It is finally spring — a season of hope during a time when, many Americans agree, things are not going great. Among our sources of collective disappointment: Technologies that once promised to promote unity and understanding are instead causing division and cynicism. The wonder and spirit of inclusion that photography once provoked have given way to an era of deepfakes and dehumanization.
For a refresher on how the medium can live up to its promise of connection and empathy, do yourself a favor and go see “Heart & Eye: World Photography by Elliot Burg” at the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery in Montpelier. It’s a retrospective featuring selections from multiple series and projects, primarily made since 2015. That’s when Burg, who lives in Middlesex and is now 77, started working as a freelance photographer, after a law career that included 27 years in the Vermont Attorney General’s Office.
Before that, back in 1986 and ’87, Burg and his family spent a year living in Circuata, a tiny village in Bolivia’s Andes. His wife, portrait artist August Burns, was working with Save the Children there, and Burg was looking after their 3-year-old son. He brought his camera and started making portraits of his new neighbors.
The show opens with a few of these early black-and-white prints. Burg said he often gave his subjects color photos of themselves as well as making the ones on view, since no one else in town had a camera. “It was an incredibly satisfying and moving experience for me,” he said in a recent phone conversation, “both the process of creating the images and then being able to share them with people.”
One of the portraits, of Rita Rueda Renaga, is particularly striking in how it conveys the subject’s personality. The woman sits beside a wall, her light clothes and darker skin and hair contrasting with the neutral concrete. The shadow of a traditional bowler hat hides her eyes; her most prominent feature is a stretch of missing front teeth. Despite these absences, Burg captures her uproarious laugh — just looking at the picture invites a viewer in on the joke.
Resilience and determination run through many of Burg’s images. In a couple of series from 2015 and 2017, those qualities take the form of athleticism. One of Burg’s first projects was documenting the 2015 National Senior Games in Minneapolis, where he captured older track-and-field competitors, including Vermont pole vaulter Flo Meiler, then 81. Burg establishes a rigid geometry with vertical and horizontal poles crossing in the middle of the shot; Meiler breaks it with the strength visible on her face and the tension in her arms.
In the 2017 photo-essay “The Combination,” Burg pictures a younger athlete — Ali Watson, then a University of Vermont student — as she trained for the New England Golden Gloves boxing title. We don’t see Watson’s face, but her ferocity is clear from the way light hits her muscles.
Burg portrays strength of a different sort with images from several projects that hang in a sort of mini-exhibition of their own, “How We Remember,” in the back gallery. These photos, some of his most powerful, were taken on trips to the Gambia, Ukraine, Argentina, Cuba and New Orleans.
The Gambia, a West African nation surrounded by Senegal, spent 22 years under the authoritarian rule of dictator Yahya Jammeh, deposed in 2017. In 2025, a human rights museum called Memory House invited Burg and Burns, his wife, to the country to document survivors’ stories. Though the presentation doesn’t include those narratives, the images feel laden with them.
Viewers immediately confront a portrait of Abdoulie J. Barrow, identified as an ex-soldier. At 32 by 40 inches, the unframed, near-life-size image provokes an immediate sense of connection with the man, whose crisp shirt, beard and eyes pop in bursts of white; the depth of his gaze conveys the weight of his past.
Next to his portrait, printed equally large, a colorful image of a “Mardi Gras Indian” from New Orleans shows a dancer resplendent with a beaded costume and yellow feathers. But in the moment Burg caught, her downcast gaze seems serious and introspective. Though the Mardi Gras images are some of Burg’s most vibrant, showcasing spectacular costumes, their placement beside those taken in the Gambia reminds viewers of the bonds between African, Louisianan and Indigenous American histories and cultures — and of the complexities of celebrating joy that follows deep trauma.
Several of Burg’s series address long historical arcs: authoritarianism in the Gambia, human rights activism in Argentina and a retracing of his Jewish ancestors’ routes through villages in Ukraine. But one photographed closer to home memorializes an event on a smaller time frame: Montpelier’s recovery from the 2023 floods.
Here, Burg broadens his view, showing us portraits not only of individuals but also of community response. The artist has said that the “eye” in the show’s title, “Heart & Eye,” refers to the technical aspects of his craft, rather than the identity of the subject. Those skills are on full view in these black-and-white pictures.
People are infinitely diverse and beautiful.
Elliot Burg
“Chairs” captures a volunteer next to barstools and wire shelves piled on the sidewalk. Unexpectedly for such a grimy, busy scene, the stools make a forest of shining chrome, a promise of salvage, if not salvation. An image of a worker carrying a box out of Buch Spieler Records uses dramatic high contrast to highlight a mountain of trash outside the store. Behind it, a jazz musician pictured on a poster in the window looks like he’s really there, coolly playing on.
While Burg enjoys the “eye” part of his practice, true portraiture — offering a glimpse into someone’s story — is clearly where his “heart” lies.
“People are infinitely diverse and beautiful,” he said. “When I’m approaching someone on the street in Havana or a volunteer in Montpelier after the flood or one of our neighbors in Bolivia, I feel drawn to that person.” ➆
“Heart & Eye: World Photography by Elliot Burg,” on view through June 26 at the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery in Montpelier.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Where the Heart Is | Middlesex photographer Elliot Burg’s portraits convey history, resilience and personality”
This article appears in May 13 • 2026.
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