Mystic Seaport Museum

Author's Comments

The Charles W. Morgan in late afternoon light, photographed from Chubb's Wharf, with her masts cutting against a September sky that has just started to warm. That is the photograph people come for, and it deserves the attention. But I have learned that the Morgan is almost too obvious, too much herself, and the more interesting work at Mystic happens in the periphery. The village is where I spend most of my time now. The cooperage, the chandlery, the small wooden buildings that line the river path, all of them sitting in that particular New England light that seems to come from the water as much as from the sky. In October the light goes long and the shadows of the rigging fall across the clapboards in ways that feel almost staged. They are not. The seaport simply sits in a geography that does this work for you. The river itself is the element most photographers undervalue. At golden hour, with the tall ships' masts doubled in still water and the working shipyard quiet for the day, the reflections do something I have not quite seen elsewhere on the coast. Get low. Get close to the waterline if you can. A long lens compresses the masts into a forest and turns the whole scene into something that could be a painting from 1840 if you cropped the parking lot out of the corner. Come on a weekday in shoulder season. Stay until they close. The last hour, when the day visitors have left and the light is doing its final work on the wood and the water, is when this place is most itself.

Gallery