Photography

It's not that the art of glassblowing doesn't get any respect. It's just that it never hurts to remind people that even if it's a bowl or an ashtray, it's still art. This explains why Emily Kimelman Gilvey and her husband, Sean, had planned to turn their Hudson Beach Glass studio into a small gallery ever since it opened in October. They wanted to show paintings and photography as well as exhibit their own line of glassware and others. "We're a small, family business that's making something," said Gilvey, a photographer turned mystery writer.

Is that the sonorous baritone of Mufasa, a.k.a. James Earl Jones, waxing poetic about "the circle of life"? What's this - Lion King III? No, it's Earth, the inaugural release from Disney's Disneynature division, a wide-screen wildlife documentary in which the cycles of birth and death, migrations and seasons, are captured in stunning - absolutely stunning - ways. Baby seals glowing in the light of dusk, a dense flock of cranes scudding across the sky, a lynx in a conifer forest, ducklings tumbling from a tree, fluttering their stubby wings, and yes, a pride of lions prowling around - isn't the world a magical place?

Rosalyn Cutler Handel, 76, of Elkins Park, a photographer and supporter of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, died of pancreatic cancer last Thursday at Abington Memorial Hospital. Mrs. Handel graduated from Olney High School and then, at 17, married George Handel, who was 22. They raised three children. In her late 30s, Mrs. Handel took courses at the Women's Institute of Awareness at the YMHA on South Broad Street. The courses empowered her to become involved in causes she believed in, said her daughter, Donna.

In its first curatorial hire since the death of longtime director Anne d'Harnoncourt, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has named Peter D. Barberie curator of photographs. Although he comes from a post as lecturer at Princeton University, Barberie, 37, is something of an Art Museum insider. He worked as a curatorial fellow there starting in 2003 just after the museum acquired the Julien Levy collection, cataloging its 2,500 photographs. He organized the exhibition "Looking at Atget" in 2005 and co-organized "Dreaming in Black and White: Photography at the Julien Levy Gallery" in 2006.

Keith Jarrett's nettlesome reputation precedes him. He forbids photography during shows. He is not above losing his temper at audiences who, as he puts it, "get in the way of their own experience. " This has been part of the Jarrett package since the '70s, and it's controversial. Since he's one of the finest jazz pianists alive, however, you're able to wave away the misgivings with a few brilliantly placed chords. On Friday at the Kimmel Center, with Gary Peacock on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums, Jarrett delved right into a luminous, out-of-tempo prelude, enfolding voices within voices.

Susan S. Bank has turned a hobby into a passionate involvement with photography, and it all has happened over the last 11 years. Her exhibit - "Cuba: Camp Adentro," meaning "deep within the country" - at the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown examines lives lived in 10 households by farming families who grow their own food and lack modern conveniences. Previously a Realtor and active on behalf of public education and women's resource issues locally while raising three children, Bank divides her time between her Philadelphia home and Portsmouth, N.H., birthplace.

John J. Leahy, 82, head of anesthesia at Wills Eye Hospital, who channeled his passions for photography and the history of his craft into developing the living history series at the Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology, died of cancer Tuesday at his home in New Tripoli, Pa. He also owned a home in Center City. Dr. Leahy was born in Upper Darby. After his older brother died at age 6 of meningitis, which his mother was convinced he caught in a public school, Dr. Leahy was sent to the Holy Child School on Rittenhouse Square.

Gerard J. Weiser, 82, of Center City, a Swiss-born patent lawyer and champion of inventions including the Steadicam, which revolutionized filmmaking, died March 15 after heart surgery at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Mr. Weiser specialized in scientific and technical patents. His clients included Garrett Brown, the Academy Award-winning inventor of the Steadicam, which has been used in hundreds of films. Among the earliest was Rocky, filmed in Philadelphia and released in 1976.

As in her previous series of photographs - one of which was shot from the windows of high-speed trains in Germany - Sharon Harper continues to explore photography's ability to reveal more than the expected real-life image. Her latest prints are studies of the nighttime sky shot with an 8x10 view camera and a single sheet of film over a period of time (days, weeks, months) in spring and summer, in black-and-white and color, at different exposures and in multiple locations. Her exhibition, "Moon Studies and Star Scratches," at the Print Center, features six prints from three "expeditions": one shot at Rincon, Puerto Rico, and Spy Pond, Mass.