Buck

These are some of my thoughts, as I muse on our talk a few days ago. I told you it would help me to share my notes, as I work out my next pieces on Stan. I have one or two questions to ask you in this memorandum and hope you will be able to help me. Otherwise I will just share my thoughts as I ramble on the conversation we had the other day. This way something illuminating will arise that will help others understand why he is such an interesting and powerful observer of the village scene he witnessed and recorded some few years ago.

Please correct me if I get things wrong that you said. I sometimes misunderstand.

On Chilson. I say to myself, "how generous he is with his time, skill and feeling!"

Who is this wonderful, curious fellow? Who describes citizens who came before the critical year, 1945. A line is drawn before and after that rough date. I argue that the ones before that Stan describes may be our village predecessors, ancestors, recent ancestors, but they are very different from the people we became. The thing that happened was mass society, tv, careers in organizations, much more consumption of everything and a shift to caring more about the self than the community.

Stan is mired in the prechange person. Even though he takes a lot of pictures after 1945. That is who he knew, loved and described to our everlasting benefit. Some post 1945 ers like me are throwbacks to that age and seem drawn to the time when the village was all. When neighboring was alive etc.

I must ramble and when I get to writing a text for the next piece on Stan, I will be a little more logical and clear. I think on paper, as the ideas come to me, so don't mind me if I jump a bit. My thinking is just that way and I get out finally what I want to say.

Stan is "alone in public." The art of Stan Chilson is that of a person who describes a thing while alone in public. He is typical of painters and photographers who have a kind of wall around them, as they go around and get down what they see. They need the wall to be able to concentrate on what they are doing. The work Stan does is serious and he has technical stuff to think about, the f-stops and all, but he is really in a personal cocoon in public because that is his nature. He prefers it that way and can focus on his work better.

I can imagine a village person saying of Stan, "we never saw anyone quite like him." He is funny, profound, deep. He sees. He is certain of his art. He does not seem to have pangs of creation, what to do next etc. He is just documenting village life as he sees it. Gets it down as it looks to him and shows how deep his love is for the folks he films. He is deeply emotional, but does not want to show it. He is a kind of modest, shy person who would be mortified by crass emotionalism. We Mediterranean types, the Greeks for example, love to slobber and emote. I am that way, but not him.

He is sly, whimsical, private, cryptic. He tells his story with seeming coolness and it comes out hot, as a very emotional statement of love of the village. Only he says he is just taking pictures.

Balony. He extols the courage of uniformed firefighters. They are heroes of the town, its protectors. He catches their heroism in a cool and calculated way, but down deep he feels a great admiration for the uniforms, the police and fire people who protect the denizens of the towns he films.

Stan lived through a time when art and photography too, got abstract and interpretive. In painting the artists did swirls and blotches and called it art. Abstract art. Chilson does not seem to go this way. His art is never cute, making some point or other. About psychology, about neurosis or the artistic urges photography sometimes gives in to. He does not go out of focus to make a point about modern society or something like that. He is for me an "explorer of the known."

His art is realistic, representational, versus that that is abstract and psychological. I have a preference for that kind of art. That is why I like Charles Burchfield's art, when he describes the houses people live in in upstate New York during the years of the depression. He puts deep personal feeling in his work but it is hidden. Like Chilson hides all the time as he works. Like he appears to be on the surface, but is really revealing a profound truth having to do with the power of small-town life and the threats to its existence. This last thing, the change he sees, is expressed subliminally. He does not say it was all down hill after 1945 as I do. He just takes movies and lets you see the changes in behaviour and dress and style. He is too modest to say he is chronicling a major change in American society. He lets everyone else do that and just takes movies of people who come down stairs.

You have to observe that these people have changed somehow. That the tightness of the prewar period has loosened. That some aspects of the old way have gone as old ones die and the younger ones do not take the time or have the interests to do things the old way anymore.

The person who would organize large numbers of kids to march in parades in the earlier period. You don't see that later on. The summer carnival, summer festival. It changes and disappears, I believe. Maybe Wrentham Days is its successor in that town. The decline and disappearance of old stores that are replaced by another breed of thing.

Stan records change but does not say much about it. It is not his job.

What he does is "snatch sensation." His films are a succession of sensation, all telling a piece of an old story of how village life is. He talks about the "impulse to village."

We do that in our towns today and care about one the other in our churches, in our town boards and in our roles as neighbors, but less than we used to. And Chilson picks up on the way it used to be. Only the way it comes down to us, is a string of events and sensations we don't know what to do with. So we ignore them as an oddity.

