From an early age, Rick Colson was immersed in photography. In fact, he likes to say he was born in a photography studio.
He grew up in Boston near a venerable commercial photography business, FayFoto, founded and owned by his father, Lewis. By 14, the younger Colson had become serious with a camera himself, and he later studied photo illustartion at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Colson, now living in Northampton after many years in eastern Massachusetts, would go on to a varied career that included advertising and marketing, product management, printing and even social work (after going back to college to study clinical psychology). He would work for Polaroid and other businesses connected with the photo industry, but his own picture taking became more of a hobby, pursued in his spare time and when traveling.
But now, at age 65, he’s returned to his original love of photography as art form, opening a gallery in Easthampton designed to showcase work that’s both original and affordable.
Colson has also partnered with a Boston-area museum, the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, that uses part of his space, in Eastworks, as a satellite gallery, bringing additional photo work to the Valley.
“It’s a real privilege to be associated with [the Griffin Museum],” Colson said during a recent interview in his gallery. “It gives me instant credibilty.”
Colson, who opened his nonprofit space late last summer, also returned to his artistic roots after a difficult personal loss. His late wife, Stephanie Colson-Stuhr, died in 2010 after a prolonged battle with cancer. Colson had become his wife’s full-time caregiver during her illness, and her death “radically changed my perspective on what was important in life,” he said.
“It made me realize that life has limits — it can be over before you expect it — and I needed to find a new focus,” he added. “I started thinking about what my passion had been when I was younger, and I kept coming back to photography.”
Colson has just opened his newest show, “The All-Too-Human Condition,” which offers portraits of people by over 20 photographers from the U.S. and abroad. The exhibit’s theme was inspired by “The Family of Man,” a famous U.S. photo exhibition from the 1950s on the ties that bind people from different cultures.
During his past work in advertising and product management, Colson said he came to work with and befriend many commerical photographers — and virtually all of them, he noted, had an artistic portfolio as well.
That’s part of what he’s hoping to tap into with his gallery. “There’s an enormous amount of great photography out there, but not a lot of places where you can see it.”
More to the point, he’s specifically set up his gallery as a nonprofit so that he can return more to photographers for any sales — at least 60 percent — than they would get from most other shows. He says most galleries take at least 50 percent, and usually more, from any sales of photos from their shows.
In one of his past shows, “Halloween in Bucktown,” Colson gave all the money from sales to the photographer, Marc Hauser, who has struggled with serious medical problems — and bills — following a 2007 accident. Hauser has produced portraits of many actors, athletes and other public figures such as Julia Roberts, Michael Jordan, Sophia Loren and Woody Allen,
At the same time, said Colson, he wants the art in his shows to be affordably priced.
“There are generally two kinds of [photo] galleries,” he said. “One sells images to well-heeled clients, and the other sells to collectors … I like the idea of accessible art that doesn’t cost you $1,000 and that you hang on your wall where everyone can see it.”
He also offers a number of educational workshops on subjects ranging from portrait photography and health and safety when using traditional photographic methods, which use chemicals to develop pictures. His wife was exposed to heavy levels of DDT when growing up in southern California, and this may have contributed to her cancer, he says.
His wife’s illness also motivated Colson to develop a small printing business, Eco Visual Lab, that prints with recycled paper and ink that are completely free of acids, dyes, solvents or any other toxins. He runs the business from his gallery space and combines its profits with funds from photo sales and underwriters, such as Cannon, to finance his shows.
Some 25 percent of his gallery space is reserved for exhibits put on by the Griffin Museum of Photography. The museum, opened in 1992, is named after Arthur Griffin, a Massachusetts photographer from the mid-20th century who worked for Time and Life magazines and was an early pioneer in the use of color film.
The museum operates three galleries in its Winchester location and has four satellite galleries in the Boston area. Museum director and lead curator Paula Tognarelli, who met Colson several years ago in Boston, says working with him gives the museum a valuable presence in western Massachusetts.
Tognarelli, who has exhibited some of Colson’s work in the Winchester museum, calls Colson “a very creative guy who’s had a lot of experience in different things.”
Colson has also displayed some of his own work in his gallery. In “Secrets in Plain Sight,” he offers pictures of odd houses, vacant businesses and other drab landscapes — portraits of both ennui and dark humor — to which he has appended captions that read like lines from a Raymond Carver story.
In one, what appears to be an abandoned brick building in snowy northern New York state stands next to a sign for Interstate 87 and a local highway. The caption reads “Left, right, or straight ahead, it didn’t make two (expletive) worth of difference. She just wished it wasn’t so friggin cold.”
For a future exhibition, he plans to tap some of those commerical photographers he’s worked with over the years to showcase their more personal and artistic work. “I think people in this area will appreciate what we have to offer,” he said. “[The Valley] is clearly a place where people appreciate art, and I want to make this gallery a home for the art of photography.”
“The All-Too-Human-Condition” will be on exhibit at the Colson Gallery through April 9. Normal hours for the gallery are 1-5 p.m. Friday and Saturday and by special appointment. For more information on the new exhibit and the gallery’s other offerings, visit www.colsongallery.com.