Rutland – Real & Imagined at Rutland’s Alley Gallery, confronts place in Vermont’s third-largest city with an exhibition that’s perhaps intended to show a little love for the city and its illustrious history. Rutland is equally a reflection of the opposite: the nitty, the gritty, the urban decay. Rutland’s remarkable rise came about through a historic – and fortuitous – confluence of industrial growth and the arrival of the railroad in the 19th Century. That era of affluence begat an architectural legacy of Victorian-era beauty, still much in evidence, that wouldn’t exist without the manpower and mining skills of Italian immigrants. It was another example of lucky timing for Rutland: Some Italian quarries had become unworkable. For this exhibition, Pawlet-based photographer Stephen Schaub invited eight artists “to investigate Rutland’s geography, history and people, to create artwork that tells a story about Rutland”, he writes in a curatorial statement. “Vermont is often sold to outsiders as a pleasant stereotype: an Imagined Ideal place. Those who live here know the reality as inevitably much more complex. This exhibit proposes that all representations of a place come from factors both real and imagined. And that this is something to celebrate.” Stephen Schaub selected artists who all work with the photographic image, though not all are photographers per se. One uses text in response to two other photographers’ work; another uses historical images in collage. Of the eight exhibitors, only Bob Van Degna and Susan Weiss populate their work with residents of present-day Rutland. To capture his subjects, photographer and documentarian Van Degna spent eight hours riding the Marble Valley Regional Transit. The result is a visual transcript consisting of 18 images of men, women and children on the bus. Stephen Schaub selected artists who all work with the photographic image, though not all are photographers per se. One uses text in response to two other photographers’ work; another uses historical images in collage Van Degna created a 102-inch-wide horizontal photomontage composed of three stacks of six images each that are printed seamlessly side-by-side, uninterrupted by white space. The passengers are bundled in winter hats and bulky jackets; some smile, while others seem lost in thought. One rider sits in his wheelchair; another has a cane. Outside, a woman waits for the bus and smokes a cigarette. Scenes inside the bus are occasionally punctuated by a glimpse through a window, beginning with an exterior view of the transit centre’s entrance. A sense of people going somewhere yet nowhere permeates Van Degna’s work. For “Rutland Postcard,” Weiss constructed a full-color postcard of the city from her own Rutland-based photographs. “Greetings from Vermont” is resplendent in a gold frame. The central image depicts a yard filled with an immense stump and cut logs from a huge tree. Surrounding this large image is a series of 4-by-6-inch “Fantastical Postcards” featuring notes from Rutland citizens. Weiss made postcards from her Rutland photographs and distributed them to locals, asking them to add comments on what they like or don’t about their city and to mail them back to her. The comments are a mixture of historical facts, wry remarks and witticisms, some expressing hometown pride and some not. The resulting piece, however, is not glib or snarky. Weiss, who splits her time between Dorset and San Francisco, uses photography to “focus on the human condition and the world we inhabit”, according to the narrative accompanying the exhibit. Her work as a documentarian and fine-art photographer is evident in these exuberant colour photographs of contemporary Rutland. Brandon photographer Don Ross brings beastly beauty to the exhibit with large-format colour photographs from his “Junk Series.” They feature debris, ranging from metal scrap that can be recycled or reused to detritus that has been gutted, bent, twisted and crushed beyond recognition. Ross’ colours pop like sparks from a bonfire on a pitch-black night. The series evokes formal portraiture, though the subjects are inert. The crisp, tight photographs – some cropped square – are visual metaphors for hope: if colour can be found in a world of rust and decay, then maybe other good things are possible.