Le Journal

St. Augustine flooded the scoreboard with MOC qualifying times in a dominant win over Cherry Hill East.

To those of us among the great unwashed, the rarified world of fine art photography may seem like something only found in New York City and other cultural meccas. However, a pair of Bay Area photographers has decided Alameda can be a part of the sepia tone scene as well. Since July of this year, the duo of Jeff Heyman and Sharonda Grant (who goes by “Westeigh”) have operated Frame1A Gallery and Photographic Salon, a tiny one-room space that also spills out into a hallway, just east of downtown Alameda in an old house that’s also home to medical and other offices on Central Avenue. It ain’t the exactly The Whitney (whitney.org), but it’s a start. The two photographers met through an exhibit they both had photos in at San Francisco’s de Young Museum in 2023 and hit it off.From there they started doing photo workshops together at Alameda’s Frank Bette Center for the Arts and realized they both “cared about the photo community and how we wanted to make something for people who are not getting their work on the walls,” says Frame1A gallery co-owner Heyman. In other words, they wanted a photo gallery. Initially, they were considering opening up in Carmel, often referred to as the birthplace of West Coast photography and one of the world’s fine art photography meccas where Ansel Adams prints can be had for thousands of dollars. However, the pair’s grand plan was derailed after a tour of the area where they both returned feeling the work available was devoted soley to “old masterwork. It’s all Ansel Adams and (Edward) Weston. And the photos cost a lot. So it probably wouldn’t be a space for new, upcoming emerging photographers,” says Heyman. “Photographs printed on surfboards isn’t our idea of photography.” That’s when the pair decided to develop a small space for emerging Bay Area photographers. “We were feeling if we had the opportunity to have a small space to show emerging photographers that are local to the Bay Area, we would love to do that,” says Heyman. Then serendipitdously, the Central Avenue space became available. Westeigh, who works as a financial fraud investigator, describes it as an “intimate viewing space.” An Oakland native, she is a self-taught photographer and San Francisco State molecular biology graduate who got her first camera in the shape of Spiderman at age 6 and has been snapping away ever since. Considering that most people today only take photos on their phones and never print them out, she says “a lot of people don’t take photos seriously until it’s the last remembrance of a loved one.” Under the current circumstances fine art photography may seem like a lost art, but not to Westeigh. Lately, she has even been going in to her darkroom to print out photos taken on film. “It’s very tactile. I’ve been printing in the dark room lately, and it takes me about 30 minutes to develop a roll of film. And then after I develop it, it has to dry, and then I can go and print it. It’s a process. It might take you an hour to get a photo,” says Westeigh. “It’s a magical experience to see it appear. It’s like something that was in your mind on film.” Heyman comes from a more traditional art photography background. He also studied at San Francisco State, earning his bachelor of fine arts degree in 1981 in fine art photography. A retired U.N. and Peralta Community College District public information officer, Heyman took photos in far-off locales like Bosnia while with the United Nations. Frame1A welcomes all photography methods for exhibition consideration, but their upcoming show is only for “shot-on-film” photos, which has hit a nerve. “The next show in February is an all-film show,’ says Heyman. “Thirty people entered, and the only criteria was you had to shoot it on film in the last year. You could print it any way you want in the dark room, but it had to be shot on film.” Another feather in the cap for the small but mighty gallery is their upcoming participation in next year’s Carmel Center for Photographic Arts…