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Photography and Preservation – A Personal Story
Above: Mill Clock Tower, Lawrence, Massachusetts, 2014.
I’ve been photographing urban settings in New England for more than forty years. Early on in my career I was drawn to the decaying and abandoned factories and vernacular architecture that had fascinated me since childhood. I sensed something of a once vibrant past that was disappearing. I was – and still am – drawn to that sense of loss; to the echo of the past that resonates all around me. As a photographer, I make each photograph as an individual work of art. But I have for some time been working in a larger context. Photographing urban areas and various types of vernacular architecture (e.g., diners and roadside structures, old movie theaters, mom-and-pop restaurants and businesses), I also see my work as a form of historical documentation: a record of what is passing from our architectural heritage before it completely disappears.
For more than a decade, Historic New England has been collecting my photography of New England and also featuring it in its publications, both printed and online. My work aligns perfectly with Historic New England’s mission of preservation and its appreciation of photography as an art form as well as a method of documenting the past and present. – John D. Woolf
Curator’s Note
Photography is — and has always been — a major collecting area for Historic New England. By 1912, only two years after the organization’s founding, photography had already been identified as a “specialty” of the collection. At first the focus was on images of noteworthy houses but soon expanded to include contemporary views of all kinds related to New England and its people. The first twenty issues of our Bulletin, dating from 1910 to 1919, are filled with comments about the importance of photographs as documents and detailed descriptions of photographic acquisitions, from single images to large collections.
Today, Historic New England’s photography collection includes more than 600,000 images, ranging from daguerreian portraits from the 1840s to images of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter Movement, and is used by thousands of people each year. We are tremendously grateful to John Woolf for significantly expanding the collection through his gifts of his beautiful and compelling photographs.
Exciting News
Our work could not continue without the support of individuals and institutions who share our commitment and invest in our efforts to preserve and share these visual documents. Historic New England recently received a $250,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to digitize 125,000 glass-plate and film negatives, allowing us to provide online access to this exceptional collection and ensure its long-term preservation. Dating from the 1880s to the 2000s, these negatives document the people of New England and its built and natural environments, and tell the fuller, more inclusive stories of the region. – Senior Curator of Library and Archives Lorna Condon
