Ellen Augarten, who exhibits rich black-and-white portraiture, offers Ripe: Portraits of Pregnancy this month at the New Gallery. Augarten’s portraits can be startling—the relationship between the camera and her pregnant subject is sometimes so intimate that one feels a tinge of voyeuristic guilt. Some of the photos focus on the pregnant body, offering studies of form and figures with obscured faces. But the portraits that catch Augarten’s subjects interacting with families, partners, children or blurred figures in the background reveal candid expressions of shared excitement, expectation and contentment.
Through July 31, free, The New Gallery, Cooley Dickinson Hospital, 30 Locust St., Northampton, (413) 584-6377.