Photography Class Five Town History Project – Camden Hills Regional High School
Thank you to art teacher Carolyn Brown for submitting this blog post.
Kevin Johnson
Students in Ms. Brown’s Photo Studio classes at Camden Hills Regional High School are working on a “Then and Now” photo history project of the Five Towns CSD, including photos from Appleton, Hope, Lincolnville, Camden and Rockport.
Guest photographer and photo archivist Kevin Johnson, of the Penobscot Marine Museum, visited classes in late May. He showed students historic photos from the Eastern Illustrating photo archive, which includes photos of the Five Towns shot between 1909 and 1947. He explained how these photos were made with large cameras and glass plate negatives, and how he and his team of archivists have been cleaning, restoring and digitizing the glass plates. Students then tried out Kevin’s large-format camera, to get a feel for how the old photos were set up and shot.
Kevin Johnson, Heather Eaton
Students have selected old photos from the collection to reshoot with modern tools. The classes will select the best shots and create 25 pairs of images- one of the old shots with the scene as it looks today. These photos will be matted and framed, and become a permanent collection for CHRHS. Additionally, local historians will work with students to give background history about the history of the Five Towns area depicted in the photos. Eventually, the photos will be available on the Penobscot Marine Museum website, and mapped using GIS tools.
This project is supported by Youth Arts, the Bisbee Fund, and a donation from Laurie Adams. Anyone interested in learning more about the project, please contact teacher Carolyn Brown at Carolyn_Brown@fivetowns.net
More information about the Penobscot Marine Museum historic photo collection can be found on their website at http://www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org/photo-collections/index.html
Kevin Johnson, Dinara Galilulina
me arts ed 