Tupper Arts to host third Kathleen Bigrow show next month

by Dan McClelland

Photographer Jim Lanthier Jr., the chief archivist of Kathleen Bigrow’s vast photo collection, has been hard at work in recent weeks preparing for his third showing of her local photographs at Tupper Arts next month.

Two previous shows, both entitled “Through the Lens of Kathleen Bigrow,” highlighted Mrs. Bigrow’s many photos of the first two decades of the operation of the town-owned Big Tupper Ski Area. The second was devoted to an overview of the well known photographer’s photo journalism of the greater Tupper Lake area spanning nearly five decades. This show is entitled “Through the Lens of Kathleen Bigrow: Live, Work and Play” and features photos about those parts of life here.

Photographer Jim Lanthier Jr. shows some of the Kathleen Bigrow photos he has prepared for next month's exhibit at the Tupper Arts center on Park Street. (Dan McClelland photo)

This third show promises to be as interesting and as successful as his first two. Many of the photos in this new exhibit haven’t been displayed publicly before.

Kathleen was a reporter and photographer for some 25 years with the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, the Watertown Daily Times and the Syracuse Post-Standard beginning in the 1950s. She joined the Tupper Lake Free Press as its photographer in 1977 and worked there into the early 2000s. In her eighties she opened an Adirondack furniture and gift show on Park Street called “The Sorting Gap,” which she operated for a half dozen years. Kathleen died in 2014 at the age of 91.

Mr. Lanthier in recent years donated her vast photographic collection to Tupper Arts. It includes the thousands of photographs taken by the tireless photographer over her 50-year career. Under Mr. Lanthier’s guidance Tupper Arts is cataloguing, digitizing and archiving the collection for the enjoyment of future generations here.

He has recently purchased a sublimation machine and printer to transfer the photo images from the collection onto souvenir mugs, the sale of which will benefit the art center in the months ahead.

In recent years the local photographer has donated thousands of dollars in equipment and materials to Tupper Arts to prepare the exhibits for these three shows. Included in his donations are special printers and negative scanners to bring Mrs. Bigrow’s photos to life. One printer is specially designed to print from black and white negatives, as most of Mrs. Bigrow’s photo were, to produce vivid blacks, subtle grays and pure whites.

The entire back room of the arts center on Park Street is now filled with photos on display boards- all ready for hanging in the show in coming days.

For Tupper Lakers- both current and past- Kathleen’s photos rekindle many memories of people, places and events over generations here.

Re-prints of all photos as well as the new souvenir items will be available for sale from Tupper Arts on its web site when the show opens next month.

Working with Jim again on this show is another mainstay of the arts center- Ed Donnelly. Jim has printed nearly 120 photographs that will appear in the show. Once Jim shrink wraps each one, they go to Ed who mounts them on mats and hangs them on various easels and display areas in the Tupper Arts gallery. We found Ed in the arts center working on the show on Monday morning.

The show begins at Tupper Arts on the first of May and runs through May 23. The center is open Wednesdays to Sundays 11a.m. to 5p.m.