ongoing

There’s a lovely pop song from the ‘80s by Tommy Keene called “Places That Are Gone,” which touches upon memory and change – how we can cherish the former and resent much of the latter. You might say that’s a theme behind a photo exhibit Christine Elise, 43, has at the 2nd  Cup Café in Allston, It started Feb. 22 and should run a month. If you know Elise’s name you may recall her from the heyday of Boston punk rock – her dad, Down Avenue’s Alvan Long, would take her to shows, and in high school she dated SS Decontrol singer, Springa. More likely, you know Elise, who left Boston for Los Angeles at age 19, as an actress – she played Emily Valentine on 12-episode arc of “Beverly Hills 90210,” did a year on “ER” and can currently be seen on HBO’s “Tell Me You Love Me.” She just completed an Indy comedy in Pennsylvania called “Route 30,” with Dana Delaney. She’s an actress “full time,” she says, “and photography is my hobby.” But she’s back here in Boston as a photographer, putting up photos see took during five cross-country trips – L.A. to Brooklyn – in 2003-4. She didn’t want to fly. She had two old dogs, Dempsey and Friday, who couldn’t make that kind of trip. (Sadly, the dogs are now deceased.)  Elise made the most of her trip, by shooting pictures of the American heartland.  “I’ve always photographed heavily,” she told us, “and digital cameras have made it easy to overshoot for free, it doesn’t cost you a million dollars to see what you got. So I’d shoot from my driver’s seat, sometimes stop and walk around. There’s something really liberating about packing the car and hitting the road and there’s nothing you can do ‘til you get there, however, long that trip takes. There’s no hurrying back and no access to things that tie you down to tedium of day-to-day life.”

What she came up with as a photographer: “I would say it’s roadside Americana, where the corporate footprint that’s happening to any city doing well. Any character is being erased by the superstores, Costcos, Wal-Marts and Starbucks. Those ‘fly-over’ states, as they’re called, are not doing so well. It’s depressed and it’s preserved.” There’s a downside to the desolation, to the poverty, of course. “But,” Elise also says, “I\ think it’s a great thing too see those mom and pop stores.” (By the way, Elise finds it heartbreaking what B.U. has done to gentrify Kenmore Square, too.)
“I don’t think the photos in my show are breaking ground,” she says. “They’re not challenging, with a profound message, I think they’re pretty sentimental photographs of America. / Many people are doing it. There are photo books on broken-down motels, drive-ins, etc … I’m glad all that stuff’s been documented.”
Her parents nurtured her interest in photography. For one, they wanted her, too, to be an artist. For another, “my mother (Gail Rush) photographed my punk rock period and I’m incredibly grateful for them. When I left home, I became a photography junkie to document my own experience.”

111 Brighton Ave., Allston, 617-782-8282