For six decades,Neal Rantoul’s photographs have navigated the shifting sands of photography, sharing his forays into analog and digital, with a perspective from the ground to the air. The Danforth Museum of Art has recently opened a seminal exhibition, A Life in Photographs, that will run through December 20th, 2026.

The museum states: Neal Rantoul’s photographs mirror the ways the medium has changed since he first picked up a camera in the 1970s. Rantoul has navigated intense shifts in photography over the past six decades, transitioning from black and white to color, analog to digital, and the ground to the air.  This exhibition unites themes that have shaped Rantoul’s works throughout his career and redefines his approach to a photographic series. Emphasizing how storytelling is integral to his practice, this exhibition creates new narratives for singular works and explores Rantoul’s prolific career as a continual practice of risk-taking.mirror the ways the medium has changed since he first picked up a camera in the 1970s. Rantoul has navigated intense shifts in photography over the past six decades, transitioning from black and white to color, analog to digital, and the ground to the air. This exhibition unites themes that have shaped Rantoul’s works throughout his career and redefines his approach to a photographic series. Emphasizing how storytelling is integral to his practice, this exhibition creates new narratives for singular works and explores Rantoul’s prolific career as a continual practice of risk-taking.

Essays by the artist and Curator Jessica Roscio follow.

©Neal Rantoul

Neal Rantoul spent the bulk of his career teaching photography, initially at the New England School of Photography in Boston in the 70s, then at Harvard University for thirteen years and was hired by Northeastern University in 1981 to head its new Photography Program, working his way up the ranks to tenure in 1988 and in 2004 was promoted to full professor. He retired in 2012. He is an emeritus professor at Northeastern.

Since retiring, Rantoul has remained active, making many new bodies of work and he has had numerous exhibitions. He now devotes his efforts full time to making new work and bringing earlier work to a national and international audience. Rantoul has work in practically all the permanent collections of museums in the New England region, including the MFA Boston, the Worcester Art Museum, The Addison Gallery of American Art, The RISD Museum, the Fitchburg Art Museum, Harvard Art Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, among others. He has work in the Bibliothèque National in Paris and the Kunsthaus in Zurich as well.

There are many books of Neal Rantoul’s photography including American Series, published in 2005 which addresses his work in black and white up to 2005, Above, aerial photographs of Martha’s Vineyard, Paradise,photographs made after the devastating fires in Paradise, CA in 2019 and his newest book Neal Rantoul: The 8 x 10 Photographs, 1984-2005, published spring 2025.

Rantoul’s work has been represented by several galleries over his long career including, Panopticon Gallery in Boston, 555 Gallery in Boston and PhotoStop Gallery in White River Junction, Vermont.

In more recent years Rantoul has maintained an active exhibition schedule since moving to Acton, MA in 2020 with two shows at the Acton Senior Center and one at the Acton Library, and a one-man show of aerial photographs at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum in 2021.

NealRantoul’s studio is in Acton and serves as the archive of his life’s work.  He continues to teach, often works with students one-on-one, and has taught frequently at the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina, and was invited to teach a workshop at the Baer Center in Hofsos, Iceland in 2017. He also consults, particularly for Photography Departments seeking reaccreditation, and has served on many boards, including the Photographic Resource Center in Boston and the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA.

Instagram: @nealrantoul

©Neal Rantoul

A Life in Photography

Danforth Museum

This catalog can be thought of as a companion to the exhibit at the Danforth Museum in Framingham, MA during the fall of 2026. We are including each image in the show as well as, in some cases, a little more background than in the actual exhibit itself.

But first, I must thank so many that have been instrumental in making it all happen. First, to Jessica Roscio, the Museum’s director, for proposing the idea in the first place and then backing it up by being willing to meet numerous times to look at work. To Rachel Passanante, as the shows’ curator, who has been consistently excellent to work with over the past year and a half and who became a regular at my studio, pouring over portfolio after portfolio, I owe my eternal gratitude.  And finally, thanks to my studio assistant, Allison Burns, who has been with me from the beginning of our task to turn the show from a concept into a reality. Thank you to all of you.

