Gold/Smith Gallery will be featuring the digitally mastered black and white and color photography by New York photographer David Wolk, Sept. 4 through Oct. 15. An open house reception for the artist will be held on Friday, Sept. 5 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Wolk has been a frequent Southport sojourner all of his adult life; his family have been residents on Townsend Gut for generations.

Wolk's first camera was his father's Miranda D, which the two shared. At 14 he won a Cherry Blossom Festival photography contest, which led to his being hired at two local newspapers, The Belleville Times and The Nutley Sun. Wolk's assignments included shooting high school sports, local civic events and, from time to time, photographing accidents as requested by the police.

“To do this, the newspapers loaned me several Nikon cameras, lenses and flash, great equipment too expensive for my family to afford,” Wolk said. “I was paid a dollar for each photograph printed until they started printing many more images. Then I was paid $10 a week. This arrangement continued for the rest of high school. My father and I worked in the darkroom together making prints and he and I shared photography for the rest of his life.”

Wolk writes about his work:

“The advent of ever improving digital cameras, Photoshop and extremely high-quality digital printers has allowed me the privacy, focus and facility to become fully immersed in a process of producing images; the act of photography, the process of seeing and working the image, the physical shift when the image is printed. I experience this as an opportunity to be in front of a personal unknown ... to question; black & white, color, cropping, representation, abstraction, shading, saturation, print size, even framing the print — what do these 'mean?'

Come and meet this very talented artist at the gallery, located at 41 Commercial Street in Boothbay Harbor. Wolk can be reached by calling the gallery, 207-633-6252. Gold/Smith Gallery is open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday noon to 5 p.m.