Poughkeepsie Journal, July 21, 2006

Images of county fair are timeless

Rhinebeck exhibit showcases photos
By Ben Salk

A team of horses galloping down a dirt track, kicking up dust behind them; kids playing with water guns; a girl proudly showing off the calf she raised herself.

At first glance, this series of photos might look like an historical exhibition, steeped in nostalgia for simpler times, when a day of gazing at prize-winning hogs and watching sheep being sheared made for a stimulating afternoon out for many families.

In fact, the black-and-white photographs in Molly Ahearn’s exhibit “The Fair is the Heart of Dutchess County,” at Montgomery Row Second Level in Rhinebeck, only hearken back to the mid-1990s.

The show, which runs through early September, depicts scenes from the past 10 years of the Dutchess County Fair, an annual August tradition held at the fairgrounds in Rhinebeck.

But the photos’ enduring quality is a statement about the fair itself, now entering its 161st year, largely unchanged in character and massively popular. They convey a timelessness, in the sense that there is a consistency with the fair that goes back all the way to its roots, said Sue Hartshorn, manager of Montgomery Row Second Level.

The exhibit showcases the American summer tradition of the county fair in “really exquisite, beautifully printed” photographs that capture the “dynamism and the texture of the fair,” Hartshorn said.

A change of pace

Ahearn grew up in New Jersey and lived in New York City and Westchester before settling in Clinton Corners with her husband Bill.

“We thirsted for a more beautiful, less congested life,” she said via e-mail of their move to Dutchess County.

A graphic designer by trade, one of Ahearn’s first photos at the Dutchess fair featured a client’s son.

“(He) was involved in the shepp competition,” she said.

“He was the sweetest child with a cherubic face. He posed next to his sheep and held it so tenderly. You can still feel the love when you look at the photo today. That was what got me started. I’ve been photographing the fair ever since.”

Ahearn’s work falls into the genre of documentary street photography, according to Hartshorn, inspired by the styles of such photographers as Garry Winogrand, Robert Frank and Bruce Davidson, for whom Ahearn apprenticed in New York.

Ahearn shoots all of her subjects primarily in black and white, and the classic medium is especially appropriate for portraying the venerable county fair that has changed so little over the years, she said.

“What makes it timeless, that it’s not dependent on technology,” she said.

“Except for the clothes, the scenes you’ll see in 2006 are similar to the ones people saw in the ’50s.”

This year’s fair will be held Aug. 22-27 at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck, with an anticipated half a million visitors attending, according to its Web site.

Hartshorn said attendees might enjoy stopping at Montgomery Row to see the ongoing exhibit and check out scenes from the fair’s recent history.

“I hope people will stop by and see it, preferably before they go to the fair,” she said. “I think it gives them a real sense of what it’s like if they’ve never been before.”