02 Jul If you are anywhere near Lunenburg Saturday…

You should consider taking in an opening from 3-6 p.m., at the Anderson Gallery, 160 Montague St., Lunenburg, of reclaimed images from Peter Barss’s classic 1973 collection, Images of Lunenburg County.

I’m prejudiced. Peter (who doesn’t think much of my iPhone snapshots of sunsets) is a delightful eccentric, a former relative, and a dear friend with a knack for producing images that enliven and deepen our understanding of subjects we thought we already understood.

Images combined Peter’s photos of sail-era fishermen with oral history about fishing in the first half of the 20th century. Fourteen years after the book’s publication,  a house fire destroyed all his prints and negatives.

Fortunately, the Nova Scotia Museum had purchased a complete set of the photos, which Craig Yorke of Image House has brought back to life, using advanced photographic techniques. The Anderson Gallery will display 40 of the black-and-white prints through August 4. Everyone is welcome at Saturday’s opening.

Herald arts reporter Elissa Bernard has a nice tee-up for the show here. See more images here.

After the jump, Peter’s artist’s statement for the exhibit, a lovely account of how the photos came to be, and a refreshing break from the artspeak that often characterizes this class of prose.

When I was a kid growing up In Massachusetts my family made many trips to Nova Scotia to visit relatives. In the early 1950s they bought a summer home on one of the LaHave Islands, then a vibrant fishing community.

I often got up well before dawn and waited on our wharf for Roscoe Wolf, an inshore fisherman, who owned the only other house on the island. We steamed out to his nets as the sun rose over the dark ocean.

After we hauled his herring nets, Roscoe anchored his 28 foot Cape Islander and, using the herring for bait, we fished on hand lines for ground fish until the sun started to set.

One day I caught two cod nearly as big as I was. I can still see them laid out on Roscoe’s wharf. Roscoe brought a tape measure up from his boat’s cuddy and measured the fish. Forty-two inches. Forty-four inches.

Roscoe took his cap off and scratched his head. He paused for a moment and then remarked to everyone who had come down to see the fish–my parents, my sister, Roscoe’s wife Sadie and their son Ingram–that he didn’t see how an eleven year old boy my size could haul in such big fish.

I was beaming with pride.

Twenty-five years later I interviewed Sam Whynacht, who ended his fishing days as first mate on Bluenose I, for Images Of Lunenburg County.

“I went on my first vessel in 1912–two years after Halley’s comet went by here. I was eleven. I had a little suit of yellow oil clothes my father bought me. Right golden yellow! I crawled up in the top bunk to see how it was up there. I was all overjoyed. I thought I was some man then!”

As Sam explored the first vessel he would sail on, he felt the same boyish excitement as I did when I pulled in the two giant codfish. But there the similarities end. My vacation would be over in September and I would return to school with my childhood friends. Sam was about to leave his family on a two month trip working on the deck of a fishing schooner.

‘Oh, my God. How foolish it all was.” he said. “In them days you didn’t grow up. We was rushed up. Went to sea right out of the cradle, you!”

Like the other men I photographed and interviewed for Images, Sam–and Roscoe–followed their fathers to sea either on the schooners or on inshore boats. The work was hard and dangerous and the money the men made did not amount to much.

On the Grand Banks the men fanned out from their schooners to fish in dories. One man I interviewed was lost in a January snowstorm. On the seventh day his dory mate froze to death and was washed overboard. On the ninth day–after lashing himself to the dory–Frank was picked up by trawler out of Boston.

It was not uncommon for a schooner to go down with “all hands.” Often fathers, sons, and uncles from the same family were drowned when a schooner sank. Entire villages were devastated when the news reached shore.

Sensing human fragility in the face of the overwhelming force of the sea helped bring families and communities closer together. Every family had a garden, a few chickens, maybe a pig. If someone ran short of supplies or needed their winter’s fire wood split, neighbors were there to help. There were dances and pie sales and people got together to sing or to tell a yarn or two.

“There wasn’t as much money then, but everybody seemed so happy. People mixed with one another and everybody was good friends. And now the world’s divided like,” one man told me.

“I remember back… there was nice feelings in them times. We had nothin’… but you was a millionaire.”

Like Roscoe Wolf and Sam Whynacht, the way of life they represent is gone forever.

I took the pictures and recorded the words in this exhibit in the early 1970s; they are presented here as a tribute to the men who earned their living from the sea. I feel privileged to have known many of those fishermen.

I’m grateful they shared part of their lives with me.