From collection Kosti Ruohomaa Collection
LB2017.19.14959
Horses hitched to a wagon wait while a crew adjusts their tack. During the summer of 1949 Life Magazine sent Ruohomaa to document the singular and dangerous work of the shad fishery in the Bay of Fundy. Although later described to his editor as "a grand adventure", the assignment entailed following fisherman Edmund Brine and his team of horses and equipment out three miles of tidal flats at low tide to set up a thousand-foot long system of nets on the first few days, and return, twice every 24 hours, to harvest the shad, day and night, racing the rapid, 28-foot rising tide back to the safety of dry land. The vast setting of sand, water and sky, a work schedule determined by time of tide and other natural conditions, and the frantic pace of the high stakes work provided the conditions for a dramatic set of narrative images. Ruohomaa was drawn to such scenes depicting disappearing ways of life and work on the land. Having grown up on a farm, he was especially attuned to the skills it took to work successfully with draft animals. The setting is the Brine fish camp located by a marsh just inside a protective berm from the bay. In the end, "Life" ran six of the photographs in a pictorial essay titled "Life Goes to a Shad Harvest" in its May 21, 1951 issue.
