Tom McKone
MONTPELIER — “Heart & Eye: World Photography by Elliot Burg” is an apt title for the Middlesex artist’s retrospective exhibit now showing at the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery. Burg’s 49 compelling photographs come from a variety of projects — from flood recovery in Montpelier, the Tunbridge Fair, and Vermont senior athletes competing in the National Senior Games in Minnesota, to photos of remembrance taken in Argentina, Ukraine, The Gambia, and New Orleans.
A master at capturing evocative human moments, Burg said he is drawn to photograph people by memorable qualities or experiences he sees in them, such as beauty, tragedy, humor, courage, or inspiration.
“There’s something about the person I’m looking at that draws me from the heart,” Burg said in a recent interview. “The eye part is everything else. It’s using my skills as a photographer to try to capture that quality.”
A decade ago, during a chance conversation with a racquetball partner, Burg learned about the National Senior Games and that some Vermont athletes were going to Minnesota to compete. He spent a week there, capturing many special moments, including Shelburne pole vaulter Flo Meiler, then 81, as she went over the bar. Closer to home, in 2023, after spending a day helping with flood cleanup in Montpelier, the second day he brought his camera to take candid photos.
In 2015, after working as a consumer protection attorney in the Vermont Attorney General’s Office for 27 years, Burg decided to “launch myself — reimagine myself — as a street photographer, a freelance photographer.” Many of his photos are candid, and referring to the work of 20th century French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, Burg said Cartier-Bresson emphasized the importance of “the decisive moment.”
“There is often an instant of time and a specific place connected to that time when the perfect photo, the perfect image, exists. If you are in a slightly different place or you are slightly before or after that moment, it’s not there.”
For his “Sunset Park, Brooklyn,” project, he spent two full days in that small, bustling New York City park. He visited the basketball courts several times, and after watching a boy having trouble making baskets sit on his ball to watch a group of men starting a game, Burg had one of those moments. Taken from the back, the photo captures the boy’s yearning to be able to do what they did.
Burg’s work has two dominant thrusts: the celebration of humanity and calling attention to human rights violations. Many years ago, he developed a relationship with the Center for Justice and Accountability, a human rights organization based in San Francisco, which has led to photo projects in Argentina and The Gambia.
Burg calls the rear gallery, which includes photos from The Gambia, Argentina, Ukraine, New Orleans, and Cuba, “a beautiful and a sad place.” The first four of those locations highlight the room’s theme: “How We Remember.” He spent five days in Argentina, photographing commemorative events in which people used art to remember the Trelew Massacre, which had happened more than 50 years before when a violent junta ruled.
The Ukraine photos, the result of Burg’s journey there to locate the village where his grandfather had lived, present memory through family. Photos from The Gambia, which recall the brutal dictatorship there from 1994 to 2016, present memory preserved by narrative. Colorful New Orleans performers, “‘Mardi Gras Indians’ — Black revelers known for their elaborate hand-beaded and feathered suits whose subculture evokes the memory of Native Americans who sheltered escapees from slavery” — present memory through pageantry.
Burg’s lifelong devotion to humanity and to human rights has shown in his support of his wife August Burns’ work in women’s health in Bolivia, working for Vermont Legal Aid, teaching Vermont Law School students to be “excellent and good-hearted lawyers,” and working in consumer protection at the Attorney General’s Office, where his “clients were everybody in Vermont.”
Many influences, including his parents, put him on that path, and a break he took after two years in law school played a key role.
“I spent two and a half years traveling, primarily in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia — a lot of the time hitchhiking, staying with local people,” he said. “(It) really opened my eyes to the diversity of the world and interconnectedness of people.” Just as Burg created this show with his heart and eye, so we need to open our own hearts and eyes to it. While this remarkable exhibit reminds us there is still a lot to be concerned about, it also reminds us there is a lot of good in humanity.
“Heart & Eye: World Photography by Elliot Burg” is open to the public in the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery, 111 State Street, Montpelier, weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (except for the lunch hour), through June 26. For more Burg photos, go to elliotburgphoto.com.
