Milton Rogovin is a 98-year-old Buffalo leftie who took up photography when his optometry business fell apart after he'd been hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1958. The heart of his work — and his 29 photos on view at Gallery Kayafas — is his four-decade portrait of the cool cats, stern moms, and stylish ladies of Buffalo's impoverished Lower West Side. The years have given his black-and-white shots the allure of nostalgia, but in the past I've gone back and forth about his artistry — sometimes it feels dull. This time, though, I'm swayed by his straight-ahead documentary vision. In his Quartets, he returns to the same persons again and again over the years. Parents become grandparents. A young couple with an infant become in time a tired old woman alone. The photos are often heartbreaking records of how poverty plus years can break up couples and homes, steal your health, ruin your looks, and grind down hope.
Read Greg Cook's blog at gregcookland.com/journal.
Related:
Musical acrobats, Bang bang, Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage, More 
- Musical acrobats
Having Antonio Sanchez explain the difference between "straight 8's" and "swing 8's" is a bit like having Einstein explain long division — total waste of the dude's time.
- Bang bang
Misaki Kawai's new solo show marks the Boston debut of her two-dimensional works and the first opportunity for New England audiences to see her as a bona fide painter. Opening February 21 at LaMontagne Gallery, " Misaki Kawai : Kung Fu Forest."
- Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage
How is it that Fallout 3, last year's most densely packed game, still left many players wanting more?
- Study shows country music is still just awful
You know what I haven't done in a while, for plenty of very good reasons? Listened to the whole cotton-pickin' Billboard Hot Country chart! Yee-haw!
- William Friedkin at the Harvard Film Archive
However we may still praise, and therefore bury, the American New Wave, we do still run the genuine risk of slipping down the wormhole slicked by present-moment techno obsessions and amnesiac entertainment-media narcissism.
- Dance, Monkey!: Rob Crean
Rob Crean has secret talents
- Review: Push
Teens with special powers? A government conspiracy?
- Review: Friday the 13th (2009)
Jason Voorhees's bloody hands have developed green thumbs.
- Press releases: Confusion and upset
The big Maine media news is that Central Maine Morning Sentinel executive editor Eric Conrad fired reporter Joel Elliott on January 26. (Disclosure: Elliott is a friend and a fellow member of the Maine Pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.)
- The wrong change
A man driving a red sport-utility vehicle pulled up a few feet from the Cambridge Street firehouse in Inman Square.
- In a Dream
If you find yourself groaning through the first five minutes of Jeremiah Zagar's Academy Award-shortlisted feature documentary about his artist father Isaiah, you might just be its target audience.
- Less
Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Entertainment, Music, Tufts University, More
, Entertainment, Music, Tufts University, Music Festivals, Painting, Visual Arts, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Montserrat College of Art, Montserrat College of Art, Less
