Post Office at Haddam, Conn. 37.

Post Office at Haddam, Conn. 37.

A collection of people pose on the front porch of an old house repurposed as a store and rural post office. This image is part of a series made by one of the three Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company photographers assigned to cover New England or upstate New York. The quest for images that would be saleable as postcards resulted in the documentation of small towns and small town life at the turn of the 20th century. As the photos were shot, the glass plates were sent back to Belfast, Maine, and processed into postcards at the printing plant on High Street. In an image that captures an ordinary moment on a sumer day, three men, a girl, a young boy, and a cat stand for the Eastern photographer as he shoots the picture from across the road. The building carries a large sign identiying the business of Shailer & Arnold, perhaps a general store that shared space with the post office. The composition is a familiar 19th century photo tableau, where people are posed in front of a house --in groups and individually, some on the porch, some standing out front.