• "Patapsco is a portrait of a region as seen
through the memories of its elders, the eyes of a photographer,
and the sensibilities of a writer and oral historian. Through narrative
and images, it reveals the connections between culture and place,
between past and present. Also, cloaked in the regional nature of
Patapsco is a larger issue: disappearing American places. This book
documents only one region, but it speaks for all those disappearing
places and their people whose lives and times have not been documented.
Our culture must not let unique American spaces fade to dust. We
must find ways to preserve them, if only doing so in the pages of
a book."
—W. Ralph Eubanks, author Ever Is A Long Time
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Patapsco:
Life Along Maryland's Historic River Valley |
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Alison Kahn
Photographs by Peggy Fox
With an introduction by Robert Coles |
| 288 pages, 10" x 11" |
| 36 color and 48 duotone photographs |
| Cloth 978-1-930066-77-9 • $50.00 |
| Paper 978-1-930066-78-6 • $30.00 |
| Center for American
Places |
| November 2008 |
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“This book is yet another expression of the careful social observations Walker Evans and James Agee offered in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Patapsco Valley, Maryland, thereby has joined the lucky company of Hale County, Alabama--both places that become, in the hands of an alert photographer and an attentive writer, something quite else: social texts that keep helping us find ourselves. . . . A valley's portrait becomes an aspect of a nation's ongoing story. . . . To Alison Kahn and Peggy Fox, then, for giving us Patapsco, we owe gratitude for a splendid, observing effort exceedingly well done, but also for the compelling summons they tender us; through meeting these Marylanders, we get a boost toward ourselves--our similar journey through time and space in America.” -From the introduction, by Robert Coles
The love of place shines through in this documentary effort
about a historic valley that saw the birth of industry in Maryland,
the nation's first railroad, and the nation's first cross-country
highway. This compelling portrait of the region is viewed through
the memories of its elders from all walks of life. Through their
collective memory, we gain a true sense of the cultural legacy
of Maryland's historic Patapsco River Valley.
Distributed for the Center for American Places
Alison Kahn is the author of Listen
While I Tell You and has written for National Geographic
and Smithsonian. She is from Takoma Park, Maryland. Peggy
Fox is a photographer from Cockeysville, Maryland, who has received
two Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artists Awards for excellence
and whose local and national exhibits include a one-person show
at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
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