Monday, October 30, 2017

Iron by Iron Geist, Photo by Roth


Next Brass Valley slide-talk

Stratford, Ct. Library, Nov. 5, 2-4 PM



Friday, October 20, 2017

Save Stanley



PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: It’s time to stop and reconsider before the historic Stanley Works factories in New Britain are demolished forever. On Monday the New Britain Historic Preservation Commission voted to halt demolition for 90 days.

What is the value of preserving historic buildings in our communities even after they’re no longer of use for the purposes for which they were built? I live in a different part of Connecticut, grew up in another state entirely, but I knew the name Stanley from the first time in my childhood when I measured a length of board and made a cut to build a bird house as a gift for my father. Currently, guests visiting me from the Netherlands describe similar recognition of the name, “Stanley,” and find delight in learning that Stanley Tools were made here, in the state they are visiting. Stanley, even beyond Colt and Sikorsky, is an iconic Connecticut brand that evokes immediate recognition to all who hear it. The name brings recognition to the city of New Britain.

For the past seven years I have been photographing the few remains of the region of Connecticut once known as "Brass Valley." With few tangible reminders of the brass industry's past, the central importance of this region to American industrial development is vanishing, and even in the Naugatuck Valley where it was centered, the name “Brass Valley” is being forgotten, though once brass was Connecticut’s leading industry and part of a metals and machine tools culture that built our state and the nation. For seven years I have photographed this region as it disappears, and Brass Valley: The Fall of an American Industry (Schiffer Books, 2015) is my attempt to hold on to something of the brick and mortar reality that changed lives and that has almost vanished.

Stanley still stands. For generations of those who worked there it provided, not only a respectable living, but a path to opportunity and advancement. Men and women who worked there saw career options, and their children grew up in an American Dream of possibilities. Their children and grandchildren live among us. As factories closed we unknowingly closed down part of our educational system, but the buildings still speak of the world they created, and preserving tangible remains of that world provides a living connection to what we were and to what we can be. Stanley Works is more than a collection of brick work sheds. Just as forts and battlefields remind us of past struggles and our ability to overcome adversity, historic factories re-purposed for future generations tell those generations of the paths we have followed and provide the inspiration for deeds and enterprises yet to be accomplished. Historic buildings tell us who we were that we may know who we may become. New Britain should think long and hard before allowing demolition of this legacy.
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Those who are moved by this issue can write to the Hartford Courant or to the New Britain Herald.



Sunday, October 8, 2017

A Town Called Sunset


Photographs from “Brazen Grit” on exhibit:

Warren Public Library, Warren CT
thru October & November
SLIDE-TALK: Saturday, Oct. 14 @ 2 PM

Whiting Mills, Winsted, CT
Oct 14 to Oct. 27

Stratford Library, Stratford, CT
SLIDE-TALK: Sunday, Nov. 5 @ 2 PM

Mattatuck Museum: part of “I Believe in Waterbury” exhibit
thru Dec 3, 2017

Democratic Headquarters, Ansonia, CT



PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL (Continuation of August’s travels in Maine): I hadn’t come to Deer Isle to photograph sunsets, but I was there for the constantly changing weather that would be s[ecially lit when the sun was low. When I arrived at the Pilgrim’s Inn (https://www.pilgrimsinn.com) in Deer Isle I was given a warm welcome from Nicole and Scott. Built in 1793 and turned into an Inn in 1890, the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and well deserves to be. 

When I let Nicole know I was looking to make photos and would appreciate any hints on where to shoot, she quickly told me that the place to shoot sunset was Sunset. Amazed that there was a place just for shooting sunsets, I asked where one shoots sunrise. She immediately directed me to Sunshine. However, it was on the causeway, just beside the inn on August 6 I watched simultaneously as the sun was extinguished in the west as the full moon rose in the east. 

















Friday, October 6, 2017

Stoninngton Harbor, Maine



Photographs from 
Brazen Grit” 
on exhibit:

Warren Public Library, Warren CT
thru October & November
SLIDE-TALK: Saturday, Oct. 14 @ 2 PM

Whiting Mills, Winsted, CT
Oct 14 to Oct. 27

Stratford Library, Stratford, CT
SLIDE-TALK: Sunday, Nov. 5 @ 2 PM

Mattatuck Museum: part of “I Believe in Waterbury” exhibit
thru Dec 3, 2017

Democratic Headquarters, Ansonia, CT



PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: (A continuation of August’s travels in Maine) In Southwest Harbor, ME, my GPS told me that my destination, Stonington, was only 17 miles away but that it would take almost 90 minutes to get there. Stonington, Maine, lies on the edge of the ocean along a mountain ridge, one of many carved by glaciers. It became popular to a yacht-owning, sailing elite that began traveling beyond the fringe in the 1870s. Getting anywhere overland then was a long and punishing journey. Even today it takes nearly an hour to get “inland” to the “coast road."

Today the road to Stonington, ME, crosses over two sea passages. First a slender 1939 suspension bridge arches high across Eggemoggen Reach, to Little Deer Island. Then comes a causeway over to Deer Island where Penobscot Bay penetrates to Eggemoggin Reach. It is an island of bays, inlets and coves with a granite core. Beyond Stonington is Isle Au Haut that can be reached by ferry. Between lie countless islands, minor mountain-tops; even today it's a world best traveled by boat, and I’m told it is the center of lobstering. Steinbeck wrote about it; Eliot Porter photographed it.