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Canal of Ghosts
Walking with ghosts along the Blackstone Canal.
Walking with ghosts along the Blackstone Canal.
The wind is sharp as I scurry across busy Branch Avenue, sending the clouds scudding and keeping the rain at bay. The tops of the trees have been stripped bare, limbs black bony against the sky. I’m entering theNorth Burial Ground and I’m looking for the place where the Moshassuck River emerges from it’s subterranean crossing of Interstate 95. I walk for ways with the highway to my left and rows of stones and statuary to my right. There’s much room to grow on this side of the burial grounds and I cross large lawns of brown grass. A concrete retaining wall announces it’s arrival. A pair of rectangular openings angling back toward the highway. Two echoing chambers cast free of any date or ornament, bearing only a modest “716”. These are entrance and exit to fields set aside for the collection of dates, names and bones.
The river immediately finds it’s Blackstone Canal days maintained, the bed running as straight as ever between walls of cut stone. The tow path is clogged with Catalpa and Oak and masses of twisting vines. That’s no problem as I have only myself in tow and I happily clamber around, glad to be free of the droning interstate.
Some trees have succumbed to the pull of the water and have laid down for a rest, momentarily holding and releasing the stream. It’s a reasonable approximation of a babbling brook and I stop to consider an earlier traveller on an earlier journey.
The canal bounds a potter’s field, and likey displaced some remains when it was dug. That certainly was the case much later when the highway claimed a portion of the burial grounds, nipping a piece of the potter’s field. No matter. Despite the appearance of order among the numbered plots above ground it is chaos down below. Decades of poor record keeping has made this area a de facto mass grave. If someone has to move for the convenience of the traveling living they can just move in with someone else, the more the merrier. Perhaps then, this accounts for the observations of my distant voyager, a passenger on a Providence bound canal boat who reported seeing (while passing through the burial grounds) ”a strange blue tinged orb that seemed to hover just at the level of the trees, then dart quickly forth and back…”.
Current employees of the cemetery have described a what they called a "spirit in the trees”, a human shape moving around and above the trees which sometimes "seems dark and sometimes glows with light”. A number of people who have seen this phenomenon say they have seen it not only in the trees here along the canal but around the pond and on the ridge of the esker, which lies just east of the river.
At the north end of the potter’s field the river once again takes cover below a busy off ramp. A little further to the north, on the rail line that put the canal out of business there once was a terrible accident. Two trains collided at the Valley Falls station. Thirteen people were killed. One of the victims is buried in this cemetery under a headstone adored with the image of locomotive. This accident is notable beyond the loss of life for another reason. It is considered to be the first train wreck ever photographed. A Pawtucket man (not unlike myself) made a daguerreotype at the scene, from which an engraving was made that was reproduced in newspapers only weeks later.
Are there ghosts here beyond the ghosts of engravings in old newspapers? As it is nearly Halloween it seems fair to think perhaps. I consider then the lost thirteen, never to arrive at Worcester. There they are for eternity, some staring out a coach window anticipating a less eventful departure, the others rattling along aboard the second train oblivious to the oblivion so soon before them. Or perhaps I prefer to imagine a fourteenth ghost, the ghost of the proto-photographer from Pawtucket preparing his plate and hefting his kit down to the station, focusing his brass lens upon the same horrific pile of splintered wood and twisted iron, year after year, trapped by the shade of the plate he is continually making. I snap my own picture. The rain arrives at last and I squeeze my way past a fence and on to the road home.
Bucket Week - Day Five
Confusion and mystery are great motivators.
Archive finds - Pawtucket in the '90s
This week in honor of the city of my residence and my daughter's home town, I will be featuring Pawtucket, Rhode Island, aka the 'Bucket'.
Gas Holder and Apartments, Pawtucket, 1992.
This picture from 1992 has always been among my personal favorites. I was very new to Rhode Island, hadn't even found a job yet and I was living with my girlfriend on Hope street. She had a job in Pawtucket and i would drive her there in the morning and pick her up in the afternoon. I didn't know anything about Pawtucket. I knew one way to get to her workplace. I would go up Hope street, pass my favorite intersection of Ridge and Pidge, pass the Almacs where we shopped. Before the days of wayfinding tools and geolocational support you could get lost. These things are great aids to personal navigation but the feeling of being lost and stumbling upon some place new and unexpected can be a great stimulant for a photographer. I think that always knowing exactly where I am with the help of an app is not the most conducive state of mind if I wish to be receptive to a new place. Confusion and mystery are great motivators. Curiosity is king.
On this day I wasn't entirely lost, but I was exploring. On my way up Hope street there was a little sign shortly after Hope became East Ave. that said 'downtown' with an arrow pointing right. So poor then was my notion of the relationship between spaces I wasn't totally sure what downtown this was. Was there more of Pawtucket that I hadn't seen yet? Did this circle around somehow to downtown Providence? I went right and then down a steep hill.
I came upon two of those great giant trash can like structures that were used to hold natural gas. These things have intrigued me since childhood and these two seemed to be sitting right within a residential neighborhood. On Taft street (was there a Pawtucket connection to our largest President?) I saw the gasometers looming over a house and a row of apartments which sat glowing in the afternoon light. I found my spot, planted the tripod and rushed to focus, afraid somehow that something with fly away. It can be really hard sometimes to slow down and take a good look at the groundglass image. I wanted that truck, I wanted that child's bike on the right, I didn't want the shadows to climb much higher. Quick with the film holder, exposure, flip, exposure and that was that. Couldn't afford to shoot more film but I knew I didn't need to.
I didn't find my way to 'downtown' that afternoon but i'd forgotten that anyway.
Andrew Wertz found this on Shorpy. A Kodachrome from 1941.
