Photography, Etcetera!
Manchester Art Association
Manchester Town Hall
Manchester
May 19, 2026
Something about June Mita’s picture of Race Rock Lighthouse drew me in. I saw it as part of the Manchester Art Association’s latest exhibit at the Manchester Town Hall, Photography, Etcetera! The mixed media exhibition features claywork, paintings and even rock art. The picture of the lighthouse stood out.
It’s just so … blue.
Photography is like painting, except that someone else has chosen the canvas, the colors and the light. Despite the constraints, gifted photographers such as JMita can create images with care and delicacy that utilize elements of the physical world like paint to craft works that look created from scratch.
Because it’s not just the blue of the sky and water that makes this image so striking. It’s also the interspersal of light from the other elements in the picture that blends the various shades together. The breaks in the water. The wispy clouds floating over massive cumulus. A small boat peaking out from behind the lighthouse.
All of those small elements were captured at the right time, from the right angle, to produce a visual result: blue. A picture that I would show someone if they asked me to describe the color itself. The spectrum of blue.
The next photograph to catch my attention was also taken by Mita. Its composition is similar. It too captures the fusion of civilization and nature. Where the previous picture is a soothing blend of blues and whites, Fall Covered Bridge’s centerpiece is a shock of red.
At first glance, the bridge image seems to eschew the visual language of the lighthouse image. The bridge sticks out as artificial, constructed for purpose not aesthetics, and alien to the surroundings. This is a yellow space, with some allowance for green fading into yellow.
The stroke of genius Mita employed in this picture though is capturing the reflection of the bridge in the water. Suddenly, this singular color has a counterpart, blended in seamlessly with the rest of the image. There’s a sense of visual balance, literally as the two splashes of red are on opposite sides. The bridge falls into the backdrop more, no longer an outlier but just another shade of red.
These pictures feel definitive in their approach to color. This is red. Mita has mastered the ability to cajole things around them to show us what we can’t see, but what has been there all along anyway. How blue the world is. How red the world is too.
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Photography, Etcetera! will be on display at the Manchester Town Hall through August 12.
Jamil heads to an arts gala.
