Winter Dunes
Ross Dube’s A Quiet Resilience Captures the Fragile Beauty of Provincetown
by Steve Desroches
Winter. Provincetown in the wintertime is a special experience. The four seasons are certainly distinct in New England, but on the Outer Cape those differences are extreme. There are the crowds, or lack thereof. The weather. The temperature. But an overlooked aspect of the change of seasons is that while creativity and art happen year-round, winter is often the most prodigious season when it comes to artistic productivity. There’s more time, more freedom, less restrictions and distractions. It is also absolutely beautiful.
It’s photographer Ross Dube’s favorite time to shoot. The starkness presents nature and the built environment in its truest form, stripped down from the lushness and golden light of summer and fall. In July the town may looked freshly painted, but come January you can see the gorgeous patina. The fragility of it all is also laid bare. It’s the inspiration behind A Quiet Resilience, a show at Alden Gallery featuring Dube’s photographs of landscapes and buildings in the Cape Cod National Seashore.
“It’s all about the landscapes and the structures and their resiliency you can clearly see,” says Dube. “The impact of the weather over centuries essentially. Everything is just trying to survive.”
Almost 90 percent of the land mass of Provincetown is in some form of a conservation restriction, with the largest open space land owner being the National Park Service. It provides an incredible opportunity to observe nature in action as even those areas set aside for recreation, like bike trails and hiking paths, allow access to the wildness of the Outer Cape and the cycle of life inherent in nature. It also shows changes in the environment and ecosystems of the area. There’s the outbreak of Beech Leaf Disease, which has hit Cape Cod and has had a noticeable effect on Beech Forest. And then there’s storm damage, most notably the substantial amount of trees lost to the ferocious blizzard that hit at the end of the February. While not every weather event is due to climate change, the effects of global warming are clear, particularly out on the Outer Cape where life is so tightly entwined with the natural world.
“The one big thing everyone is noticing is the storms that are hitting Provincetown in greater frequency,” says Dube.
While Dube’s work and show document the current state of the Cape Cod National Seashore as a reminder that even while protected, true conservation is only as strong as the commitment of the current generation to continue the legacy of stewardship. And A Quiet Resilience is an artistic approach to advocate for our coastal environment. The show is part of Dube’s thesis as he works toward his MFA at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. The low-residency program allows him to live year-round with his husband in Provincetown, where he is also an intern at Alden Gallery as part of his degree requirements.
There’s so much more to A Quiet Resilience than the subject matter. There’s also the process. Dube worked in platinum palladium printing, a method developed in the 19th century in which photographic prints are made on hand-coated paper using UV light to create images where the metals used in the process are embedded in the fiber of the paper. It makes for sharper contrasts. For Dube it also is a more hands-on approach to his art. Often current photography is digital and then printed via inkjet on paper.
“That’s never really been that attractive to me,” says Dube. “There’s no craftsmanship in that in my opinion. That’s what’s missing to me. That step where you’re involved in the development of the image. That’s the step, the process, where for me I find it fulfilling.”
Dube also finds his life in Provincetown to be fulfilling and a major inspiration to his work and process. The dunes, the surf, the vast sweeping beaches, and the dune shacks that dot the terrain of the Province Lands are all his muses. A native of the New Jersey shore Dube feels most at home by the ocean. The history that emanates from the weathered buildings of Provincetown, the gnarled branches of the tree reaching out from the fine sand, and the stark loneliness of a ranger’s station or a houseboat riding the ripples of Provincetown Harbor. Like many artists before him Dube finds Provincetown an infinite resource for creative pursuits even as he stresses that out natural world is not an endless asset, but rather something that needs to be cared for and maintained.
“Definitely, the fact Provincetown is almost 90 percent Seashore is attractive to me,” says Dube. “Not much of the East Coast is like that. Living next to the ocean is important to me. And this place is important.”
A Quiet Resilience featuring the photographs of Ross Dube is up at the Alden Gallery, 423 Commercial St., Provincetown, May 8 – 18. An opening reception will be held Friday, May 8 from 6 to 8 p.m. For more information call 508.487.4230 or visit aldengallery.com.
