daily, and most often multiple times per day, I stand facing south over Buzzards Bay to document the pageant that is my front yard. As this work grows, so does my interest and dedication to what I feel is my most successful body of work.”

Hobler’s photography is currently on display in the reading room of the Mattapoisett Public Library located at 7 Barstow Street in Mattapoisett, open Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm, Thursdays and Fridays from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, and on Saturdays between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm.

By Marilou Newell

 

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