Monthly Archives: August 2013

The Hat, the shirt, the tools, the seat

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All available from the Company Store in Pigeon Cove

from the Bay State Granite Company Series

from the Bay State Granite Company Series

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The Coney Island Jetties – Nov. 1 1922

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from the Granite Cutters Journal May 1922:
“The Rockport Granite Company, which is the only company on the Cape doing any granite cutting at present has a large contract for large grout, they have some jetties to build at Coney Island, N.Y., and as the question of wages are settled for a year for the quarrymen, they having accepted a 13 percent reduction in wages, business in that line is as brisk as the weather and other conditions will permit. The company has a number of large barges which carry coal to different New England ports, take a return cargo of granite to New York where two of the company’s lighters unload them of the 1000 tons cargo and also help build the jetties.”

-Thomas Harris-

Coney Island Jetty

Coney Island Jetty

Moving Beyond the Noise and Nostalgia of Looking at Old Photos

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Just now, after a decade of looking at, and reflecting over, quarry photo after quarry photo, I have stumbled across a 13 image sequence which stand as a unique view of life in a Cape Ann Quarry, circa 1870s. These 13 photos are among the  greatest photos of Cape Ann Quarries I have ever witnessed.

There is a noisy excitement in viewing old images, an easy nostalgia with which we think to connect. I believe there is a challenge to immediacy, of involving all our senses, which might, with diligence permit us to stand as in the moment of when a photographer stood amidst the quarry workers and their rock.

Here is something seemingly simple:

What is unusual about this image?

workers