4 commentsWithin the bounds of the Island, we’ve all developed relationships with a favorite beach, a relative’s summer cottage, a dinner table. An uncountable number of specific points either hold or offer connection and nostalgia. Stephen DiRado’s creative process uses the weight of these affiliations with the lightness of a passing moment. He builds these bonds with every person and every place he photographs. And just like the moment, he releases them with the shutter.
Esther and Ronald, Gay Head, MA, July 6, 1996.
DiRado, who is based in Worcester, Massachusetts, practices portraiture in place with immersive dedication. His early work, including 1983’s “Bell Pond” series and 1984–86’s “Mall Series,” which was recently profiled in The New Yorker, earned him exhibitions and accolades. Through durational and tireless documentation, he chronicled humanity there. But just as naturally as he was drawn to his subjects, he knew when the work was complete.
Stripers, Pond View Farm Cottage, West Tisbury, MA, July 17, 1995.
It was 1987 when DiRado heard his familiar inner voice calling him to the next chapter, he said. The voice told him that the Vineyard contained everything he’d prepared for up until that point in his career. The Island was a place people returned to, or stayed on, to seek rest and reconnection with what felt important to them. Reflected in the calm his subjects might have in front of their own mirrors, there was something invisible he was trying to freeze on film.
In his image Susan and Stephen, MVCMA Cottage City, Oak Bluffs, MA, July 19, 2001, the photographer appears at right.
Leaning into the transience inherent in the place, he began “a surrealistic relationship with the Island.” Leaden winters lifted into hazy reenactments of the high seasons before. Each summer was much the same but never the same. Someone may have sold the family house, or had another baby. The dunes shift as they do, and the beach is still magic.
Aquinnah Beach Parking Lot Attendants, Aquinnah, MA, June 20, 2001.
He began visiting Aquinnah, and later Oak Bluffs, every single day at the same time, wearing the same uniform, and forming relationships. “I was so open and so vulnerable to folks that they in turn would mirror that,” he explained. Right when his large format analog camera was forgotten, the moment had arrived, and he’d make an image.
Lindy and Daughter Nicole, Gay Head, MA, August 18, 1988.
The results are a vast archive of eight-by-ten-inch silver gelatin contact prints in black and white. In 2012 he received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship specifically for the body of work he’d created on the Island. This prestigious prize was one he’d applied for previously, but it was his portraits on the beach, gathered at tables, and the mundanity of regular life on the Vineyard that caught the curator’s eye. In February of 2025, a retrospective of his work will open at the Fitchburg Art Museum, with many Island images on view.
Ralph and Friends, Inkwell Beach, Oak Bluffs, MA, July 1, 1991.
The unpublished works selected here are from the initial era in which DiRado became captivated with the Island, in a range of acute moments dated by aesthetic trends, and yet immediately familiar. The photographs are relevant in how much things change, and how human we stay.
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