Expressions Community 2026 photographer profiles:
- Mary Casey: Wild and Unbridled
- Deb DeJonker-Berry: Embracing Solitude
- Daniel Goldberg: Come Closer
- Jeff Krehely: Provincetown – What Remains
- David Lear: Wellfleet Through My Lens
- Ruth McCully: The Spirit of Place: From Observation to Revelation
- Wendy Perry: A Painterly View of Birds
- Kathy Sferra: Celebrating Transition on Fort Hill
- Ken Sklar: Aging With Grace: Nature’s Way
- Cathy Stewart: The Alchemy of Grief
Wild and Unbridled
By Mary Casey
My Ambition: Those who haven’t spent a lot of time with horses may not know that
they have spirit and individuality. Horses are territorial, playful and share emotional
intimacy. I want the viewer to appreciate their wild and unbridled spirit and beauty.
Personal Meaning: Horses have been my passion since I was a little girl. My favorite
TV shows were “Black Beauty” and “My Friend Flicka.” When we moved to Texas from
Long Island, N.Y., I envisioned riding up to the one-room schoolhouse on my horse.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen, but I was allowed to take English riding lessons.
I took to it immediately and started competing hunter-style when I was 9-years old. I
was at the stables for a minimum of 4-hours/day, 6-days/week for nine years. I loved my
horses, teaching them to bow, nod, kiss and come when called.
Although my opportunities to ride are now minimal, I still love horses, and this project is
a chance to celebrate the animal that brought me so much love and joy.
Embracing Solitude
By Deb DeJonker-Berry
My Ambition: To create a series of images, composed at the places I feel most at home, Cape Cod, Boston and Maine, that draw me into their stories and capture my imagination. Each image will express a moment of solitude.
Personal Meaning: When I explore a scene through my lens or craft an image on my screen, I am alone with my thoughts and senses, and yet I am challenged. In this state of solitude, I set the world aside and I find peace and joy.
I embrace expressions of solitude when alone, with another, when observing living creatures, forces of nature, vast expanses, moment of calm. There is no greater sense of peace than being behind the lens of the camera, aware of the wonder of my surroundings. I turn off all the noise, negativity and fear that permeates my world. I celebrate this experience.
Instagram: @wideopenphotographer
Facebook: Debra Dejonker Berry
Website: www.wideopenphotographer.com
Come Closer
By Daniel Goldberg
My Ambition: In this later phase of life, I’ve been struck by the beauty and metaphoric nature of moving water. My goal for this project has been to move physically and spiritually closer to my actual experience during image creation. The project is inspired by a Buddhist koan which encouraged me to consider “coming closer” to my fears, my sense of urgency, and a sense of discovery while taking photos of moving water.
A koan is a short story meant to address a question. As opposed to providing a direct, logical answer, the koan explores a dilemma through a story, typically involving a student seeking advice from a master. The koan offers a path through the problem without providing a direct answer. In essence, a koan leads to more exploration, to slowing down, and to finding resolution through experiencing something directly rather than understanding it from a distance.
Personal Meaning: As my interest in seascape photography has expanded, one day I realized that most of my photos were indeed beautiful, but they were taken at a distance. It wasn’t just the physical distance, but my photos often avoided an emotional quality that I was trying to convey. One could say that my photos lacked immediacy. As I began to reflect on this, I realized that my fear of the ocean was unconsciously making me hesitant to take risks. I was drawn to the awe I felt in the ocean, but I was afraid of its power. The closer I got to the sea, the more scared I became. Upon further reflection, I’ve always been drawn to, but at the same time fearful of water …something that I felt ashamed about and tried to hide it from both me as well as others.
A bit of personal history. When I was eight and at an all-boys summer camp in Maine, everyone took trips during a particular week in August 1957. The 15-year-olds went to the Allagash River in northern Maine which has a Class II-III stretch. In a canoe paddled by two best friends, one of them drowned when their canoe tipped over. In fact, he was the best swimmer in camp. When everyone returned to camp and found this out, we all dealt with it by moving on with camp and not talking about it, despite the grief that hung in the air. My fears of water went underground.
