Exciting program at the BGA
Saturday, May 3rd the BGA (Belmont Gallery of Art) will open at 1:00 PM. At 2:00, Dr. George Mutter will take us on a journey through time. This will be a one hour, in-person presentation which is free and open to the public. Due to limited capacity at the gallery please RSVP to reserve your seat as soon as possible.
Immerse yourself in a series of exotic and unfamiliar settings faithfully captured over the last 150 years of 3-dimensional photography. A series of tableaux are thematically organized to reflect common experiences of community, danger, beauty, amusement, and innovation around the world and back in time. This is a unique virtual adventure which, by transcending social, environmental, and technological differences allows each viewer to discover the essence of what it is to be human. Images are selections from over 28,000 recently digitized original, 19th and 20th century, stereophotographs in the vaults at Photoarchive3D. Most have not been seen by the public in the last century, and all will be projected in three dimensions as originally intended.
Dr. George Mutter, co-Founder, Photoarchive3D
George Mutter and Bernard Fishman have over five decades of combined experience searching for, and studying, historic stereophotographs. The prospect of bringing these to a broad audience through digitization launched what has become a fruitful collaboration. The result is a freshly digitized archive of approximately 35,000 original stereo images covering many subjects, most of which have not been seen by the public in the last century.
George Mutter trained in medicine at Harvard and Columbia and is currently a Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. He is a prolific scientist and educator, having authored over 120 scientific papers, and delivered numerous invited lectures internationally. Bernard Fishman is an Egyptologist trained at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. He worked in Egypt with the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago before becoming a nonprofit institution administrator. He is presently the Director of the Maine State Museum in Augusta, Maine.
WHEN: May 3, 2025 @ 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
WHERE: Belmont Gallery of Art
Town Hall Complex, Homer Municipal Building; 19 Moore St, 3rd floor
Belmont Center, MA 02478
In February of 2005 I took the first of multiple trips to Afghanistan as a volunteer with the Business Council for Peace (
Through my work with Bpeace I came to know Rangina Hamidi, an Afghan-American woman who lives and works in Kandahar, the former Taliban capital city that is still a Taliban stronghold. Her program empowers women by giving them paid employment producing unique Kandahari embroidery, something they can do at home and without breaking cultural norms. Through her work she has come to know well and be trusted by these women. She and I have embarked on a long-term project to tell these women’s stories via a book, print pieces and multimedia features, which are now in progress. By collaborating with Rangina I am in the fortunate position of having access to women who are largely invisible in their own culture, and have the privilege of bringing their stories to the West where they are all but unknown.
The photographs in this exhibition are selected from the above projects, and show the daily life behind the headlines in Afghanistan. As a photojournalist and storyteller I try to convey these stories with integrity and honesty, and in the process I also hope to make art. The images in this collection are those that I feel have come the closest to succeeding at this.