Maine Color

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My first non-musical photo project was in East Texas; the second was as far away from Texas as one could get and still be in the continental United States, Northern Maine. They were very different projects and not just because of the location. The Maine project began in 1974 and continued until Berenice Abbott’s death in 1991. I took a few more in 1998, when many of her friends from the world of photography celebrated what would have been her 100th birthday, but the vast majority of my photographs were taken between the years 1975 and 1983. There were a good number of decent black and white pictures from those years that have been exhibited. They range in size from 35mm to 8”x10”, but there are four or five times as many medium and large format color photographs. I concentrated on color for a number of reasons, not the least important was that Berenice only took black and white photographs and I wanted to show her that color could capture her surroundings very nicely. She ultimately agreed and once even asked me to bring some large format color film for a project that ultimately she wasn’t able to complete, but that’s another story. The main reason I took so many color photographs in and around the Moosehead Lake region of northern Maine is because I thought the colors in that part of the world were marvelous, even when there seemed to be almost no color, in the middle of winter on a minus twenty degree day. I didn’t see Maine in black and white, I saw it in color and I think the project worked. The only thing that didn’t work is that some Kodak negative film is more stable than others and there has been color shifting over the years. We have been able to reconstruct at least 80% of the color shifted or faded negatives, but those that are too far gone are hopeless, the negatives have turned a dark purple. I don’t know if this is because the film was flawed or if the developing was not done appropriately. I think it may have to do with the developing because in some instances a negative from one batch in 1976 is just fine; one from another batch is awful. The high quality color prints we are able to generate from the negatives, both those that were restored and those that needed no assistance, are far better than anything I ever saw or was able to show Berenice in the 1970s. The colors are bright and natural and I’m essentially seeing what captured my attention for the first time since I saw it through the view-finder or on the ground glass. It’s been a long wait. These photographs were taken with a 2.8 Rolleiflex, a Pentax 6x7 with a normal or a Deardorff with a 4”x5” reducing back. The film stock was Kodak color negative 6010. The subject matter is normally things as opposed to people. You don’t encounter nearly as many people in northern Maine as northern New York City, but most of those I did encounter all those years ago were interesting, and occasionally I photographed them. From time to time there will be additions to this group of photographs as negatives are restored.