Library Road Trip

LEAVING MONTANA

6/20/12 – Miles City surprised us. It was a wonderful little town with a lot of history. I even have some long lost relatives here. According to family lore the first pioneer child born in Montana was my ancestor Johnny Quinlan. Later, he either became a horse thief or a lawyer depending on which story you believe. One branch of the family settled in Deer Lodge, MT where my mother was born and the other settled in Miles City. I kept scanning each new face hoping to see some familial connection. . The beautiful Carnegie Library here had a awful addition added almost completely obscuring the original. Even the red brick of the Carnegie was painted brown to match the addition. What were they thinking? The head librarian took me on a great tour showing their attempts at slowly stripping away the addition to reveal the hidden Carnegie library. She also showed me the amazing Montana Room with its stunning collection of L.A. Huffman photographs. Huffman was an excellent local photographer during the end of the frontier era. Several books have been produced on his work and the Montana Room displayed an impressive collection of his original photographs. The tiny town of Terry, MT was also home to a famous photographer – Evelyn Cameron. She was a Montana pioneer from England who raised horses with her husband. To supplement their income she sold her photographs of the area to the local community. In doing so she created a fascinating record of the beginnings of Terry, MT and the final days of the settling of the American West. The library here was also tiny, austere and ultimately beautiful. I think that the library in Glendive, MT used to be a bank with a drive up window. The Google Street View of it made me cringe. But the reality and its context were fascinating. It had grain elevators in town, remnants of the frontier and also a Canadian feel to it due to the proximity to Canada. The Wiboux, MT library was old and beautiful but the lighting was not good. Just as I was turning to leave a young woman dressed in a punk/goth style stood in front of the library drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette. We talked for a while and her presence in the photo made for a great contrast between the old and new in Wiboux. Crossing into North Dakota we photographed the tiny town of Beach. Simple and beautiful would best describe it. We stop at a truck stop and exult in the incredible open space all around us.

We finished the late afternoon and evening in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. “ I never would have been President if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota” Roosevelt said. His life here challenged this former New Yorker and sharpened his interests in nature and conservation. Later, he became one of the earliest Presidents to actively protect the environment by establishing several National Parks. This park is dedicated to his memory and his work. It is an overlooked national gem and we were overwhelmed by its beauty. As we drove and hiked through the park we were enveloped by this strange but fragile landscape.  The perfect air, temperature and light instilled in us a sense of peaceful ease. After four days of hard charging we needed this. Frequently we encountered large, lumbering buffalo; small, perky Prairie Dogs and big-racked Elk. We hiked steep bluffs that gave us an impressive 360 degree view of the land and sky. At certain places we almost felt like we could fly off the steep ledge. At the Wind Canyon overlook we watched the sun set over the sculpted cliffs and the Little Missouri River. As we looked down on buffalo tracks in the river we imagined dinosaurs walking through this timeless landscape. Later, we dined at the local bar in Medora. Our waitress was from China and another was from Russia. We had a long, fascinating conversation with the Russian about traveling, Putin and politics. This multi-national, college-aged work force is common in or near many American National Parks. Despite the sometime poor wages and working conditions the Russian woman had come here three times.  Our conversation with her was one of the best we have had so far.

CHEYENNE RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION

6/21/12 – It was a real struggle to get out of bed but we had miles to go. We passed the 2,000 mile mark near the tiny town of Amidon, ND. It takes pride in being the smallest county seat in the nation. It also has the Prairie Library, now closed. With a darkening sky as a backdrop this simple white building exuded the character of this harsh but beautiful land.  Near the border of the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation we visited the almost all-white town of Faith, South Dakota. Relatively prosperous and very tidy we saw almost nobody on the streets. The library contained the simple beauty of this place. East of Faith we entered the Reservation. Though this is one of the poorest parts of the US this farmland area did not seem destitute. Eagle Butte, SD is the center of this area that is almost all Indian. Here is where we saw real poverty. It also contained the incredible Dakota Club Library. In the 1930s, Eagle Butte was an all-white town. A group of civic-minded women started the library in an old pioneer sod house thatwas later covered in rock. The very helpful librarian was Northern Cheyenne and came from Lame Deer, MT but had gone to college in Rutgers, NJ. The old library was closed and the new one was in a windowless metal building. The outside of the old was sadly covered with graffiti. The new library had two computers but only one was working. This was the only internet connection for a town of 3,300 people whose annual per capita income was $5,000 a year. With a 70% unemployment rate It was simply too expensive for people here to pay $40 a month for the internet, let along buy a computer. While I photographed, Walker walked around town. He saw three guys smoking crack, a guy passing out in the middle of the Main Street and a kid getting arrested for drinking alcohol in public. Two drunk guys aggressively asked me for money. When I politely said no they wanted my camera. This was all in the span of one hour. Life seemed rough for many people in Eagle Butte.  The Christian mission belting out Bible songs on Main Street hopefully would provide some solace for the people here in need. Despite all this people seemed genuinely friendly towards us, especially the young. After driving along a long and spectacular dirt road we finished photographing in Timber Lake, SD. According to the librarian the relations are pretty good between the Indians and whites in this mostly white town. The library was severely beautiful, like the land itself. We ended the day in Mobridge, SD. We walked along the wide Missouri River at sunset, ate dinner at a real 1970’s style restaurant, downloaded photos, blogged and then collapsed into a deep sleep.

