PATAPSCO: Life Along Maryland's Historic River Valley
Artist's Statment
“Patapsco: Life along Marylands Historic River Valley”
In 1997 Alison Kahn writer and folklorist, and I were commissioned by the Patapsco Heritage Greenway to document the lives of twenty five of the old timers living in two small mill towns, Ellicott City and Oella, in the Patapsco River Valley, home of the industrial revolution in Maryland.
We captured them with film and words, their environment, stories and portraits and realized we had barely touched the subject. We were then engaged by the Greenway and The Maryland Historical Trust to photograph and document a further selection of people from two more towns, Elkridge and Relay, and to record one final town Daniels, which was destroyed in a flood.
The photographs and stories in this collaboration support each other to tell a story of time gone by. The color images all began as black and white photograohs which I colorized digitally to recall older times. The black and white images were made with tri x and infared film.