So, to the work itself in this largest show of my work to date. As I write this in late June, we have just finished the work of scanning, printing, mounting, matting, framing and packaging the 94 prints in the show. It took us six months. The show effectively spans my career with the mirror image made in 1973 on up to close to the present in Shirley (2023). As I have always been a prolific artist, there is far more left out than included in, but Rachel has cherry picked a selection that brings some clarity to a long career as an artist photographer.

In the hallway, two narrative series—Solothurn, CH (1981) and Shirley, MA (2023)—serve as effective bookends, representing early and late phases of my work in narrative series. Rachel and Jessica chose to include each series in full because this approach has been foundational to my photography. Throughout the early 80s, I returned to the practice of placing pictures beside one another again and again to create a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. From the early series Nantucket, Yountville, Fences and Walls, South Shore, and Mountain Work, this way of photographing reduces the importance of any single image and makes each photograph part of a larger whole. By 1984 I stopped making series works as I made single images in the 8 x 10 view camera format. I returned to series work in 1996 with Portland, ME, Oakesdale, Hershey, Newtown, Cambridge, Bartlett’s Wash, Moab, Summerhill, Fort Pulaski, and many others with Stream and Shirley (2023) being the most recent.

While the two series works practically take over the hallway in the Museum, there is a short break in three black and white pictures. These are vintage prints in that they are darkroom made prints from the 90s using the 8 x 10 camera.

In the show, passing through the gallery at the end of the hallway you are confronted with more of my work, broken up into categories.

As you enter the large gallery at the Museum you are faced with photographs of mine arranged in four categories. The first of these is

#1: Oddities

Much of these photographs are plucked out of series to demonstrate one way I’ve been working on and off for about 25 years. By 2004 I had been promoted to the rank of full professor at Northeastern University, where I taught and was head of the Photography Program. Before that I would describe that my work, my art, was under some scrutiny. After the promotion this was much more passive and could be defined as “observational” at Northeastern. This then became a time of new freedom, which was evidenced in working in color first, then to the Cabela’s work, then to aerial photography, then the photographs from the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia and so on, culminating in this show in the Mannequins photographs made just a few years ago.

A time of growth, divergence, expansion; all happening along with a revolution in photography itself. I was now making huge inkjet prints from my scanned color 8 x 10 negatives at a quality unimaginable ten years earlier. And, no small point, I was working in color whereas the previous 30 years or so had been only in black and white.

There are four photographs in the show made from numerous Cabela’s stores, mostly in the Midwest. They are notable because the company itself awarded me blanket permission to photograph in the early mornings before each store opened. I photographed in 17 stores over a couple of years. Cabela’s was acquired in 2017 and is now owned by Bass Pro Shops. Thank you to the Cabela’s Company.

Last, there is a small black and white print in the show of a frameless mirror hung in the woods with fishing line, made in 1973, the year I graduated with a MFA degree from the RI School of Design. It is notable because it was experimental in that I was trying out an idea to see in two directions at once. This was way before digital and Photoshop.  I wasn’t hired at Northeastern until 1981 so had no structure or discipline imposed on my work and was free to express and experiment to my heart’s content.

#2: Aerials

Many of the very large pieces come from my working aerially.  These also came at a time when the quality of digital photography was getting very very good, allowing prints of large size. My work from a plane started in photographing the wheatfields of the Palouse, in eastern Washington and expanded out to almost everywhere I would photograph.  Probably the largest number of aerial photographs I’ve made is of the islands of Massachusetts that include the most obscure ones of Noman’s Land, off of Martha’s Vineyard, the Elizabeth Islands, and Muskeget and Tuckernuck off of Nantucket. As a side note, I exhibited aerial work of the wheatfield pictures in 2013 at the Danforth Museum in its original location in downtown Framingham. Also, it was the first show Jessica Roscio curated as a new hire at the Museum. Jessica is now the director of the Museum.

#3: Formal Elements

The photographs in this category embody my interest in design. What the subject becomes in a photograph, including shapes formed by light and shadow, as in the Skate Park photographs, or lines, as in the Forti Di Marmi print. Symmetry and asymmetry are important here, as in the Edgartown Beach Club picture and the Hofsos photograph. Finally, figure/ground plays a role in the Shrink Wrapped print that includes the wrapped bow and stern of two boats.