Jack Delano, New Bedford, Ma, 1941
Bucket Week - Day Four
Downtown in winter.
This week in honor of the city of my residence and my daughter's home town, I will be featuring Pawtucket, Rhode Island, aka the 'Bucket'.
At Summer St. and North Union, downtown Pawtucket, 1994
Today's pair represents something that I rarely do, which is to say something that I do all the time. That is take multiple, slightly different views at one location. I do that often, what I usually don't do is promote more than one view as the work goes forward. Normally I will make a choice, or feel the choice has been made for me, one is usually clearly the "best", or the best I could do. With these I've continued to like both variants. Although I don't remember I believe they are shown here in the order I made them. I framed up the first and then moved forward for the second. I think the shadows agree with that. There is one thing here that shows something that I do rarely do: photograph snow. My guess is this is late winter. Made with a 4x5 camera on Tri-X film.
At Summer St. and North Union, downtown Pawtucket, 1994
Bucket Week - Day Three
In Oak Grove.
This week in honor of the city of my residence and my daughter's home town, I will be featuring Pawtucket, Rhode Island, aka the 'Bucket'.
Oak Grove Cemetery, 1994
Gates of the Oak Grove Cemetery, 1994
Some people are put off by pictures of cemeteries. Some people are put off by cemeteries in general. Not me. I find they are great places to explore, full of interesting names and fragments of interesting stories. They are usually relaxing places to photograph in as well. No traffic, often no people at all (above ground anyway) so you can mess about with your gear and not feel stressed. There are exceptions. Swan Point in Providence has a strict policy regarding photography and they will chase you out. Hasn't stopped me though, you just need to be quick(ish). In cemeteries within urban environments I find I'm drawn to the ways that the city of the living relates visually to the city of the dead, how the streets line up or how a row of headstones is echoed by a row of houses. This is very likely something else that Walker Evans has taught us to see. These two photographs are almost back to back from each other. I love the detail of the little lamb (a child's grave) in the lower right of the second image. These were made with a 4x5 camera on Tri-X film.
Bucket Week - Day Two
US Route 1.
This week in honor of the city of my residence and my daughter's home town, I will be featuring Pawtucket, Rhode Island, aka the 'Bucket'.
Broadway, Pawtucket, looking south, 1995
This picture was made in 1995. I had an idea to photograph Route 1 in Rhode Island from north to south. This is almost as far as I got. It did lead to other projects: the intersection set and a walk down RI route 2. This is a 4x5 camera image on HP-5 film.
Bucket Week - Day One
On the W.E. trail.
This week in honor of the city of my residence and my daughter's home town, I will be featuring Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Pawtucket will be kicking off it's campaign for the 2015 Pawtucket Arts Festival on Thursday. A worthy effort.
Wilkinson Park, Pawtucket, 1993
I made this image in 1993, not too long after I arrived in Rhode Island from upstate NY. I was working then exclusively with a 4x5 camera and I had just begun the work that became the Rhode Island Photographs project. This image is an homage of sorts to Walker Evans, and it is fair to say that almost everything I was doing then was an homage to Evans. Evans did a great series on war monuments during his time with the FSA. He was responding to photographs made of monuments during the Civil War, photographs he attributed to Mathew Brady, although we now know them to be made by others in Brady's employ. The Evans photographs inspired Lee Friedlander to make a series on monuments. I was thinking both of Friedlander and Evans when I made this.
Providence Fruit and Produce Warehouse
This post first appeared on the Endangered Places, Emerging Stories blog of the Providence Preservation Society. The post can be found here, along with other interesting pieces on buildings lost, saved and on the bubble in Providence.
Harris Avenue was one of the very first places I would explore in Providence shortly after I arrived in 1992. I can clearly recall the first trip out with the 4x5 camera to that part of town. A spring afternoon, Sunday, the sun clear and warm. Red brick, dusty streets and not a soul around. The area felt ignored and forgotten, as if time had slowed to a crawl. Activity ceased or barely persisting in the evidence of one or two boxcar loads on a siding and a scattering of trucks at a few loading docks. Perfect for me and my slow camera. Plenty of time and none. For if there had been little change over the previous 25 years on Harris Ave. the next 25 would be otherwise.
There were several structures of interest that together made up the fabric of the district, held together by railroad tracks and the river channel. An ivy covered signal tower from the New Haven railroad era, a single story track side warehouse with a curving wooden dock, the hulking Providence Cold Storage warehouse, and the iconic Silver Top diner.
Anchoring the street was the concrete art deco of the Providence Fruit and Produce Warehouse. Long (almost 900 feet) and low it was built in 1929 when rail was king to hold produce unloaded from boxcars for distribution through the city. In 1992 there was some activity but it was hardly a bustling place. One by one these places were pulled from the fabric, torn down or in the case of the Silver Top, moved. The space itself was intruded upon by new highway off ramps.
When the warehouse was finally pulled down in 2008 I wrote this: ...[the warehouse] has great value because it connects us to our past, it is real in a way that buildings like the Providence Place Mall will never be. This is our heritage, built for an honest hard working purpose, not a sham echo of something it is not. This is not a decorated box, which is almost surely what we will get in the place of the warehouse." The rest of this rather angry blog post can be found here.
February 2008
So far all we get in place of what might have been is an empty lot. Perhaps it could have become the year round farmers market that Providence so desperately needs. Perhaps not. Although tons of produce still moves by rail it is not the fruit and veg that the new farm to table trade is built on. Perhaps it could have been arts space. We'll never know. Looking at these pictures reminds me that the only time we have is now, and if we wish to maintain a connection to the past we have to work at it, or all that will remain is a photograph. That said, you can view more photographs here.