We put some music to his work and play it as it lies and go from one scene to another and say that is interesting. But he deserves more. A frame by frame appreciation of his genius and talent and love.

Chilson is a small-town boy. I see him walking his village, Franklin, tipping his hat and saying, good morning to all. He is not a prejudiced sort of person. He likes most everyone. Villages are all the same. In Africa, Greece, eastern Massachusetts. He records the common. Documents the weal.

Most definitely not like Currier and Ives or Rockwell. But like Walker Evans and Eugene Atget. The latter two have a tight and powerful representational style. The former are Disneyites. Very colorful and good, but different from those who do a kind of non-fiction in their work.

He is a humble scribe, telling a simple story about decent people, living dignified, simple lives. Before the onslaught of the modern way. Chilson is making a point, but in a quiet way. That the humans he describes have a hidden strength to endure. That the race they represent and will reproduce, will find a way to recreate community and decency and a surcease from the excesses of drugs, alcohol and mindless commercialism. He alludes in a curious way to the fact that things may someday come around. That some day we might get back to family life and to community as foci of life. That we will incorporate all the changes, the status of woman in the modern world, the internet, the tv, pornography as a right of the citizen if he so chooses on tv, the vile talk shows, the home as a place to sleep only, the belief that when a spouse gets old or sick you can dump him, the nonraising of children........ somehow we will find the ability to come out whole. Because these prewar ancestors were so strong and decent, it was in them and us to get through the modern fog.

At least that is how I read what I see in his figures. Who is to know? Only that he shows a life that is powerful and too valuable to waste, as we have appeared to have done in the last fifty years.

His point is that things last, if we only will them to. Parades, community festivals, ceremonies for veterans, bathetic funerals, joyous weddings, graduation ceremonies, razings of old buildings etc. All of what he shows can go on and form the fabric of viable villages and towns.

Of course, people coming down stairs. That will always be a constant and it is a true tribute to his genius that he focuses on that one community function to exemplify life as it lies in the towns he films.

Life may change, but it endures. Some folks like Buck will still collect and fix old things to remember the simple life gone by. Simple indeed! You fix old clocks and are the timekeeper of Medfield, fix and fiddle over a church that goes back to the late 1600's. How much has really changed? Stan's influence over you is enormous. In a way it is over me too. The idea that the daily life is sacred and interesting and ought to be preserved to tell a thing to those who will follow. Even though most won't give a damn.

Buildings like your church in Medfield are moved a full ninety degrees. Buildings are moved by horse in Wrentham footage Chilson shot, but they last. They are still here. Next door to the Cumberland farm where you can buy a popsicle, a ticket to heaven .... I mean a lottery ticket. Next door to a liquor store where you can forget your life in a bottle , near a real estate office that used to be a drug store..... a massive structure presides.... an old church and the congregation still gathers to do what congregations do.... give thanks and express the hope the world will somehow get better. Maybe by remembering those gone past like Stan who gave us so much on what constituted the good life. How we could be better people and more like the ones he photographed and hung around with.

He is not a private investor, but a public investor. He works not for private gain, but to improve the public life. He is really quite a good person to have around in these times where everything is privately owned and controlled by this corporation or that or by the government. Some things gotta be free and Chilson lived a life or so it seems to me, where he was making a gift to society, with no holds barred. His work was just there and could be used to tell the story of the times.

Nothing changes, even as everything changes. But really nothing changes.

The two-leg still has two arms. The same physical configuration. He is just as evil, good, just as funny, as the ones who came before. Look at the corporons in the suburbs, at their sameness, the self-centeredness, and yet, there are some mighy fine ones I bump into in the politics I do in Dover. Some actually care about the town and its history. Not a few are neighborly, kind and decent. They are there when tragedy strikes. Some are capable of forgiveness, and some have religiosity of a good sort. Some are artists and do paintings and videos and make furniture. Nothing changes as everything does.

Stan is but a beacon. A lonely beacon lighting a world few seem to care about today.

He's interested in all the people, a true democrat. Rich and the poor. He is recording his time. Nothing unusual. Except the volume of his production. His catholicity, his desire to capture it all. He filmed everything. So we could tell the story he was suggesting to us with greater accuracy. I feel this is a common urge in the thirties and forties. The artists somehow knew their times were momentous and they were so darned proud of their townmates and wanted that story to get told someday. They lived through times that were tough. Maybe not as tough psychologically as ours, but tough nonetheless and they were proud and wanted to leave us a telling of the times. He is considerate and thoughful, and I do appreciate that. He may not be sure what we will need to know about his world so he tells us everything, in picture form. He gives us extra, in case we don't get it right the first time. And he does it in a number of communities. The same sorts of street scenes and people coming down stairs.

