The primary (and best) reason to digitize museum collections is to share them with the public on the web. PMM’s photo archives staff has been hard at work for the past year getting to know Kosti Ruohomaa’s photographs through this process. Since he worked under the umbrella of a photo agency for most of his life (Black Star Publishing in Manhattan), the collection is most meaningfully grouped by his professional assignments: those he was given and those he conceived himself and pitched to them. It’s interesting to observe that many of the “self-assignments” were studies of particular aesthetic and cultural themes which the photographer circled back to repeatedly throughout his career.
Beginning in January of 2021, we’ll use this page to showcase a few new assignments each month. Please check back here to further explore the captivating work of this iconic Maine talent. Click on any of the thumbnails below to open that group of images in our online database.
Cranberries
Cranberries are native to the Northeast and do not need a bog to grow; however, commercial cranberry growers typically build bogs for cranberries, using levees and flumes to control water level. Flooding the crop protects it from freezing, and the cranberries can be floated for convenient harvest.
Children’s Summer Games
Kosti Ruohomaa made several photo series all illustrating the fun children have in the countryside. In this series, Kosti took vividly colored slides of children playing outdoors.
Tide
Kosti Ruohomaa started photographing the extreme tides in the Bay of Fundy for an earlier assignment in 1949 for Life magazine when he documented gill net fishermen working in the brief and dangerous moment just before the tide comes in, which Kosti described as “grand adventure.”
Children in Barn
Kosti Ruohomaa made several photo series all illustrating the fun children have in the countryside. In this series from 1950, Kosti took photos of children playing in the barn on the Ruohomaa family farm on Dodge Mountain.
Maritime Provinces
Kosti Ruohomaa made trips to Eastern Canada to take photos for over a decade. By 1950, “Ruohomaa would be shooting major assignments in the Canadian Maritimes for the Toronto Star.”
Boys’ Busy Saturday
George Winslow and George Starr, both nine years old in 1949, often spent Saturday together in the countryside near their homes in West Rockport. Kosti Ruohomaa joined them for a day one Saturday in January of 1949.
Standard Packaging
In November of 1959, Kosti visited Eastern Fine Paper and Pulp, a division of the Standard Packaging Corporation. The large factory in Bangor, Maine manufactured paper, and Kosti followed the whole process, documenting each step, from workers moving whole pulp logs, to workers inspecting, cutting, and wrapping the final reams of paper.
Dawn
“Kosti Ruohomaa sought out various light effects of weather and time of day to create mood and atmosphere in his photographs. In this series [shot in downeast Maine], he captures dramatic skies, lone early-morning workers, and the distinctive low, slanting light in the fleeting minutes of dawn.”
Winter on a Maine Farm
In the winter of 1953, Kosti was sent to Bingham, Maine on assignment for International Harvester. The International Harvester Company was a manufacturer of farm equipment and tractors from 1902-1986 and Cecil Laweryson used International Harvester equipment extensively on his farm.
Farmers’ Almanac
Kosti Ruohomaa had an ongoing interest in links to the past. Living in an era when the wider culture was focused on modernity and progress, Ruohomaa liked to use his photographs to capture the old and the traditional.