To depict humanity, a photographer must first look to his own. The portrait shows humanity by individual example, and when a photographer turns the lens on those in his own family; he shows the source of his humanity. Anthony Randell uses his heart to navigate his photography, and in it displays a personal journey spanning a generation each on either side of him.
Anthony Randell was inspired to photograph by his father, himself a Photographer and Graphic Artist for the CBS television network. Being raised with the knowledge of photography’s influence both within the world of television as well as in gatherings of his large, Brooklyn-Italian family, he came easily to the camera to explore his life and his heart. His portraiture shows people both up-close and far away, with a keen sense of metaphor for both situations. Viewing his work allows access to his heart and those people contained therein, whose dignity and individuality are not compromised for being intimate subjects of his camera.
A photographer has many options when making a portrait. From simply capturing a likeness to the more complex process of giving visual clues to his subject’s character, he has the opportunity to show many different levels to his subject. Family, a core to human existence, has a powerful influence; the breadth of the words “give” and “take” are explored and exploited uniquely within its boundaries. Such a powerful human experience creates a unique photographic challenge for those who use the camera to explore humanity through portraiture. This sense of familiar intimacy shows through the classical motifs of Lady Clementina Hawarden’s Victorian images, to the more informal and spontaneous work of Jacques-Henri Lartigue a generation later; and on to the more recent family portraits by Sally Mann and Nan Goldin. In the imagery of Anthony Randell, each person photographed and re-photographed offers a new layer of self in every image. Each of these photographers propels the portrait by knowing that each image shows a different layer; one portrait invites, and ten portraits acquaint.
Anthony’s images are untitled; the visual message is the only one. But for having shared their hearts with he who recorded them with his own, and giving those who regard their likenesses a sense of this love, let their names appear on this page off to the side of their faces: Theresa, Michele, Jessica, Anthony Nicholas, Johnny Boy, Uncle Sonny, Tony, Lenny, and Don – "the Old Goat."

—Benjamin J. Coopersmith, Curator

The Almanac Gallery of Photography is a division of Hoboken Almanac of Phtography. It is a gallery that will be open by appointment only, except on Saturday afternoons, when it will be open to the public. The purpose of this gallery is to educate and give young and unrecoginized photographers, as well as the more seasoned and experienced ones, a forum to show their work.

There will be a new show opening every month, and the openings of the exhibitions are by invitation only.

Hoboken is a uniquely appropriate place for this gallery since is was this town that was the early home of two legendary American photographers - Alfred Stieglitz and Dorothea Lang, as well as one Benedict J. Fernandez, the founder of the Hoboken Almanac of Photography and the gallery, who started his life in Hoboken at the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard as a crane operator.

The Almanac Gallery of Photography is located at 1252 Garden Street (corner of 13th Street), Hoboken, New Jersey, 07030. It is open on Saturdays, from 1PM to 6PM. Open other times by appointment. Call 201-865-6997 or fax 201-865-5493.