#4: Urban/Rural: Vernacular Walks

Here the curators have chosen work that often shows my proclivity to make my photographs in walking through an area, to examine the creative possibilities in a specific area or neighborhood. This is true in the two prints from Yountville, CA as well as the Peddock’s Island photographs. Again, much of this work in the show is chosen as examples from larger sequential series.

©Neal Rantoul

In conclusion, if you come to my studio in Acton, MA to look at work, as many curators do, you are faced with a row of flat file drawers that contain the analog work I made from the late 60’s on up to about 2004. These are darkroom vintage prints, often mounted on museum board, that I made in black and white by processing the film, exposing the photo paper to light from an enlarger and running the paper through the series of chemicals in trays with a final wash.

This all changed as digital photography became more viable. By 2005 I had my first large format inkjet printer and I was photographing digitally as well. This different way to photograph and make prints is reflected in the numerous portfolios sitting on shelves in wire racks in my studio. I have been a digital photographer for the past 21 years. All this adds up to literally hundreds of bodies of work, either in portfolio form as in prints in a box, or as stacked prints in the flat file cases. From this very large amount of work, the curators, Jessica and Rachel, had to select prints to show at the museum. When I started showing them my work a couple of years ago, I told them I wanted them to make the selection, that I wanted to be curated. This is exactly what they have done and I commend them for taking this daunting task on. Finally, whatever you see of mine in the exhibition, I made, whether it is from 1973 or 2023, that’s 50 years! Often artists feel early career work is not as good as more mature works. I don’t feel that way. My photographs are my photographs, whether early or late and all are either legitimate or illegitimate. – Neal Rantoul

©Neal Rantoul

Curator Jessica Roscio’s essay for the catalog:

The title of this exhibition is “A Life in Photographs,” and represents almost six decades of Neal Rantoul’s photographic work. I have known Neal a small fraction of that time, and when I was first introduced to his work its wide-ranging scope presented a challenge.  Here was a photographer who had studied with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at RISD, and whose infrared photographs of downtown Boston and eerie landscapes on Peddock’s Island defined a particular time and place in my own study of photography. Where to start? Of course, there are a number of entry points into the full body of work; the conundrum is developing the narrative that connects them all.  As this exhibition attests, there are some themes that have carried across bodies of work over the years, while other series stand on their own and represent a specific place and time.  It is my hope that “A Life in Photographs” takes this challenge head on to create the narrative, unite the work, and present a fresh view to a new audience.

I came to work with Neal’s photography through a theme that is one of the cornerstones of his practice—the aerials. They were the subject of the first exhibition I curated at the Danforth Art Museum in 2013.  I was confident, but it is safe to say that I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into.  Prior to our first meeting, where I needed to present both a checklist and a tentative layout of the exhibition, I did a deep dive into Neal’s previous work. The exhibition focused on the most recent Wheat series, representing roughly four years of shooting aerials in the Palouse in Washington State.  As I studied dozens of images, a visual thread for the exhibition began to emerge. While all were striking in terms of color, form, and symmetry, I connected most closely with the ones that were more disorienting, specifically those without horizon lines.  Without a horizon the unmistakable fields of wheat against solid blocks of sky turned upside down. They became abstracted patterns, zig-zagging back and forth, stark cuts in the earth that challenged the viewer to determine which way was up. The lack of horizontality transformed a traditional landscape into a complex and mysterious composition.  My favorite in the Wheat series was a work from 2012, in which a road bisects two fields. Seen from the air, the vastly different colors of each field—one deep green and one a light brown—and the specific cuts in the wheat—a small circular eye and slashes like gills—evoke the image of a giant fish devouring all in its path.

