A Denmark resident seeking to introduce the world to his art took a straight-on approach in Bridgton last week.

Drivers climbing and descending the hill on Main Street by Shorey Park found their attention diverted by “Faces in the Day in a Life;” more than 40 black and white photographs by Elihu Acker clipped to ropes tied to trees at the edge of the park.

With the exception of his two Labrador retrievers and several side and back views of Acker, 48, the photos were all of faces front and center; all people Acker sees nearly every day. Most of his subjects smile. Few, if any, were doing anything extraordinary, but the extraordinary is not what he sought.

He sought the straight ahead looks of smiling people of all ages and appearances placed at head level to bring a viewer out of themselves and into the world around them.

“It is like stones in a pond. Toss one in and then toss in another and see how the ripples connect,” Acker said.

While not a great day for pedestrian viewers, the taut rows of close-in shots of Acker’s friends caused many motorists to slow down, and at least one to pull to the side of the road for a long slow look.

That was the intent in mind when Acker approached the Bridgton Board of Selectmen for permission to use the park. While he was not allowed to advertise Two Lab Productions and Straw Hat Films, his film and photography companies, as part of the exhibit, he was confident viewers were again making contact with the world around them.

“Connection is not the Internet, not a cell phone,” said Acker as he and Mark Labrie, who made the prints of the photos, braved the chilly breezes whipping down Main Street.

Once a furniture maker until health complications forced him to retire from the business, Acker has been taking the pictures for two years.

“I had to come up with what I will do with the rest of my life,” he said.

Acker spent most of the weekend on the street by his exhibit, but four separate sequences of the photos were filmed by Labrie from a slow-moving pickup truck as Bridgton police diverted Main Street traffic from Church Street to the intersection of Main and South High streets.

Seeking to get viewers to reconnect to the world around them, Denmark artist Elihu Acker lined the edge of Shorey Park in Bridgton with more than 40 photographs of himself, his friends and his dogs.