. . . beyond design and location, the real draw to the Seaworthy Gallery is of course the artwork on display. [Jeff] Serusa is a photographer who uses an 8-by-10 large format camera to produce images from long exposures that go beyond the ordinary confines of nautical art. He prints his photographs with large, wide-format printers onto either colorfast watercolor paper imported from Germany or on archival quality canvas, and he frames them himself. The result is a body of work that is iconic, masculine and direct, and, as art, very reasonably priced considering the time and work that has gone into construction.

His subjects are often ships, both in water and in various stages of repose, or else are related directly to sailing in some way. The enormous images are high in contrast, with liberal use of deep, pure black. Mr. Serusa uses natural light exclusively, which forces him to spend tens of hours trying to get a given shot just right. One image of the Aquinnah lighthouse, hanging right behind his desk, is particularly remarkable in the way that the subject is also the only light source in the photograph.

Because Mr. Serusa’s images are so large and so arresting, it is easy to think that they may have been manipulated in some way using computer software. Not so, says the artist. ‘I’m actually color-blind, so I really can’t fiddle around with the pieces. If I did, the colors might end up all wrong. I just trust the camera,’ he said.” – by Cooper Davis, Vineyard Gazette, Friday, November 21, 2008