Art Petrosemolo to Exhibit Photographs at Eastern Branch Library

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SHREWSBURY – Veteran visual journalist Art Petrosemolo will be exhibiting twice this fall at the Eastern Branch of the Monmouth County Library in Shrewsbury.

This photo by Art Petrosemolo of Shrewsbury will be among those on display in his exhibit, “Sport – It’s All About the Action,” Sept. 4 – 30, at the Monmouth County Library’s Eastern Branch.

Sport – It’s All About the Action, will be Petrosemolo’s first exhibit in September followed by Afghan Children – The Next Generation during November, according to Eastern Branch Librarian Janet Kranis.
The exhibit will be on display in the circulation lobby during regular library hours. The library will also host from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 18, a Meet the Photographer reception that is open to the public.
The Eastern Branch Library is located at 1001 Route 35 in Shrewsbury.
Petrosemolo, a 16-year Monmouth Country resident of Shrewsbury, is the assistant to the president at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He spent his first 10 years at FDU as the university’s chief public relations officer.
“Photography has been part of my life since I started to work as a newspaper reporter and learned they paid extra if you took your own photos,” Petrosemolo said. “Through the years I have done work for colleges and universities, corporations and nonprofit organizations.”
Petrosemolo’s photography and feature stories appear regularly in The Two River Times™, and other local publications.
In recent years, Petrosemolo has concentrated on nautical photography and has become adept at capturing up-close-and-personal action of one-design sailboat racers. He is the chief photographer for all Monmouth Boat Club local, regional and national regattas and has been invited to photograph national and international events across the country including the Lightning World Championships that brought nearly 100 boats to Lake Champlain, Vermont in 2009.
In Sport – It’s All About the Action, the photographer has captured peak action in events as diverse as women’s roller derby and ice hockey to bicycle racing and surf casting.
“Today, everyone is a photographer,” Petrosemolo says, “and with high-end digital cameras, anyone can get lucky and get a great shot. The trick is to know what the great shot is and to be able to set up for it and wait for the action to happen.”
Petrosemolo’s exhibit will include 12 large prints and a number of smaller images that cover a variety of sports and participants from preteen to professionals.
“Afghan Children – The Next Generation,” a photo exhibit by Art Petrosemolo, will be on display Nov. 1-30 at the Eastern Branch of the Monmouth County Library.

In November, Petrosemolo will display haunting faces of the children of war in his exhibit Afghan Children – The Next Genera­tion. Petrosemolo traveled to Kabul and Bamiyan in 2006 with National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry.
Petrosemolo was coordinating an exhibit of McCurry’s images, including the iconic Afghan Girl, for the main lobby of the United Nations headquarters in New York City that was sponsored by Fairleigh Dickinson University.
McCurry was on assignment for National Geographic in Afghanistan, working on a story about the people of Bamiyan, the site where the Taliban destroyed the centuries-old Buddha statues by dynamite and tank shells in 2001. Petrosemolo accompanied McCurry, and took images of the photographer at work to display with his work at the U.N. exhibit.
“I was just overwhelmed at the living conditions for these children,” Petrosemolo said. “Their faces were covered with rashes and other skin diseases and they – many times – did not seem to have adequate clothing for the weather we were experiencing in late February.
“However,” Petrosemolo continues, “they did not seem depressed or upset but played outside with makeshift toys and looked just as content as kids here in Monmouth County. All I knew about Afghanistan is what I read in the newspapers. My trip was eye-opening.”
Petrosemolo has picked close-ups of a number of children in both Bamiyan and Kabal for the exhibit including photographs of McCurry.
For more information on the library exhibit, call 1-866-941-8188. For more information on programming at the Monmouth County Library, visit www.monmouthcountylib.org.