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Things are getting Weird at the Noyes
Museum seeking photos for exhibit assembled by publishers of Weird N.J.
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Mark Moran has been partially responsible for putting weirdness in print for 15 years.
Back then, he committed to black-and-white Ilford film to capture the faces, scenes and structures of New Jersey's backwaters, and began submitting hard-copy photographs to Mark Sceurman's newsletter, Weird N.J.
But ask him to define that weirdness, to put his finger on it, and he stops short. All he can give are shining examples of that distilled eccentricity.
A carnivalesque cartoon face looming out of a roadside fairground. Or the interior of a vast, decaying crypt, strewn with bones and a lone beer can.
"A lot of weirdness is in the eye of the beholder," he sums up.
That enigma would not normally pose a problem. As he puts it, you know weird when you see it.
But the next seven weeks ensure he and Sceurman must crunch criteria, to determine exactly what weirdness means in a whole new setting.
For the pair - now collaborative partners in Weird N.J., the magazine with 35 issues and a mailing list of 30,000 - have teamed with the curators at the Noyes Museum in the Oceanville section of Galloway Township to spew weirdness into a gallery setting. Photographers, amateur or pro, can submit up to three pictures via e-mail before Aug. 7, for inclusion in a Noyes show in October and possible publication in the magazine.
"We've always relied on an army of readers," says Moran. Starting as a Xeroxed newsletter, the publication struggled to include many pictures.
Things got easier once readers got their hands on digital cameras, he said.
"We've known they go out scavenging for stuff to e-mail us."
Those submissions stack up in the magazine's Bloomfield headquarters. A few languish. But many make it into the mag's illustrious laser-printed pages.
South of there 110 miles, Dorrie Papademetriou first hooked into the magazine's aesthetic two years ago.
As exhibition manager at the Noyes, she said, "I just kept noticing a quality in a few works by a photographer I knew."
"I called it 'weirdness.' Which I guess can mean a lot of things," she explained.
"But I felt I couldn't have an exhibit called "Weird..." without involving the magazine."
Papademetriou helpfully prints out the dictionary definition of weird, the word.
"Its first line says, 'of fate, destiny,'" she reads. Below, she adds, "supernatural, eerie."
When the exhibit submission period closes, Moran and Sceurman have agreed to travel to the Noyes to help thrash out a curated selection. On the drive, they'll pass through towns that have given the magazine that supernatural element in spades. In its ongoing fascination with the folklore of the Jersey Devil, the magazine's newest issue highlights the 66.6 mile-marker on the Garden State Parkway, through Ocean County. The sign has been stolen more than four times in two years.
But Moran also knows he'll be returning to the scene of some of the magazine's great cultural finds - including the concrete ship Atlantus, an abortive attempt at World War I seafaring, that broke free of her moorings and ran aground off Sunset Beach in Cape May.
Or the stomping ground of Wilberforce Sylvester, who adorned his Pleasantville home top to bottom with folkloric murals.
But against those classics might sit the new exhibit submissions.
"Look at this one!" explains Papademetriou, pausing mid-flip through some of the e-mailed works, to study the scene of a child's boat floating on a seemingly stagnant lake.
"It's so creepy," she says, casting a professional's eye over the composition. "Can you imagine this lake ever being alive?"
As much as Papademetriou assesses each scene as a curator of artworks, Moran knows elevating Weird NJ images to a formal setting accomplishes something, well, weird.
"People drive by these things every single day," he explains. "Sometimes they're very temporary; others have been sitting there, part of the landscape."
Just as Andy Warhol transformed the way the world looked at a can of soup by hanging its portrait on a wall, Moran says, "Take these real photographs and hang them in a gallery, and something strange happens. You strip away context, but you force people to think harder about that context and their own surroundings."
From the dozens of submissions sent to the Noyes from across the state on the day the competition opened, executive director Michael Cagno deduces the collaboration has broadened word of the Noyes Museum to many young photographers-slash-art-enthusiasts throughout the state.
And whatever the working definition of the weirdness found inside Weird NJ's pages, Moran says habitual readers start to channel its essence.
"We found there are standalone photo sites - not maintained by us - on Flickr, PhotoBucket and so on," he said, amused. Browsing through there, Moran found the magazine's most recent cover.
"A photographer, Susan Kane, found a headstone showing the three Stooges," he said. "It was really new."
Because of such developments, Moran says the open-call exhibit brings their search for weirdness full circle. Opening the magazine's pages to brand new sources, he says, has only confirmed the surprising power of the quick snap to capture weirdness in the wild.
"Because sometimes you need pictures to prove what you're describing is real," he finishes. "It's like, sometimes people will really need to see firsthand that yes, somewhere in the state, there is a headstone the size and shape of a Mercedes."
E-mail Juliet Fletcher:
Posted in Life on Saturday, June 20, 2009 6:15 am Updated: 6:50 am.
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