So, fast forward to now…my goal as a 77-year-old adult is to see if I could create images that would convey the mystery, beauty, and intensity of water. I could only do this if I was willing to get physically and emotionally closer to water…not just the ocean, but also to waterfalls, raging water over dams, and fast running streams. Often this meant being in or right next to the water…even stumbling or falling into the water as I was taking the photo! Hopefully, these photos were possible by my coming closer to my own experience of moving water.
Provincetown - What Remains
By Jeff Krehely
My Ambition: After several years of developing a “straight” photography practice in Provincetown, I am incorporating movement, motion, and blurring effects into my work. This change allows me to create more abstract photos, which is a 180-degree turn in my practice. I’m still interested in straight photography, but I’m very committed to expanding in this abstract direction.
Personal Meaning: A lot of the motion and abstract work I’m doing feels a bit chaotic to me, which I think reflects a lot of what we are experiencing right now. Politics, the economy, and AI all make me feel like what was once up is now down, and what was once black is now white. We are in an era of blurred lines and where nothing is what it seems–or, at least, what it used to be. Taking an abstract approach–grounded in movement or motion–to my work just makes a lot of sense to me.
Sometimes I am capturing people as they move about their day or night here in Provincetown, or boats moving through the harbor. Other times I’m imposing motion–via my camera–on buildings or landscapes that are fixed. The result, I think and hope, is a sense of uncertainty that encourages us to pause and look closely at–and sometimes question–what we are seeing.
Objective truth—represented via a straight photograph—has been slipping away from our society in ways big and small. I feel compelled to explore this feeling and phenomena in my work, capturing scenes that are sometimes clear and sometimes anything but. They are all, however, Provincetown in one way or another.
Wellfleet Through My Lens
By David Lear
My Ambition: Recently, my wife and I have gone thru the process of creating estate plans which has led to me reflect on the years and what I would be leaving my family with. Over the last 20 years or so I have been lucky enough to travel the world, and my camera has always gone with me. So, I’ve decided that part of my legacy will be to select my favorite images and put them in a series of self-published books.
I have reviewed thousands of images and created a list of potential book subjects. The book that will start this series will focus on the Town of Wellfleet and my reflections of the time I have spent there.
Personal Meaning: My parents fell in love with Wellfleet after a making a couple vacation trips and in 1978 they decided to purchase the Wellfleet House. For my parents, particularly my Dad, Wellfleet quickly became their special getaway retreat. Over the years they went from renting during the summer to spending as much time in Wellfleet as they could. It also became a popular gathering spot where family and friends would get together for weekends, vacations and holidays.
The time I have spent in Wellfleet at the house and along the seashore has played a major role in my personal and artistic life. Initially the house was a place to spend time with my parents and family. My Daughter’s grew up spending many family vacations visiting their Grandparents and enjoying Wellfleet’s ponds and beaches.
Eventually, I purchased my own Cape property and stopped staying at the family house.. However, I continue to spend time in the town of Wellfleet and along it’s beaches with my camera and tripod.
My parents passed away a few years ago and after 47 years in the Lear family, the house has been sold. It’s the impact Wellfleet has had on myself and family that led me to selecting it as my first book.
The Spirit of Place: From Observation to Revelation
By Ruth McCully
My Ambition: My intention is to create series of images of the natural world that I encounter where I live and where I travel. Each series will go from an expansive view to mini explorations or expressions of the same subject. Each series will consist of a recognizable image of the subject followed by a series of deeply personal expressions of the subject that have never been photographed before. I will deconstruct the subject to see something new. Each image in these mini explorations will be a transition from seeing to feeling.
Personal Meaning: My photography is a spiritual journey where I witness and interpret the mystery and majesty of the natural world. I love the process of creating images. Being in the natural world, I find joy in the act of photography itself. As the changing light, colors, hues, textures, and scenes unfold before me, I feel alive, joyous, fulfilled and humbled.
First, I photograph what is in front of me. Then, I get to a point where I photograph what is inside me. I revel in the moment, in the experience and feel grateful in creating images that have never been seen before. The images are deeply personal expressions of the creative photographic journey.
