armfuls of show and tell: 5/1/11

"It requires constant vigilance to see people as they are."
-Olive Pierce

I first came across Olive Pierce's photo series Up River a year and a half ago. The series is of a Maine fishing community, taken in gritty black and white, and I remember being struck by how intimate and revealing the images were; they were able to convey so much about who the people were and how they lived, making me feel as though I had a solid handle on what the community was like. And the photos are simply beautiful. When I found out that Olive lives in Rockland, only a few hours from Portland, I decided I needed to ask her for an interview. My recording device failed me, so I can't give you all the back and forths, but I wrote up what I learned from talking with this incredible woman.

When I show up at Olive's home, she is making her way up her icy walk, wearing a down jacket and using a ski pole as a cane. At 86, her body is slight, her movements delicate, but when I catch up with her just before she ducks into the house, she turns around and grins, slinging me a hearty, "HEY!"

We enter the kitchen, simple and spacious. There's a New Yorker on the counter, soup bubbling on the stove, and an airy breakfast nook set out for lunch with china in various shades of blue. And I'd thought I was going to have to skip lunch. I nestle my recorder between the serving platters, and we sit across from each other, eating our meal--"soup from a can doctored with tahini and rice vinegar," salad, cheese, crackers, focaccia, and, for dessert, orange slices and "German Christmas cake." She seems to watch my face for a reaction to this out of season dish, delighting to think I might really believe she is serving me two-month old cake.

Olive Pierce is a documentary photographer best known for her photographs of two families in a tiny Maine fishing community, which were gathered over the course of ten years living in the community and have been collected in the book Up River: The Story of a Maine Fishing Community. She chose grainy high contrast film for this series, and the resultant photographs are incredibly gritty and human, providing a rare and intimate glimpse into a community known for its insularity.

Let me emphasize the time-line: for ten years, Olive went out fishing with the Harveys and the Carters, attended their weddings and their funerals, and joined in their Christmas celebrations. She even slept over at their houses from time to time. This type of extended immersion is not unheard of in journalism--one thinks of Gay Talese and Leon Dash, of Ted Conover spending a year as a prison guard to report on corruption amongst prison employees. And yet this immersion is incredibly impressive: I heartily cheer on anyone who can dive completely into a project and then emerge from its gaping maw, years later, eyes shiny with adventure and a finished work in hand.

Even given the serious commitment of time, how did Olive navigate through the complexities of her subject to create something so candid? In her images, Olive manages to create a portrait that is neither saccharine nor patronizing, that sidesteps the romanticism typical to images of coastal Maine as well as the contempt and distrust that some show toward this poverty-stricken community. I figure it must have taken a pretty unique person to become welcomed into a community that has reason to distrust outsiders, and then to take intimate photographs of that community that are neither critical nor idealized, but simply straightforward.