Photographer Ray Pfortner has an eye for lighthouses. He likes to shoot them at sunrise when their stalwart presence becomes a sculptural focal point in the early morning sky. The sizes and shapes vary, but of all the many lighthouses captured by Pfortner’s lens, there’s one in particular that he favors — the Point Robinson Lighthouse on Maury Island.
Like any artist whose passion for a certain subject draws them back to it time and again, Pfortner has photographed Point Robinson in all kinds of weather in every season of the year, though almost always at daybreak. On a tip from Captain Joe Wubbold, a steward of the Point Robinson Lighthouse, last month Pfortner entered several images of the lighthouse into a juried photography show for The National Lighthouse Museum (NLM) on Staten Island, New York. Of the 550 submissions, Pftorner’s metal print silhouette of Point Robinson with the Fresnel lens aglow in the dawning light, became one of only 70 chosen.
The exhibit, — “Lighthouse Stories and Tales of the Sea,” — opened March 7 and will run through the end of the month.
Though no stranger to juried shows, Pfortner said exhibiting the Point Robinson image in “Lighthouse Stories and Tales of the Sea” held greater meaning for him than most.
“It marks the 100th anniversary of Point Robinson, and it marks a showing of my photography in my hometown of New York City after 23 years away.”
Raised in the boroughs of New York City, Pfortner found solace and joy at the dead-end street where his family lived before moving to northern New Jersey when Pfortner was in the second grade. Such was the impact of nature on Pfortner that his parent’s decision to relocate was based on finding more of the natural world for their son.
“I realized very early on, at age 5 or 6, that nature was powerful,” Pfortner said. “It used to be a curse to say you were a nature boy, but I admired the resilience of nature. I was always out collecting nests, netting butterflies and identifying birds.”
Photography quickly became a parallel passion for Pfortner after his grandfather took him, at age 16, to visit his ancestral roots in Germany. Pfortner brought a good camera and spent three months shooting sites throughout Europe.
During college, Pfortner worked for the state of New Jersey as a naturalist, with the requirement that he try teaching. He was given a projector but no slides to go with it.
“So I had to shoot something I could use (in lectures),” Pfortner said. “I was always shooting for something, like a show on deer or beaver. Those two things (the trip to Germany and the naturalist job) propelled me, and I’ve not stopped shooting ever since.”
In college, Pfortner’s love of nature first led him into a pre-med track at Yale University, then back again to the greater arena of biology. Following a graduate degree in forestry from Duke University, Pfortner worked for the EPA in New York City, but all the while his photography came into play in his work, shooting EPA superfund sites or aerials of forestry land.
Twenty-one years ago, Pfortner and his wife Nancy Wing moved to the island, drawn by the abundance of nature and prime photo-op sites.
“Tramp Harbor is my favorite place to shoot, followed by the lighthouse,” he said. “I like the lighthouse’s scale. It is made grand by its surroundings and history of 100 years. Point Robinson juts out so far east, it gives me a beautiful view throughout the year.”
