David Akiba turns 70 next year. He began early as a photographer, as a boy, setting up his developing equipment in his bedroom. He'll not soon stop, the medium being that central to who he is. Given the opportunity, one suspects, Akiba would be taking pictures at his own funeral (long delayed may that occasion be!).
The variety of notable projects he's undertaken gives a sense of the extent of his engagement with photography. They include shooting mannequins, bubbles, street scenes, marathon runners (almost grotesquely expressive closeups), the old elevated Orange Line, and Olmsted's Emerald Necklace. Having studied with Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan at the Rhode Island School of Design, Akiba has carried on a tradition of instruction. He currently teaches at Emerson and Babson.
Born in Boston and raised in Winthrop, Akiba has spent all his working life in the area, apart from three years in the Navy. It would be accurate to call him a local photographic hero - except that "hero" in an artistic context often can mean overbearing and disproportionate. In intent, if not talent, Akiba is modest to a fault. He's always focused more on furthering his art than furthering his career.
The localness (which is also the universality) of Akiba's art is on serendipitous display in a pair of complementary exhibitions. At Gallery Kayafas, "David Akiba: In Plain Sight" consists of photographs of Boston and Winthrop that mostly show his urban side. "David Akiba - In Winter: Photographs, 1989-2009," at the St. Botolph Club, looks at trees and parks rather than buildings and bridges.
The Kayafas show comprises 23 pictures. Fifteen are of Boston. They're big, 19 1/4 inches by 15 1/4 inches, but not monumental. In subject, no less than character, the heroic is not Akiba's mode. These pictures neither celebrate nor denounce. They simply accept and record urban life as something that is - a thing that's literally unnatural, yes, but no less a landscape for being manmade. In almost all the images one or two individuals are visible, usually small figures: reminders that it's because of people that these massive bridges and highways are located where they are.
Akiba took the pictures (of the Zakim Bridge, runways at Logan, tracks at South Station) with a telephoto lens. They look grainy and muscular without seeming overbearing. Along with a sense of the weight of the world, they also communicate a little bit of wonder.
In a number of the images, there are tracks, rails, ducts, and/or pipes. Their linkages make for a kind of latticework. These elements are functional rather than decorative - except that Akiba's camera renders them ornamental, too. His eye perceives a stylization that would otherwise pass unnoticed.
The photographs of Winthrop Beach bring us closer to nature: a wharf, two kids running, rocks, snow on sand. (As the St. Botolph exhibition shows, he's wild about snow.) They're tranquil, maybe even serene, but not pristine. Akiba has too much respect for reality to idealize it.
The snowy beach links up with the 42 winterscapes at the St. Botolph Club. There's a further visual continuity: the traceries of bare branches Akiba frequently shows echo the structural lattices of the Kayafas show. Part detailing, part geometry, they speak to how elegantly his eye and sensibility intersect.
Some of the "In Winter" pictures are shorn of context: branches, a stump, night scenes. Most are site-specific: the Arboretum, Jamaica Pond, Hammond Pond. Place matters less than season, though. Snow, which covers all, unites all - and transforms, too. The undulation of snow-covered branches recalls albino snakes (are there such things?). The combination of cloud above and snow below softens the light and in such a way that the tonalities of gray demonstrate expressivity and tenderness.
The temptation is great to describe these pictures as poetic, which they are. Except that poetic can be as much of a code word as heroic - in this case, for affected and wan. That's not the case here. Akiba is poetic in the sense that poetry bespeaks a heightened awareness of beauty and an ability to capture that beauty with economy and formal grace. He's also poetic to the extent he lives up to Wallace Stevens's words in "The Snow Man": "One must have a mind of winter/To regard the frost and the boughs/Of the pine-trees crusted with snow." Clearly, David Akiba has a mind of winter, though there's nothing chilly about his sensibility.
This is a lovely show - but note that it's open to the public only on Wednesdays, from 2 to 4 p.m.
Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com. 
