A Day's Work: A Sampler of Historic Maine Photographs, 1860-1920, Part I, annotated and compiled by W. H. Bunting. Sponsored by Maine Preservation, Tilbury House Publishers, 132 Water St., Gardiner, ME 04345, 1997. 380 pp., oversize, paperback, $35.00
This is a wonderful book, so don't let the title drive you away. You must read halfway through that forbidding title to find out that it's about Maine, farther yet to learn that it's photographic, and "Part I" leaves you dangling. I would have called it Maine at Work, 1860-1920: Photographs and Text; the rest is superfluous--and I have added the word "text" because the text is just as delightful as the photos. I am writing this review because it's a book that people who love Maine shouldn't miss.
I have been summering in Maine for about forty years. The mountains and the skies and the rockbound coast make one constantly aware that Maine is different--the most northern and most eastern state in the USA, with a thousand of miles of shoreline and huge expanses of forest wilderness. Its wild geography has shaped its people and determined how they live. Vestiges of the past are everywhere, from the old docks and windjammers and lighthouses to the barns and sawmills and huge piles of firewood. If one wants an understanding and a feeling for those old times, this book is for you.
William Bunting's fascination with these historical photographs is communicated through the text. He has spent decades immersing himself in local history, and he not only explains each photo but goes behind it, delving into the history and significance of what is shown. If you want to know how to make hard cider, see p. 150 opposite the superb photo of the farmyard with a pile of apples by the old barn. The complex process of logging in the wilderness and getting the logs downriver to the mills and eventually by ship to market is followed through many photos with descriptive text (see pp. 34-44, 86-88, and more). Many buildings in Boston and points south were built of Maine granite; here you can see the granite cutters and the ships and men that carried that heavy cargo to market. Would you like to know and see how in the old days lobster fishing, seining, dip-netting, and canning were done? Or railroading, hunting, or harvesting ice? They're all here, and much more.
Start reading at the Introduction, a fine evocation of Maine today in relation to the past, and a convincing demonstration of the value of photos as historical documents. You will also discover that the author raises cattle and is a bulldozer operator, which doesn't quite explain his mastery of local history (this is his third book) but puts him closer to the down-to-earth people in the pictures. The introduction takes you directly into the text; there are no breaks or chapter headings. Bunting explains that the book is like "taking a journey," one that he took himself--and fortunately it has a good index. I began by looking up the places I know best: Waldoboro, Boothbay, Edgecomb, Casco, Bath, Damariscotta, but the book is a trap--once in, it's hard to get out. You go from photo to photo and from text to text.
The content of the pictures and text is absorbing, but I have said nothing about the aesthetic quality of the photographs. These old black and whites, from the days of heavy cameras and glass plate negatives, have a crispness and wealth of detail rarely seen in today's polychromatic action photos with artificial photo-effects. Many of them were taken for the purpose of making a record, and they project an authenticity that makes the viewer a participant. They have the grip of reality. The photos are worth the price of the book, and the text multiplies their value.
A Day's Work (Part I) focuses on many economic aspects of life in Maine in the late eighteenth and early twentieth century. The author, or annotator and compiler as he calls himself, says that some topics will appear in both volumes, but Part II will emphasize the pulp and paper industries, cotton textiles, coopering, axe manufacturing, etc. Perhaps he's waiting to sit down with the photographs and see where the journey leads. If it's anything like this one, it will be worth waiting for.
Herbert S. Bailey, Jr. Fearrington Post 248 Pittsboro, NC 27312
NO author of Maine historical and cultural subjects writes better, or has done more comprehensive research. I would certainly include it in the parcel I would assemble for exile to Boon Island.
I pray for the author's health, happiness, and continued productivity. He is the best of Maine writers and scholars, and sets the best example and model for the generally motley group of Maine "writers", especially the very narrowly-scoped academicians who slavishly follow fixed models of interpretation and presentation. I'm sure Fanny Hardy Ecstorm, Elizabeth Ring and James Baxter (god bless their beautiful souls) are smiling at this wonderful, wonderful writer.