6/17/12 – Shoshone, ID was our first stop. I had seen the Library/City Hall building back home on Google Street View. When we arrived in Shoshone the view was partially blocked by a trailer hauling a huge All Terrain Vehicle. I was disappointed at first but soon realized that this was the best shot. So much for my preconceptions. Pocatello was a nice, mid-sized Idaho town that was divided into two parts. It had a new side and a beautiful but abandoned (on Sunday) old town. The library was in the old part of town. It had some great modern sculpture outside including one that surprisingly dealt with guns, violence and kids. Parked outside was the Pocatello Bookmobile with great graphics of Idaho icons. But no potatoes. We headed north and east to another icon – The Grand Tetons. This was the first time I had seen them from the west. From here they reminded me of photos of the jagged peaks of Fitz Roy in Argentina. The Alta, Wyoming branch library has these grand Tetons as a backdrop. It was jaw-droppingly beautiful. After a long and wonderful drive over the Continental Divide we came to the little town of Dillon, Montana. Like Pocatello the old downtown is empty on this beautiful Sunday afternoon. The library is classic and had interesting sculpted faces on the sides. We end our long slog in Butte, MT. This is probably one of my favorite towns in the American West. Walker said we probably like it so much because it reminds us of San Francisco – great old architecture built on hills; cold and windy summer evenings and full of hobos. We have dinner at the M & M Café, a Butte landmark. In the evening light we drive around this incredible community trying to figure out how this once grand city survives. As we drive by the big library that I will photograph tomorrow my heart drops. In a city of architectural splendor the library is probably the plainest building in town. I find out later that the gorgeous old library that I thought would be here had burned down twice. This was the replacement.

6/17/12 – The first day of the Library Road Trip 2012 was spent driving twelve hours through three states – California, Nevada and ending in Twin Falls, Idaho. We spent most of that time in our air conditioned bubble listening to Ry Cooder and a book on CD called 1491 from our local Noe Valley branch library. 1491 is the great book by Charles Mann about pre-Columbian America. Our first impressions of the trip are: the Sacramento Valley is (still) incredibly hot (103 degrees); Interstate 80 is almost a continuous stream of traffic and sprawl from the Bay Area to Auburn; Nevada is majestic, strip mined and awe inspiring; and Idaho is gorgeous in the evening light. I quickly photographed one library in Jackpot, NV. As the sun set I clicked away at this austere, prefab building as two  Native American kids played basketball nearby. During a quick pit stop at the Cactus Pete’s Casino Walker and I got the distinct impression that this Nevada border town was where the pious Mormons of Idaho come to have a little sin. The road between Jackpot and Twin Falls, ID was filled with police cars stopping the  ones that may have sinned a little too much.

Hi friends,

Walker and I are setting off on the road again next week to complete my photographic survey of American public libraries, which will become a book in 2013! Follow this blog for news and on-the-road photos as we jump back into the wild life of road trips and library photo sessions.

Work on the book is coming along swiftly — I’m in the process of finalizing details with the publisher, and will announce the acquisition as soon as the ink dries. And we have an absolutely astounding roster of authors and poets contributing to the project. Their words will pair with my images to give a more complete portrait of, and investigation into, the remarkable commons that is our American Public Library. I can’t tell you the writers’ names yet, but I’m thrilled about and honored by their participation, and I know you will be, too. (You’ve definitely heard of them!)

For more on the project, visit my webpage at [coming soon].

And as always, feel free to comment here and ask me questions.

See you at the library.

-Bob

8/16/11 – The final leg of the library road trip started in the rain at the Farm in Vermont. We were finishing this epic journey by photographing four libraries in New England. We were also driving Walker down to New York City to begin his junior year in college. Just as we arrived in Laconia, NH the rain stopped. I photographed the amazing Gale Memorial Library there. It had a great display on local summer stock theater as well as striking architecture. I had feared that the rain would return and stop my photography of the fascinating exterior. Fortunately, it really was stopped for the rest of the day. Ellen had spent her childhood summers in this area and we visited several places that brought back strong memories for her along the way. The Samuel A. Wentworth Library at Center Sandwich, NH was a delight. We didn’t think that we would have time to photograph it and it turned out to be an eccentric surprise in this remote part of New Hampshire. We continued east past the Presidential Range Mountains and thickly wooded forests into Maine. We stayed with our wonderful friend Jacqui Koopman who lives near Portland, ME. We had so many stories from this trip that we stayed up to the wee hours telling only a few of them.

