Wednesday, August 27, 2003

By Grace Rishell, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

When Kathleen Kvortek graduated this spring from Johns Hopkins University, she received a bachelor's degree and the university's 2003 Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts for her photo essay on Pittsburgh.

	Kathleen Kvortek of Oakdale holds her photo essay, "Still Dreaming: K.M. Kvortek's Pittsburgh Project." The work earned her the 2003 Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts from Johns Hopkins University. (Bob Donaldson/Post-Gazette)

Established in 1983, the Sudler Prize is an annual award of $1,500 for a graduating senior or fourth-year medical student who does not plan to pursue a career in the arts but displays artistic talent. The winner is chosen by a committee comprising some of the college's faculty and staff members.

"It was quite a surprise to win," said the Oakdale resident and West Allegheny High School graduate, who plans to use her prize money to buy a computer.

Kvortek majored in the history of science, medicine and technology at Johns Hopkins, which is located in Baltimore.

Her photographic essay started out as a student project for one of her classes.

She chose Pittsburgh as her subject "for my own benefit and feelings of nostalgia. I think I was trying to capture a lot of things that were changing, such as Horne's Christmas tree. No one can understand who hasn't been here. But my story combined with the image is something they can appreciate."

Her inspiration came from a visit she and her mother, Colleen, made several years ago to the Carnegie Museum of Art to view the work of the late W. Eugene Smith.

Smith, once a star photographer for Life magazine, came to Pittsburgh in the mid-1950s on a freelance assignment. He was to shoot a hundred pictures of the city for a coffee table book. What started out as a job became a fixation.

He ended up taking more than 17,000 negatives over a three-year period, combing the area from Bloomfield to the Hill District to Mount Washington for photos that would portray an American city at midcentury.

The Carnegie exhibit "was my first brush with Smith," Kvortek said. "I loved the pictures aesthetically, and I could recognize some of the locations."

She decided to take some pictures from the same vantage point as Smith to record how the locales had changed over the years.

This past New Year's Day, Kvortek, accompanied by her father, William, set out with her camera. The weather was rainy and cold. "That's Pittsburgh. It was a great backdrop," she said. "What I found was amazing. Many of the buildings and landmarks Smith photographed had been either renovated or destroyed since the 1950s."

She snapped more than 100 photos, including shots from Grandview Avenue on Mount Washington, the Waterfront in Homestead and the former Mellon Bank, Downtown, which in recent years had been turned into a department store.

The first part of her book was "a comparison of mine with Smith's work," Kvortek said. She scanned some of Smith's images on a computer scanner "and juxtaposed them next to mine, giving him credit."

Smith's photos were in black and white, while Kvortek's are in sepia "so they would stand out from each other," she said.

The book's second section was a series of images Smith couldn't have captured because they weren't around during his sojourn in Pittsburgh or he was unaware of their existence. It features scenes of PPG Place and "what's left of Forbes Field," Kvortek said.

The book's third segment is a combination of six photos and accompanying essays on local sites that are special to Kvortek in some way.

One is a picture of the old Fulton Building, now a hotel. "I took piano lessons there when I was young," she recalled.

At that time, the building was full of offices. Kvortek never had an opportunity to see what was behind the office doors. But while she was waiting in the hall for her lessons, she had a chance to meet and converse with the people who were employed there, and through those conversations, began to imagine what kinds of activities went on inside the rooms and the dance studio located on the same floor. She enjoyed "how odd the people were and in a good way."

She also learned to appreciate some of the architectural features of the building.

When Kvortek this year returned to Johns Hopkins for her last semester, the pictures were ready to be organized into a book. Kvortek said she worked with a professor of photography who gave her advice on technical matters, such as "whether the image was too bright or needed more contrast." The professor encouraged Kvortek to submit the finished product to the Sudler competition.

"I am more than proud," of winning the Sudler, Kvortek said. "I am very pleased that people are taking out of the book what I put into it. They said they felt it was moving and evocative and showed why I like Pittsburgh so much. That's the greatest compliment, so I feel motivated to expand my project."

She plans to contact Smith's family to see if they'll give her permission to print Smith's pictures in a more comprehensive version of her book, using more of her photos and some of Smith's. She'd like to see it published professionally.

Kvortek said she was able to use Smith's pictures for her class assignment because it was an educational project, but in order to have them printed professionally she would have to obtain the family's consent.

Kvortek just four years ago had every intention of becoming a doctor, but "I was in one of the larger medical classes" at Johns Hopkins "and I realized that wasn't my interest. I loved my archeology course more.

"I do love the humanities and literature, plus I enjoy the physical sciences, so I took all of those and near Eastern studies and the history of science. I like looking critically at experiments from a historical point of view and the changes in medicine. I like looking at history with science as a frame and in the context of technological progress through a specific window," for example, "looking back at the Industrial Revolution here and in England and asking why."

She plans to be a museum curator, "hopefully for some large institution as the Smithsonian. I love their American history museum."

Kvortek is a recipient of the Hagley Fellowship to attend the University of Delaware, where she'll study for a master's degree in history. She'll also earn a museum studies certificate while interning at the Hagley Museum in Wilmington, Del. The Hagley showcases exhibits of 19th-century American life and industry.

When she gets free time, she likes to paint and sculpt.

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