BETHEL — An upcoming exhibition by the photographer and digital artist Ken Graff will offer visitors a look at an innovative combination of old and new, on several levels. “Old Friends,” which takes its name from a song by Simon & Garfunkel, will open at Bethel Arts Junction on Saturday, April 15.

The work going on display features images of the elderly. Mr Graff took the original images when he was in his mid-twenties, during the late 1960s, of men and women in Central Park and Washington Square Park in New York City. The series is both heartwarming and heart-wrenching at the same time.

Mr Graff took the stills for a project in which he mingled the photographs with 16 mm movie footage he had shot that spanned the seasons in New York City and the suburbs, and then set all of the images to the music of what he calls a “poignant” song, “Old Friends.”

“In essence,” feels Mr Graff, “it was one of the first music videos.”

Decades later, the original project has taken on a new perspective for the photographer. “Old Friends” has now taken on a new life, via computer technology and an older, perhaps more sympathetic, artist. With a digital technique he calls Graffic Illusions, using an electronic paintbrush in place of a mouse, Mr Graff has transformed the original “Old Friends” photographs into a new art form.

The original slides were recovered, scanned into the computer, and recomposed. Mr Graff has altered the color, converting all of the images into sepia tones, added grain, and then printed the work onto watercolor paper. All of this was done without once stepping into a darkroom.

“I think this is really a fairly unique concept,” Mr Graff said this week. “I’m using new technology to look at something I started 30 years ago. The new pictures look a lot different than the color slides, that’s for sure.”

“‘Old Friends’ wasn’t one of the most popular songs done by Simon & Garfunkel,” Mr Graff pointed out, “but the song has a lot of emotion to it.”

By printing all of the photographs at the same size, using the same tones and mounting the works under glass using rust-colored mats behind all of the images, Mr Graff hopes to draw viewers’ attention to the photographs, and not necessarily the technology that went into re-creating them.

“I was specifically looking for a way that would not detract from the images themselves,” he explained.

A former resident of Newtown for over 20 years, Mr Graff moved to neighboring Brookfield three years ago. He grew up in New York City, where he attended photography school, and has been a professional photographer for more than 35 years.

After retiring as manager of photography for one of the world’s largest chemical companies, Mr Graff decided to put on a different hat, that of an artist. He now uses all of his stock of photographic images taken around the world as subjects for his new business, Graffic Illusions.

Graffic Illusions creates original art treasures from photographic images, explains the photographer. The technique Mr Graff uses is one he has developed over the last decade, using conventional photographs and combining them with imagination and technical artistry.

Bethel Arts Junction is an artists’ cooperative gallery located at 5 Depot Place — the old Bethel train station — in the center of town. Gallery hours are Wednesday, noon to 5 pm; and Thursday through Saturday, noon to 9 pm.

An opening reception for “Old Friends” will be hosted by Bethel Arts Junction on Saturday, April 15, from 5 to 8 pm. Mr Graff will be in attendance, and live music will be performed by Walter G. Lewis (Mississippi Delta Blues).

The video for “Old Friends” has also been re-created, with Mr Graff again relying on his computer, this time as an editing station. The new video will be screened during the exhibition’s opening reception.