A retrospective of travel photography by the late Caroline Littell of Alfred will be on view Friday, June 12 through Wednesday, July 15 on the main floor of Alfred University’s (AU) Herrick Memorial Library. The public is invited to an opening reception for “Camera Without Borders – the World of Caroline Littell” from 2 to 4 p.m. June 12.
The library’s summer hours are from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday. The library is closed weekends.
Littell was a freelance photographer whose images illustrated articles on tourism and travel in several dozen newspapers and magazines in this country and in Europe. For more than 30 years, major publications featuring her photography included The Los Angeles Times, Travel & Leisure Magazine, The San Francisco Examiner, The Chicago Sun Times, The Milwaukee Journal, The Athens (Greece) News, The Denver Post, The New Orleans Times Picayune and Ocean Navigator Magazine.
In Western New York, her work appeared regularly in The Buffalo News, The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, The Hornell Sunday Spectator, The Olean Times Herald, and The Alfred Sun.
The 60 black-and-white photographs to be displayed at Herrick portray landscapes and people in locations ranging from Greece, Colombia, Thailand, and Burma to the American West and the plains of East Africa.
Born in Egypt of English parents, Littell was educated in England and later studied languages in France, Spain, Austria, and Greece. She immigrated to the United States in 1962, moving to Alfred in 1968.
As a photographer, Littell was entirely self-taught except for a brief period of instruction at AU. She worked for the most part in film, experimenting with digital formats only at the end of her career. But whether in film or in digital, her photography displayed a technical mastery of a demanding craft as well as an unerring eye for balanced composition.
Like Henri Cartier-Bresson, the French pioneer of modern photojournalism, Littell had the uncanny ability to capture on film that decisive moment of facial expression or body attitude that defines mood or personality.
Littell died earlier this year in Pasadena, CA, after a long illness.