Howard Greenberg Gallery presents an exhibition of images by Mark Osterman. Drawing on twenty years experience in a traveling medicine show, Osterman created a series of ambrotypes that celebrate his stage performances as whimsical records on glass. Ghost-like figures step out from the edges of darkness as a personal memory, witnessed from the performer’s point of view. The images in this body of work relate to a 1920-style medicine show Osterman created and performed for twenty years in Eastern Pennsylvania and the surrounding region. As the fast-talking pitchman, “Dr. Bumstead,” he sang and played the banjo, caught bullets with his teeth and sold snake oil from a folding stage he built onto the back of a 1919 Model T Ford.
