Legacy through the Lens

The work of Danville pho­tog­ra­ph­er George Cahoon to be celebrated

Most peo­ple who are con­nect­ed to Danville in one way or anoth­er will have run into George Cahoon’s work. His pho­tographs have appeared in Ver­mont Life, on a vari­ety of local cal­en­dars and exhib­it­ed at many near­by craft shows. His icon­ic pho­to of Danville, shot from Dia­mond Hill, also graces the cove of Vil­lage in the hills, a his­to­ry of Danville, Ver­mont. Sub­jects for him have run the gamut, but he says “for the most part, they are scenic.”

On Jan­u­ary 17, an exhi­bi­tion of his life’s work behind the cam­era will be held at the Danville His­tor­i­cal House. “The open­ing of the exhib­it will be held from 11:00–2:00,” said Mary Pri­or, Pres­i­dent of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, “and will be up through Valen­tine’s Day.” In the plan­ning stages are a recep­tion, mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion and pho­tos lin­ing the walls for close-up view­ing. “Pieces will also be avail­able for pur­chase,” said Mary, know­ing that many of the pho­tos will con­nect the view­er to pre­cious and per­son­al images from their past.

George’s pho­tog­ra­phy career began humbly with a need to record his sur­round­ings. “My fam­i­ly was always artis­tic,” he says. And that got him into a lit­tle Kodak in the mid-fifties. From there he grad­u­at­ed to his first SLR (sin­gle lens reflex 35mm) where he much more impressed with the result­ing images. “I trad­ed that one in on my first Rebel Canon and start­ed sell­ing a few of those shots.” Fifty years lat­er, he has accu­mu­lat­ed 25,000+ images that are stored in two rooms, neat­ly stacked and labeled. Most of the images were record­ed around Danville.

Want­i­ng to get a sense of the work that will be on exhib­it, Mary and I looked through some of the pro­posed images stacked on a table at the Danville His­tor­i­cal House. As we leafed through them (many of them of well-known local farms), we won­dered at George’s per­spec­tive. “Look here,” said Mary, hold­ing up one of the old George Swett farm. “Where was he stand­ing to get that shot?” And it was dif­fi­cult to deter­mine, because it was not pic­tured from the usu­al angle one would have expe­ri­enced from the road. As we con­tin­ued through the stack, we noticed that all of the shots were like this. George had cap­tured the farms as they lay in the land­scape from an unusu­al per­spec­tive. “He always took a lad­der with him,” mused Mary.

Ear­li­er, George and I had spo­ken of per­cep­tion when we looked at his most famous pic­ture of Danville. In the pho­to, Cow Hill sits square­ly behind the vil­lage. From our dai­ly expe­ri­ence, dri­ving to and through Danville, the moun­tain is more to the south. But George changed our per­spec­tive in that pho­to, too. One can imag­ine him trudg­ing through a field with his cam­eras and lad­der on that clear blue day. There he found the per­fect spot on Dia­mond Hill to fill the frame and tweak our under­stand­ing of how the town fits into the land­scape. It is sub­tle but full of intention.

Therin lies the artist’s gift to us.

This arti­cle was first pub­lished in Decem­ber issue of The North Star Month­ly.

To view these and more cap­tioned pho­tos, click here.