A Painterly View of Birds
By Wendy Perry
My Ambition: I will be expanding on my love of bird photography by exploring different techniques that will express my feelings about their beauty and behaviors. I am aiming for a more abstract, painterly outcome. Rather than capturing an image of a stationary bird, I will be looking for motion, as in birds in flight. I will also create opportunities through camera motion. In the past my goal was to photograph unusual birds or birds unique to a location, but my focus now will be on capturing the beauty of birds in general as they move through their environment.
Personal Meaning: I developed a love of photography ten years ago when I retired. Since I prefer to be outdoors exercising and exploring nature, I drifted toward wildlife subjects. It’s a constant treasure hunt to find that special animal, bird or insect and then capture its behavior and beauty. To me birds are gems in the landscape. Since they may be found in a variety of locations, they are my favorite subject. I have spent many, many hours photographing birds in my backyard and the DC metropolitan area, on Cape Cod, and while traveling on workshops. Sometimes I find it important to include their environment, and at other times I like to minimize the background to emphasize their feathers, or an unusual behavior. I still love bird photography, but I’m ready to personalize it and create my own artistic vision.
Celebrating Transition on Fort Hill
By Kathy Sferra
My Ambition: Nature is always in transition – and so too are we. I’ve spent the past year exploring the subject of transition at Eastham’s Fort Hill, an iconic coastal landscape within Cape Cod National Seashore. My images capture the beauty of the changing seasons in this landscape. As I have wandered the trails with my camera, this project has also served as a walking meditation for me as I contemplate my own transition into retirement, with many of my ramblings paired with notes and journal entries.
Personal Meaning: I discovered Fort Hill more than 30 years ago. It is a diverse landscape that is simultaneously intimate and vast. Fort Hill is my “comfortable pair of shoes” on Cape Cod where I feel most at home, and where I return regularly to photograph at the transition between land and sea. Most people don’t know that Fort Hill was already staked out for subdivision development and was incorporated into the Seashore at the 11th hour.
I’ve spent my career protecting special places like this across Massachusetts, and know that important work still remains to be done. As I consider what it means to retire, and what my next chapter looks like, the parallels to transitions in nature – death, repose, rebirth and celebration – feel timely and important.
“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” – Rachel Carson
Aging with Grace: Nature's Way
By Ken Sklar
My Ambition: As I move through my own seasons of life, I find myself drawn to the quiet poetry of nature’s aging. Trees shedding their leaves, flowers, releasing their pedals and rocks carved by time. In people, and in nature time leaves its mark. As in nature, aging is a quiet form of beauty. Wrinkles, like weathered landscapes, speak of a life fully lived. They are the visible poetry of time, beauty shaped by experience and softened by grace. They all reveal the quiet courage of endurance and distilled beauty of life continuing.
Through my impressionistic imagery and soft abstractions, I explore the dignity of time and the radiance found in change. Each image is a meditation on endurance, transformation, and the deep calm that comes with acceptance. My ambition is to look to the natural world to mirror our human journey.
Personal Meaning: Since my retirement in 2020, I have endured several health challenges. Each of which has altered my pace but also deepened my vision. Photography has become both meditation and medicine. Through my lens, I explore how nature reveals the quiet beauty of aging – the refinement of times touch, the grace within imperfection, and the resilience that endures in all living things.
The Alchemy of Grief
By Cathy Stewart
Personal Meaning: I lost my life’s partner, my soul’s best mate in March of 2024, after a 17 month journey with Cancer. It was my deepest honor and most fulfilling work to partner with him during that journey as he continued to write poetry and grow, give and love.
Now I stand 19 months after his leaving, learning to recreate my life, love Harry in new ways and experience shattering waves of grief even still…
I turned to photography anew in this journey, finding that the camera allowed me to find beauty in the midst of grief and to find moments of deep transcendent connection with Harry. This project — which ultimately will become a book– explores the alchemy and universal experience of grief and continues a philosophical, political, artistic conversation with Harry – one we have been having for decades.
