LB2017.19.14983

LB2017.19.14983

A man driving a horse-drawn wagon moves along a line of gillnets on a vast tidal flat at low tide. 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. Part of the Brine crew's task was to clear the nets of shad twice a day at low tide, regardless of the time of day or conditions. In Kosti's hands, the setting and the equipment often made for a poetic as well as documentary image. Suggesting an endless sailing ship at sea, the billowing gillnets create a disappearing line of perspective across the picture plane. The crescent forms of the snagged fish are visible against the delicate netting and sky as the wagon approaches, threading under the guy lines. 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.