Lenses Trained
From the article “Learning to See” by Lois Lowry in our August 1977 issue.
“Good perceivers,” said David Lyman, “are like good poets. They can find beauty in anything. Right here, where we’re sitting, there are photographs to be perceived.”
Right there, where David was sitting, two woodstoves were comfortably lifting the early morning chill of Rockport out of the unfinished board floor. There were several discarded bus seats arranged in a haphazard grouping around a stove and a collection of chemical-stained towels hanging over a doorknob. In a sink at the opposite end of the long room, newly made prints floated and turned slowly in the quiet turbulence of running water. Nearby, a bearded young man, one of Lyman’s students at Rockport’s prestigious Maine Photographic Workshops, disconsolately examined five prints of two pairs of feet posed in a casual sneaker-to-loafer intimacy; finally he sighed, tossed all five into a wastebasket, and went back through a door marked “Darkroom” to try again.
Founded by David Lyman in 1973, the Maine Photographic Workshops has since evolved into Maine Media Workshops. Still located in Rockport, the school has attracted thousands of students, like those photographed here, hoping to become “good perceivers.” Lyman, still a working photographer, lives in Camden today.
Anita Winter (students); Alfred C. Chadbourn (cover)