Down East Books, 2009
Hardcover, 112 pages ($24.95)
Hidden lives are everywhere
“Some subjects come to me as gifts,” said Patrisha McLean. Moving to Camden 18 years ago, after always living in big cities, she began a newspaper column “Patrisha’s People,” brief bios and photo portraits “to celebrate the extraordinary people I feel privileged to know.” Thus we are introduced to the essence of community-a particular community, yet the framework recalling us to the small towns we once knew, the beginnings of our many different lives.
It is the everyday, nonchalant charm staring out at us, with the few words, short comments on their lives, that captures a reader right away flipping slowly through these pages.
These are people much like people we see in our commonplace lives, the unpolished insouciance evident in our peripheral vision as we proceed on our daily errands in our neighborhoods, rarely considering the individual vibrancy of townspeople we wave to, or just acknowledge somewhere in our minds as part of the place we call home.
Until we stop and engage in conversation, as Patrisha McLean does. McLean’s people reveal themselves, sometimes more than they mean to, in words and photographs. As Richard Russo notes in his forward, “they tell us what they love and hate and fear and desire, what they dream about and have given up on.” The faces that peer into the camera are, as Russo writes, “more diverse than we imagine, more complex, more interesting, richer, poorer, more alone, and yes, paradoxically connected.”
We begin with Evelyn Richards, who wants to make sure a child has something to hug. Evelyn fixes old dolls and teddy bears, sending them off to poor children around the world. Looking at a photo of her dolls in the arms of a child in Mexico or Ecuador, she tells McLean “It does my heart good to know that when a child goes to bed, they have something to hug.”
Then there’s Chuck Berry, “a junk hound and proud of it.” He patrols he dump several times a day, stressing that he is searching for junk, not trash. “It’s kind of like going to the supermarket without a list,” he says. His finds net him materials to barter, or sell-enough to live on.
The camera finds Imero Gobbato, an artist and classical music composer, holding his fluffy pooch, Maurice, his best friend. As an immigrant, for years he missed his native Italy. Now he considers Camden home.
In his purple and red farmhouse, Tommy Douglas is known for his colorful shirts and lawn art. At 78, Tommy still makes crazy sculptures. Taking a drag on his cigarette, he says, “I stayed the same, but the world changed.”
Every photo is wrapped in the atmospheric background of the person inhabiting a small space in a small town. We see the optimistic dreamer, Bob Ryan, at his upright piano; Dwight Howard leaning beside his barn, next to his much-loved Belted Galloway cows; the ice-sailing Buddhist monk, Jory Squib in Moonbeam, an electric car he built; and 100-year-old Frances Schipper, who, when asked how Camden compares to the many cities she has visited, says that “Oh! It’s the best…it’s home.”
Now, close this warm-hearted book, look around your own small town, at the people you drive by every day. Hidden lives are there, everywhere.