8/17/11 – I photographed only one library in Maine but it was a good one. After I explained my project to the friendly librarian in Gardiner she said that I should do a whole project just on Maine libraries. It dawned on me that I probably should do a more in-depth study of libraries in all fifty states. It is just time and money. With enough of each I could do it. The library in Gardiner kept me busy for over an hour and a half but eventually I pulled myself away. We drove for many hours to my last library of the summer. The Pollard Memorial Library in Lowell, MA was a great one to end the library road trip. I had always wanted to photograph here because this was the home town of writer Jack Kerouac. Apparently, he skipped a lot of school to spend time among the stacks of this library. Local legend has it that he was also found passed out in the stacks later in his life. This Civil War memorial library was filled with huge murals of Lee’s Surrender at Appomattox and General Grant in the battlefield. The library also contained a huge Chinese Vase and stunning interior architecture. While Walker and Ellen checked their iPhones in the library I went outside to finish with a few shots of the incredible exterior in the late afternoon light. Lowell is known for its closed 19th century cotton mills and its large Cambodian-American  and African-American population. The streets were teeming with people as the warm evening approached. I began to attract some attention on the street so I texted Walker to come out and watch my back. I took the last photos and we drove on to stay with Ellen’s sister near Boston. The following day we drove to Walker’s new apartment in Brooklyn. We had dinner that night at a Uighur restaurant in Brighton Beach after driving through an awesome thunder and lighting storm. Our final night on the East Coast was spent enjoying my birthday dinner with our dear friends Stanley and Lynn. At the same time we watched another torrential downpour outside. This last post was written as Ellen and I were flying back to San Francisco while Walker moves in to his new place in Bushwick. This trip has produced many great experiences and, I hope, great photographs of public libraries across the country. I photographed 189 libraries in 26 states and the District of Columbia. We were on the road for 58 days while driving 11,123 miles. Our Kickstarter funding campaign on the web succeeded in raising more than our $8,000 goal from friends and strangers alike. I am very excited about going home to develop all of my film. In the next few weeks I will begin to see what were the results of this extraordinary trip. I will post the greatest hits from the summer over the next few months. Thank you for reading my blog and for your interest in my project. I hope you enjoyed this wild ride as much as we did. Please stay in touch. I will keep you posted as I develop the next big phase of this project which will be the book. Stay tuned.

8/12/11 – I decided to spend two days photographing some of the important libraries of New England. I have been photographing New England libraries since I began the project in 1994. This part of the country is where the idea of public libraries began and there is a rich heritage of significant libraries still here today. Also, it is rare when I have my 4X5 camera here so it made sense to do a mini New England library road trip. Most of these libraries are old and built by private benefactors. The Field Memorial Library in Conway, MA is a case in point. Built by funds from Marshall Field, the famous department store owner, it is both a monument to his civic-minded generosity and perhaps a monument to himself. This was one of several libraries I found that were stunningly beautiful and surprisingly out of scale for the small New England towns in which they were located. The Forbes Library is located in Northampton, MA and is also home to Smith College. Opened in 1894 this library is one of the only public libraries in the nation that is also home to a Presidential Library.  It houses the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum. The librarians here were wonderful and gave me free access to every part of the magnificent library. I had hoped to travel down to photograph the library in Branford, CT and several other libraries along the coast of Connecticut. However, the drive had been long and I had many miles to go before I stopped. I drove just across the border into Enfield, CT. I went to the Pearl branch library that was built by Carnegie. It had a wonderful reading sculpture of kids inside. As I was lying on my back trying to shoot it from below a nearby library patron launched into a long spiel on why Christ was the only way. I apologized that I couldn’t engage him in conversation because I was too busy taking pictures. I got out of there as soon as I took the last photo. From there it was a long drive to Worchester, MA. I was listening to public radio the whole way. Downtown Worchester was surprisingly sketchy. I took my view camera and tripod over to the library and got the overwhelming sense that I should not be there alone, under the dark cloth. Memories of being socked in the jaw in Braddock, PA came back and I beat a hasty retreat back to my car. After another long drive I arrived in Providence, RI. The sun was setting and I quickly set up my camera and photographed the beautiful back of the Main Library. I could hear a loud protest coming from the other street that got louder as I walked around to the unused front of the library. As I set up my camera to photograph the beautiful stairway a group of striking Verison workers came over. They thought I was the Press and desperately wanted to tell me their story. They explained that they were striking over job insecurity with many of their jobs being shipped overseas. I had heard about this strike before and the situation sounded pretty bad. I didn’t know who to believe but my sympathies naturally went out to these workers dealing with corporate America.

8/13/11 – After spending the night in Providence in a high-rise corporate American hotel and having my coffee in a corporate American Starbucks I headed to America’s first lending library in the small town of Franklin, MA. In 1778 the town changed its name to honor Benjamin Franklin. When he was asked to donate a bell to the town he responded by giving a collection of books saying that “sense was preferable to sound”. The original Franklin collection is still housed in a bookcase in the library. The current Ray Memorial Building was built in 1904 based on the design of a Greek temple. It was almost closed in 2003 due to budget cuts but survives as a stunningly beautiful library.  Finally, I headed to the Thomas Crane Public Library in Quincy, MA. It is also a beautiful library that had a sign saying that it was “closed on weekends in July and August”. I looked inside and vowed that I would return to what appeared to be one of the most beautiful library interiors I had

seen on the trip. The outside wasn’t too shabby either and I photographed there for an hour and a half. Three hours later I was back at the Farm in Vermont for another great family gathering and dinner.