Michael Berger remembers the moment well. It was 10 degrees in Coolidge Corner. A few stragglers stood shivering, waiting for the T. It hardly seemed like a good photo opportunity.
But as his eyelashes frosted over, the scene looked different to Berger. The light refracted, creating a blurry, impressionistic version of the moment.
Looking through his icy lashes, he snapped the photo as he envisioned the final piece. “That’s the image,” said Berger, an artist and professor emeritus of chemistry at Simmons University.
Tucked into a small gallery in the Brookline Bank in Coolidge Corner, Berger’s latest work showcases sights dear to Brookline residents. Along the walls, the 13 pieces that make up “Visions of Brookline” capture glimpses of everyday scenes, somewhat obfuscated through fractals and haze.
The exhibit is open through October as part of ArtsBrookline’s initiative to showcase local artists. ArtsBrookline is a nonprofit organization established in 2017, aiming to support artists and develop Brookline into a cultural district.
As a Brookline resident of nearly 50 years, Berger, 81, takes inspiration from the places around him. Coolidge Corner, Village Square and Dane Park are among the familiar sights found in his work. Berger said his art serves not just to document a place but to capture a feeling.
For Sasha Liang, 39, longtime Brookline resident and manager of Brookline Bank’s Coolidge Corner branch, Berger’s exhibit did just that.
Liang said the exhibit showed “how the various landscapes have changed in the 30, 40 years [he’s] been in the community.”
“It’s nice to see what [Brookline] used to look like,” Liang said.
Of the locations he photographs, Berger finds Brookline Village to be “the most evocative of another time,” Berger said. Many of his works open a window to Brookline’s past.
Berger uses photography and digital painting software in place of a traditional artist’s sketchbook, in an effort to evoke a “sense of place.” He then prints a giclée, a high-quality art print, on canvas and augments his piece with classical mediums — oils, watercolors, chalk pastels or acrylics.
The intersection of art, science and photography has always been at the epicenter of Berger’s work. During his 25-year career at Polaroid, he sought to capture both the sharp detail of traditional photography and the feeling of the moment.
To do so, he said, “you have to go off track. You kind of have to look at it squinting and look at it over your shoulder.”
Berger said he captured that feeling in his work, developing new types of film for Polaroid. This intersection of science and art has influenced his work since, including during his 19 years as a chemistry professor at Simmons.
“Science is very dynamic, and art is like that too,” Berger said. “I find that art and science kind of stimulate one another if they’re allowed to blend.”
Amy Browning Emmert, vice president of ArtsBrookline, wanted to feature the locally well-known artist. Throughout the installation of his exhibit, passersby stopped to observe the work and chat with Berger, she said. Everyone seemed to know him.
Browning Emmert said Berger’s work evokes the memories of the viewer, providing a sense of place and community.
“It’s sort of a way of distilling memories in a contemporary way,” she said. The images “make you think about your life, when you went through that place, or how you stood waiting for the T.”
What many see as mundane, Berger can transform. Dynamism, connectivity, and movement drive his work, even in the most unsuspecting of places.
“I love the T,” Berger said. “It connects. It flows, just like art and science. It has that dynamic.”
As a founder of the Brookline GreenSpace Alliance, a nonprofit intended to support Brookline’s open spaces and greenery, Berger’s passion for environmentalism seeps into his art. He’s currently working on another series of images taken at the Arnold Arboretum.
Berger’s first exhibit was at the Arnold Arboretum in 1992. And he’s still going. When rain starts falling in sheets, or snow drifts slowly down, he’ll grab his camera and get to it.
“The rain, the darkness, the fog, cuts out a lot of the extra stuff,” he said. The image “becomes more like a poem, a visual poem, than a documentation.”
This story is part of a partnership between Brookline.News and the Boston University Department of Journalism.
This article was originally published on September 18, 2025.