BURLINGTON, VT.- On Tuesday, January 20, the Fleming Museum of Art reopened for its Winter/Spring 2015 season with an exhibition featuring the mid-century photography of Europe by Burlington physician H.A. Durfee, Jr. who spent a long career in obstetrics and gynecology at Mary Fletcher Hospital, later Fletcher Allen Health Care, in Burlington, Vermont, where he delivered a notable percentage of Burlington’s current residents.

In the early 1950s, prior to beginning his career in Vermont, Dr. Durfee practiced medicine at the U.S. Army Airbase in Wiesbaden, Germany. He and his wife Elizabeth took advantage of the assignment, traveling to London, Paris, Venice, and the German countryside when they could find the time. On these travels, Dr. Durfee took with him two German cameras: a Rolleiflex and Rolleicord. Between 1951 and 1953, he took over 600 black-and-white images, capturing the striking architecture, landscapes, monuments, ruins, and the uncannily empty streets of Europe’s cities in the aftermath of World War II.

The doctor-photographer developed the negatives, but printed only a select group of the images. The work languished for more than sixty years, until 2014, when Durfee’s son, Eleazer, working with Vermont photographer Don Ross, began to print the negatives, first as contact sheets, then as full-size prints, bringing the majority of these extraordinary images to light for the first time.

Support for this exhibition has been generously provided by J. Brooks Buxton ‘56, and the Walter Cerf Exhibitions Fund.

The exhibition is one of three on view at the Museum this winter. Also on view are Staring Back: The Creation and Legacy of Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon and Civil War Objects from the University of Vermont Collections.