Camden, Maine: Down East Books, 2007
$15.00
Good pictures that cast no spell
Greg Currier is a good photographer and the pictures in this book are nice. For your money you have a souvenir of Maine, or an addition to the coffee table, or a house present to leave with hosts. Besides those positives, it is hard to find much more to recommend it. The pictures as a collection cast no spell, although they come with best intentions. Currier may have hoped that the gear of lobstering, showcased here for its aesthetics, also would create appreciation for those who engage in that work. He dedicated the book to “the Maine men and women who put themselves at risk lobstering so that we may all enjoy the abundance of the sea.” And that’s a worthy subject and an admirable attitude. But this book feels random. People like books, even if mainly pages of pictures they’re browsing with negligible text, to convey some sense of meaningfulness, to “tell” them something. Often, in a kind of subtext, that is achieved by a book’s particular organization. Currier’s book lacks that. He could have brought us from wooden traps and buoys to today’s wire and plastic. Or he might have grouped his pictures by hue, since the book was nominally focused on the color spectrum. And his captions, even though minimal, deserved more attention; the dull prose is pedestrian, and conveys little information.
Currier could have illustrated a calendar or date book with these photographs. Or perhaps he should have done what some others have with books of photographs: use quotes and excerpts from articulate writers who poeticize Maine in words. Consider, for example, the book Maine: the Seasons, featuring photographs by Terrell S. Lester (New York: Knopf, 2001). Lester not only organized his pictures by season, but enlisted the help of accomplished authors Ann Beattie, Richard Ford, Richard Russo and Elizabeth Strout to provide commentary. Each of them lives in Maine much, if not all of the year, so their remarks are personal, wrought from their own experience. Strout notes that, “Spring in Maine begins with a change in the February light.” Beattie observes, “Maine is a serious place masquerading as a summer paradise.” Russo confesses, “I, like my grandfather, am both a worrier and a lover of autumn. It is the time of year, at least in Maine, when those of us inclined to worry find our inclinations most validated by nature. (One is a fool to worry in summer; by winter it’s too late.)” And Ford admits to pipes freezing in his house. He’s no lover of winter: “If only the movie theater were open. My choice would be `Last Tango in Paris.’ ” Honesty, humor and real emotions get revealed in the essays. They’re recognizable as similar to our own; we relate to how these writers experience the seasons. And Lester’s pictures — consistently outstanding — are like accompanying riffs, as they interpret the seasonal Maine landscape visually, metaphorically.
ere’s no question that coffee table-type books face an undeniable challenge: to engage readers intellectually as well as aesthetically. When image and language combine symphonically, that’s potent. Children’s books do well pulling that off, and maybe memories of that satisfying experience stay with us as readers in the years after. When text and pictures seem capable of each standing on their own, yet feel inseparable at the same time, that combination might become the one we perpetually look for in picture books. If that’s an acceptable yardstick, then Maine: the Seasons measures up, and The Colors of Lobstering falls short. q
Tina Cohen spends much of the year on Vinalhaven.