Greenport's Working Water
ON THE EDGE
By David Berson
Photographs by Juliana Thomas
GREENPORT—This is a photo series about people you know, some better than others. You will probably recognize some of their faces. They are our neighbors; we see them on the street, shopping at the supermarket, sitting in the bars. They all share one thing in common, they are at the bitter end of a long maritime tradition in the village. In one way or another, these people are still able to cobble a living working on or around the Greenport waterfront.
There was a time when such a series would have been physically impossible to mount. So many people’s lives were tied to the waterfront, that to have all their photographs displayed would have required a space many times larger than any available in this small village. It is probable, as well, that had such an exhibition been hung 20 years ago it wouldn’t have attracted any notice, for in a community built of shipwrights, fishermen, ship-yard workers, who would have thought that they deserved special notice?
