Associate Professor of Art Mike Kolster is featured speaker at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts, this coming Thursday, May 25, 2017. He will discuss the book Take Me to the River: Photographs of Atlantic Rivers (GFT Publishing, 2016), which features photographs by Kolster of four rivers that flow into the Atlantic Ocean—the Androscoggin, Schuylkill, James, and Savannah—as they emerge from two centuries of industrial use and neglect.

The talk, which is free and open to the public, is titled Photography And Uncertainty: Stepping into the River, and it gets underway at 7p.m.  

Talking to the Bowdoin community earlier this year, Kolster said the project was sparked by a desire to more fully understand the town he has ended up living in, i.e. Brunswick, Maine, and the significant role that the Androscoggin has played in the formation of the community. In particular, Kolster said he was struck by the high levels of pollution that were present in the Androscoggin until relatively recently. He said he was also struck by how much the water quality of the river has improved in the last few years, and the resulting ecological changes that have turned it into a destination for anglers and ornithologists alike.

“How is it that this place could change so quickly? And how is it that some of the perceptions of the river haven’t changed as quickly?” Kolster said he was drawn to the challenge of how to convey the complicated history of rivers like the Androscoggin, in a photograph.

Take Me to the River also features an essay by Bowdoin College Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies Matthew Klingle.