Chats With Champions: Penobscot Marine Museum archives

Thu, 09/13/2018 - 8:00am

Skidompha Library's Chats with Champions Committee will present Kevin Johnson, photo archivist for the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, as their next guest on Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 10 a.m. in Porter Hall.  Please allow time for parking.

Kevin will give a guided tour of the photography archives of the Penobscot Marine Museum, including many startlingly crisp photos from old glass plate negatives.  Penobscot Marine Museum has the largest photography archives in the state made up of dozens of collections and consists of more than 300,000 photographic images spanning the 1880's to the recent past. The slide show and talk will look at the various collections with a special focus on Lincoln County. Kevin will also share his story of how he ended up in his position. The archive is currently being digitized and more than 100,000 images can now be viewed on the museum's website in their online databasewww.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org.

Kevin Johnson received his bachelor’s degree from St. Joseph's University in 1989. He worked as a paralegal until 2003 when he decided to leave the 9-to-5 world to pursue a career in fine art photography. He relocated from Vermont to Maine in August 2003 to attend the Maine Photographic Workshops in Rockport, where he earned a Professional Certificate in Photography.

It was at the workshops that he first began working on the Eastern Illustrating Collection. In 2007, he helped to rescue the collection when the pipes burst in Union Hall where it was stored, which prompted its donation to the Penobscot Marine Museum. He followed the collection to Searsport where he currently works as the photography archivist. He was a founding member of Aarhus Gallery in Belfast, Maine and teaches photography courses at Maine Media College, Waterfall Arts and Unity College. As museum photo archivist, Kevin has created numerous exhibits of historic photography, led student projects, and taught adult courses for the museum, as well as managing the museum’s 200,000+ piece photo archive. His personal photos are on his website, rubylightstudio.com.

Chats with Champions is a free community offering from your national award-winning Skidompha Library and is sponsored by Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shop. For more information call 563-5513 or online atwww.skidompha.org