©Neal Rantoul

Without a horizon line, my mind was free to form its own narrative for the landscape and this was an idea I felt worth pursuing.  As a result, I proposed a “no horizon line” checklist, and honestly had no idea what I had started. Despite the fact that this approach was unexpected, Neal didn’t push back, which might have surprised us both. Instead, we curated a horizon-free exhibition, and have continued to work together since. Since 2013 I have visited Neal’s studio many times, and each visit offered the opportunity to look at new work.  Neal is constantly working, and what he is producing now feels as important as the work that came before.  A few years ago, as we started talking about an exhibition that would attempt to represent the scope of his career, the task seemed particularly daunting. A hallmark of Neal’s photographs is the sequencing within a series; how could we convey the feeling of multiple series with a comparably small sampling of images?  This task fell to my colleague Rachel Passannante, curator of the exhibition. One of her advantages is that she was able to approach his entire body of work with fresh eyes. She has divided the exhibition into four main themes, working with the underlying idea that there are specific threads Neal has carried throughout his career no matter how much the subjects have changed.  Individual images would be freed from their series and recontextualized, dissolving time and place to unite the work by placing primacy on the visual.

Moving through the exhibition, there are the aerials, not only the Wheat works, but also starkly color-blocked views of Salt Lake in Utah and breathtaking views of coastal New England.  Neal has always been interested in what he terms “oddities,” a wide-ranging description for where the real and the artificial meet in the landscape.  From the constructed interior views of his Cabela’s series to more natural quirks of light and architecture, Neal has an eye for what is slightly surreal in the landscape. Looking back to inspirations in his early years in photography, compositions that can be distilled to purely formal elements are the largest grouping of works in the exhibition. Lines, curves, angles, and plays of light and color are integral to understanding his process, and photographs that are an homage to formal elements can be found in all of his series.

©Neal Rantoul

Finally, and perhaps my favorite aspect of Neal’s work, are the vernacular walks. This is where the sequencing in each series comes to life.  Neal choses a site, urban or rural, usually something ordinary the viewer might not take a second look at, then documents how he moves through the space. Each image in the series reveals a different part of the landscape. Some are more striking than others, but all depict one crucial element highlighting how the extraordinary appears in the everyday.  There are two full series included in the exhibition, Solothurn (1981) and Shirley (2023).  They represent an early vernacular walk and a more recent foray into the landscape, and are very different bodies of work. Neal’s editing has evolved over the course of his career to the point where he can create a narrative while highlighting just a selected few key points in the landscape.  For me, Shirley is perhaps one of his most distilled walks, capturing the feel of an entire town through views of one street. Yet, 42 years later, it employs similar structural elements as Solothurn, repeating an object from one frame to the next so the viewer feels as if they are walking down the street with the photographer.

My favorite of all of Neal’s vernacular walks is the series Pulaski Motel (2012), a site he encountered as he was driving to the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina for a summer of teaching. The Pulaski Motel is in Virginia, my home state, likely one reason I was drawn to it, but certainly not the only one. The series starts with a foreshortened view of the entrance of the abandoned motel, shot in a way that makes the four columns of the portico exude grandeur in a way that defies reality.  As Neal moves through the site, the motel becomes increasingly commonplace, worn, almost spooky.  Just after its midpoint is a flight of steps to nowhere. The series ends where it begins, with an alternate view inside the columned façade, far more ordinary than extraordinary. Yet, there is something supremely satisfying about taking a walk through this site over the course of fourteen images that I cannot adequately explain. Perhaps because we have all experienced a place like the Pulaski Motel. This site, worse for wear when Neal found it, could be anywhere. In its familiarity, each image articulates the ways in which we imprint ourselves on the landscape, and how the photographer can serve as a translator of those fleeting moments.

©Neal Rantoul

The distance between capturing the fleeting moment and the finished product is lengthy, and I’ve learned much about Neal and his process as this exhibition has come to life.  During studio visits we often discussed the “right now” so I would understand his focus at that time, but I was missing backstory.  I have gained insight into the intricacies of building each series of photographs and the meticulous editing in that process. I have learned that storytelling is more integral to his practice than I originally thought and that is likely due in part to being a member of a family of artists and creatives across disciplines. He had a two-person exhibition with his mother in 1978, and his sister was a sculptor. Perhaps most enlightening for me, I have come to understand Neal’s career as a continual practice of risk-taking.  He moved from painting to photography while studying with some of the most innovative photographers of his day, and that shapes an artist and their ways of seeing. Looking back, it is a privilege to be just a small part of this ongoing story. – Jessica Roscio

©Neal Rantoul

©Neal Rantoul

©Neal Rantoul

©Neal Rantoul

©Neal Rantoul