One Thousand Words - A Lost Era Captured on Glass
Text Copyright 2005 by Ronald E. Ostman and Harry Littell
Thirty years ago, local resident Lois Barden discovered a box of grimy, century-old photographic negatives on 8x10 inch glass plates in a family tool shed. only recently, she and photographer Harry Littlell cleaned these gragile negatives and transferred the images to digital computer files...The Barden prints shown together with photographs selected from The History Center's Verne Morton Professional Photographer Collection, present glorious examples of how historic glass plate negatives can be transformed into dramatic, modern, large format, digital prints, allowing the stories of their subjects to be drawn to the surface...These two collection portray our region in different ways: as a nearly unspoiled, pastoral place, but also as a landscape undergoing dramatic transformations by muscles and machines. The exquisitely portrayed subjects serve us today by transporting us back in time - revealing detailed and elegant stories of the lives of people living in our region over a hundred years ago.