Stars in Our Sky Series #6

Amanda Merullo's photography

Stars in Our Sky #6

Amanda Merullo, photography

Arches National Park, 2013

This month we’re featuring the work of someone dear to both of us!

By practice and passion, Amanda Merullo (wife of Pa, mother of Zan) is a documentary photographer.  Completely self-taught, she began her career shooting events and programs at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, then moved over to that town’s world famous museum, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.  There she photographed the Institute’s amazing collection and frequent events, and specialized in making a photographic record of the the repair and retouching work done in the Clark’s Conservation Laboratory.  That work entailed photographing the painstaking process of conserving paintings by artists such as Monet, Sargent, Renoir, Cassatt, and many others.  After seven years there, Amanda traveled overseas with her husband and documented events and displays on United States Information Agency exhibitions that moved all across the former USSR, and showed to over a million visitors in places like Tashkent, Irkutsk, Kiev, Tbilisi, Donetsk, Moscow, and Rostov-on-Don. Back home again, she spent seven years at Historic Deerfield Museum in Deerfield, Massachusetts, working until the day before she gave birth to the first of her two daughters at age 41.  She then switched careers to that of a stay-at-home mother, taking on very occasional photography jobs for weddings and other celebrations, making wonderful portraits of her children (a second daughter was born when Amanda was 45) and indulging her number-one passion that continues to this day:  travel photography. To follow her work, friend Amanda on Facebook.

ZAN and PA:  Mom/Amanda, what inspires you?

AMANDA:  I am inspired by being in new places, but I also enjoy making my eyes search for new elements within even the most familiar locales.  Wherever I find myself, I look for color, patterns, designs, and artistry in nature or the man-made world.  Another particular interest of mine is capturing people in ordinary street situations, children at play, seniors conversing, women and men going about their daily business.  There’s something magical in all that for me.

Woman with hennaed hands—on the train en route to Naples, Italy. June 19, 2019.

Street Market with Man on his balcony, Naples, Italy. October 16, 2019.

Cobblestone street in Naples, Italy.

Infiorata of Bolsena, Street decorated with flower petals. Bolsena, Italy. June 13, 2019.

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