Morrissville, Vermont - Speed and contemplation merge in the life of Rolf Anderson. He is a lively raconteur whose succinct sentences combine wisdom and cleanly-etched details. He is a businessman whose business is the outdoors. A generation ago, he was one of the first here to take city folk for weeklong camping trips that brought them face-to-face with nature.

Hidden by his talent for organization (he created and runs with his wife Sharon the Hazen's Notch Association. and a widely-know summer camp for children) is his lifelong fascination with photography. His very personal portrayal of that was on display here for the past month at the award-winning cafe, the Bee's Knees, which won the 2007 Yankee Magazine Editor's Choice for its homey atmosphere and creative use of local foods.

Anderson's 18 photographs take the viewer face-to-face with nature, but with a measure of delicate restraint. A splash of fall colors boil in the foreground almost hiding a touch of snow along a mountain ridge. A fragile necklace of snow clings to a muscular tree trunk Needlepoint of tiny dead branches at the base of a stand of pine seduces the eye to step in, then taunts the spirit with a question: Was it meaningful ? Open to interpretation ?

Anderson saw something different.

“What I like about the lower dead branches is the busyness of it. People go to the outdoors to clear their minds. When your mind sees so much visual information it can replace what ever it is that's there. Nature fills you and empties you.”

The meaningless of it, however, haunted the mind. Was there meaningfulness in any of the deceptively simple photographs? The answer came in a fleeting study of an apple orchard in the high meadow. It was under attack, caught in a snowstorm. It taunted the spirit with primitive aggression. Can the product of any of man's efforts survive ?

“It was taken during a snowstorm,” Anderson said, “to convey the beauty and force of nature.”

Said Sara Marshall, a Montgomery science teacher, “My favorite is 'Burnt Mountain at Night.' It has stark lines and colors, but within those are depths of feeling, emotion, and intuition that are unique to the observer. . .. Those are the colors of introspection.”

In each case, the photograph caught a pattern about to vanish. Hence the photographer's need for speed.. If the photographer had not raced to the spot, that precise arrangement of color, the temporary cling of snow to the tree trunk would have vanished.

“There are patterns in nature from the regular growth habits and forms of most plants, to animal tracks and the shapes of specific cloud types,” Anderson said.

He continued, “It's just that we don't always see the patterns. We often think of nature as being irregular and chaotic. There is great variety but there are many, many repeating forms. Sometimes you just have to slow down, focus the mind, and then you will see these patterns and sense the harmony they create.”

The love affair with the outdoors, with nature, began when he was ten, with the camera when he was 13.

“When I was ten, I lay down in the forest across the road from our house. The ground felt like the earth giving me an embrace. I looked up in the trees and I realized this is where I belong. I'm not just passing through.”

Three long years later, at 13, he came face to face with a waterfall. He rushed back home, and stood before his father. Leroy Anderson (1908-1975) was a celebrated American composer, best known these days for his optimistic and jaunty Sleigh Ride (1947). Could he use his father's Leica? Yes, his father said, and handed him the camera. But without the film. Go back and compose the photo first, he was told. He did, returned for the film, and has his first photograph in hand today.

If nature has been a lifelong obsession, so has his home territory of Hazen's Notch.

Anderson: “People ask me, 'Do you only photograph Hazen's Notch ?' Newness is not an advantage. You must become familiar with a landscape in all its moods and changes and, like Ansel Adams, you must return and return. It's my advantage.”

This means he can do what he most wants to do: and you see it in the 18 photographs shown here. Anderson is a four-season photographer, with a difference. He wants to catch, not spring, summer, fall or winter, but those delicate tantalizing moments of transition.

He's interested in the spiritual quest of “how we adjust mentally from one season to the next,” the fact that winter with its challenge of cold and storm follows on “the spectacularly beautiful season of fall.”

Anderson makes his statement, and it leaves you gratified to have found in the familiar around you something new. The fireman in him competes with the artist and the artist is the winner. The viewer is the beneficiary.

The show will move on to the Brown Library at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common where a reception will be held Friday, February 15, 2008 from 4:30 - 6 PM. Proceeds from sale partially benefit Sterling College. All other proceeds from Anderson's work go to the Hazen's Notch Association Campership Fund.

- Nat Worman

Feb. 4, 2008

Anderson's exhibit titled “Winter Light” appeared in January 2008 at The Bee's Knees in Morrissville, Vermont and in February 2008 at Sterling College's Brown Library in Craftsbury Common, Vermont.

His work can also be viewed year-round at Trout River Traders in Montgomery Center, Vermont.

Winter Light
January - April 2009