Kevin Johnson, photo archivist for the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, will present “Winthrop Maine: The Postcard View — Selections from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company” via Zoom Thursday, Sept. 9. Shown is a lodge at Jackson’s Camp on Lake Cobbosseecontee. PPM Collection
WINTHROP — Kevin Johnson, photo archivist for the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, is scheduled to present “Winthrop Maine: The Postcard View — Selections from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company” from 6 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 9.
The presentation is to be held via Zoom. The slide show and talk will include the story of the postcard company as well as the historical views of Winthrop and its neighboring towns.
The Eastern Illustrating company was founded in 1909 in Belfast by Rudolph Herman Cassens, according to a news release from the Winthrop Maine Historical Society. Cassens’ goal was to photograph small towns and rural areas from Maine to California, producing real photo postcards that would be valued for promoting tourism.
Cassens did not fulfill his dream of photographing the entire country, but his company did produce over 50,000 glass plate negatives of New England and Upstate New York between 1909 and 1947. The collection is full of historic businesses, family homes and local landmarks.
The images take viewers back in time to when the roads were still dirt, horse-drawn carriages outnumbered cars, coastlines were undeveloped, and elms lined the streets. The collection is now part of the archives of the Penobscot Marine Museum and continues to grow as more negatives that escaped from the collection are located and acquired.
The PMM Photo Archive offers more than 100,0000 thousand images at penobscotmarinemuseum.org.
.
Kevin Johnson By Bill Evans
Johnson earned his bachelor’s degree from St. Joseph’s University, and after a number of years working as a paralegal shifted his focus to fine art photography. He earned his professional certificate in photography from the Maine Photographic Workshops, where he first encountered the Eastern Illustrating company’s postcard collection.
When the postcard collection needed a new home in 2007, Penobscot Marine Museum brought it into their collection. Since then, Johnson has grown the museum’s archive to more than 300,000 images from various sources including the Eastern Illustrating company, National Fisherman magazine, the Maine Sardine Council, and photographer Kosti Ruohomaa.
A business meeting will follow the presentation.
The Zoom link is networkmaine.zoom.us/j/81096636540. The meeting ID is 810 9663 6540.
For more information, contact Nick Perry at nperry@baileylibrary.org.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
