Photographer James Venuti at BWAC

Innovative photography at BWAC

 Queens-raised artist James Venuti is a pharmacy manager by day and a photographer by all other hours. His sprawling image of the Flatiron Building “Turn to the Right” is on display at Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC), the 25,000 square foot warehouse that continues to be a remarkable incubator of emerging and well-established artists.

“Turn to the Right” is part of his compelling series Living Frames, photos of iconic NYC landmarks where each photograph interacts with the respective frame that Venuti has cut and/or painted. There’s two layers of “living” here: the sense (and reality) that these landmark images are in constant flux, and the discursive ping-pong between frame and image.

“Turn to the Right,” required more than the usual amount of surgical precision, Venuti said. “Carving street lines is a nightmare. If I’m off 1/16th of an inch it all has to be scrapped. Leaves and vines are easier. If I mess those up it’s fine. Leaves can have their own shape.”

At 14, Venuti worked in a local pharmacy in Queens. It turned to a CVS four years later, and Venuti found himself as a pharmacy manager for the next 12 years; he taught himself woodworking in his spare time.

After a 2012 trip through Europe where he took over 6,000 photos with a point-and-shoot camera, Venuti returned home with refreshed eyes and the urge to capture the thousands of marvels he saw around New York.

“Walking around the city I really wondered how I could incorporate frames and photography. I wanted to come up with one of a kind pieces.”Since Jan 2016, Venuti has made more 60 pieces for Living Frames. Each takes about 100 hours of work. Venuti sees the carved frames as paramount importance to the image.

Professionally, Venuti is unusual compared to many artists with MFAs. He has no formal schooling in painting or photography, and where most artists will listen to music when they work, Venuti plays re-runs of “Frasier” as he paints in Queens. His favorite episode is “The Innkeepers,” where the two brothers attempt to revitalize the four-star restaurant of their youth.

Now upgraded to a Nikon TSL, Venuti continues to shoot around the city. Against the reproduction of photography, these works are sui generis. With a cinematic flourish, Venuti captures the glowing energy and light of New York’s most prominent landmarks. These well-known images could easily fall victim to a dentist’s office; what keeps them startling and complex is Venuti’s clear devotion to detail.

The light he captures can’t be mimicked in Photoshop. Rather, it’s produced through trial and error. For “Lost Dock,” a panorama of the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, Venuti shot from the site more than 30 times before he finally caught the right light.

“Sometimes you’re lucky with one shot. You see it in your head in a certain way and everything works out. But sometimes you’re not lucky, and so many things come into play, you have to keep going to get to what you want to see.”

In conjoining a cast of mediums, Living Frames remains inviting and complex at once. Most pieces are instantly recognizable, but some require a step back. When people ask him, what’s going on along the edges of “Turn to the Right,” Venuti will explain the perimeter is a reworking of the Flatiron Building.

“They’ll stand back and see the whole thing. Then they get what’s happening.”

Venuti will be at Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit on Labor Day weekend and on Sept 8-9.

A Star-Revue Contributor