Lumbermen’s Museum shows photos

    PATTEN — The Patten Lumbermen’s Museum has announced the showing of the photographic exhibition “Maine’s Woods: Observations by Bert Lincoln Call and Henry David Thoreau.”
    For a limited time, the museum is presenting a show of 38 works of art, each of a size which will draw the viewer in the world of the Maine Woods in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Upon investigation, we find the routes taken by Henry David Thoreau documented in photography by Bert Lincoln Call. Both worked at an art that had a degree of commercial value, each wanting to leave a legacy, but still make getting a living poetic. Both had spiritual beliefs, a strong code of ethics and lived in moderation with a minimum of status and wealth. Both were alert to their surroundings, great observers and recorders of nature. Both were attracted to the tonic effect of wilderness. They learned to respect nature in its solitude and menacing reality as a wild savage country.
    What Thoreau revealed in prose, Call documented in photography. Bert Call’s images provide an extraordinary photographic record of the North Woods, often of specific places Thoreau described in his book. Through Call’s photos we have visual documentation of the way the Maine Woods looked only 35 years after Thoreau visited.
    The total Call photo collection covers Central Maine and the Northern Maine forest. A sampling of his work was first shown at the University of Maine’s Fogler Library in 1990. An expanded version was exhibited in New York in 1991, sponsored by the University of Maine Alumni Association. The exhibit was again shown in 2003 at the Bangor Public Library, and in 2005 in Dexter, Greenville, Dover-Foxcroft, Guilford, Milo and Bangor. In 2007, a new show combining Bert Call’s photographs with quotes from Thoreau’s The Maine Woods was created for the annual Thoreau Gathering, sponsored by the Thoreau Society, in Concord, Massachusetts. Recently, Bert Call’s photographs were used by Dave Mallett to illustrate his latest CD, The Fable True, The Words of Henry David Thoreau’s “The Maine Woods”.
    This exhibit is now at the Patten Lumbermen’s Museum, 61 Shin Pond Road, Patten, Me., and is available for viewing May 28 – July 4 during the regular schedule. Reservations are being taken for school classes, civic groups and other interested groups. Please call 528-2650 for additional information or reservations. For more information on the photographer, visit www.callthoreauexhibit.com.