All he seems to ask of us is a smile and a desire to remember history as he does for us all the time. It is as simple as a good morning as one goes about one's village, mythical or real. Chilson sort of teaches you the importance of villaging, a thing sorely needed in these electronic times when the world seems to be exploding with changes and conflicts and challenges to the very soul of humanity.

He goes about his work as a village cobbler would, in a kind of straightforward manner expecting no special recognition for his essential role. He does what he does and others do what they do. He is no better than the butcher or the blacksmith. He is like the painter whose work I know who covers every surface he can find with art that tells of what he is looking at in the nature and the people around him.

He is never harsh or judgemental of what he sees. It is straight reporting. He is not ironical or insulting to a person. He is not doing investigative reporting to show someone up as a cheat or criminal. He is just telling a story of life on the surface. He is not Ricki Lake or Ted Kopple or even Ida Tarbell when she was exposing Standard Oil in the early part of the century.

He is a gentle scribe who writes in light so we can reminisce.

His work is balletic. He is a musical person who plays piano and the violin. His orchestra or band plays local gigs. He sees the world through the eyes of the musician. His people cavort, walk and dance across his sights. He loves motion as he loves music which is really a kind of aural motion. He has a strict sense of how to capture the ballet of daily life. His figures don't stumble or act bumbly. They are purposeful bodies he portrays doing the busy life of the village and then going home for a glass of lemonade.

He is able to capture the everyday people and the village heroic types, the ones in uniform who protect and keep the rest safe. He portrays the fire and police as supermen in uniform. You have the sense these people are your basic heroes on a daily level. They keep the community functioning. The police to Chilson and the fire people are first-class human beings protecting the town.

So he puts on this show. A play with music, the music he hears in his mind and the figures go through the motions. Like shadows on a sheet playing in the village at night so the people can have some fun and diversion. That was the case in Greece when the puppeteers came to town to play the morality plays of the day with a character who did ridiculous and stupid things, the one we call the karagioz.

Only Chilson's shadow play comes out straight as a kind of village ballet. That is what I see when he amuses me with his wonderful slices of town life. I know the Wrentham films best and they seem very musical to me. There is no sound but I sense some in the way he films his people. That is why I see him as balletic.

He shows us visually and with movement how a community ticks. On the surface he is a documentarian and below a musician, putting the whole thing into some operatic or balletic form. That came through to me when you reminded me he was a musician.

He says the village is very good as places go and he will show us that. He puts it to music, a silent music, and gives us the song in his mind. And then his characters move about for us. And for him. He is a photojournalist of motions. A genius of kinesis. He does his shadow play, his village theatre, to a silent music in his head.

The picture he has taken of him at the piano on the second floor of the Morse theatre with the roof open to the wrecker, I imagine. Him at the piano in a hulk of an old building. What does this mean about Chilson? Why him at the piano in a broken down old buiding? Why? He seems to be dramatic in a way. Seeems desperate to say something about the way he sees his vanishing world of the old times.

Lone man. Lone ranger. Time outruns him. He can't keep up. The mechanical clocks in churches' belfries will soon become electric. One will no longer need an old man to go weekly up in the tower of the old church in Medfield, say, to wind up the old clock. An electrical mechanism will make it all a lot easier and the old man can barely climb the stairs anyways. Chilson must have got tired of doing the old life and must have known he would soon be overtaken by modern life. A life he really didn't like very much.

The world changed. Chilson didn't, at all. He stays pure in a tainted universe that he really does not get too involved in. He stays mired in the past. He loves the simple and elegant machines that worked on principles of simplicity and grace. The trucks that for years put out fires, the clocks, the cameras pre- computerization etc. The old machines, the printing presses, the fire engines, the cameras, the cars, the clocks. All gone by with nary a whisper. The steam engine, that marvel of complexity and simplicity, both. Maybe I have it wrong but I do not feel Chilson is all that crazy about the modern times and machines.

Just to go over our talk, I began by saying he was cryptic, anonymous in his style. A documentarian, a terrific artist in my mind, nonetheless. Sensitive, deeply loving of his communities. Sensitive as a photographer.

He read photo magazines of the day. Books of the old electrical engineering variety. Went to Worcester Poly. Was an electrical engineer by trade. Worked at Golding Press which later became Thompson National on Dean Avenue. He is a draftsman. The company made printing presses. He also took photographs for them of parts for manuals. You described how they put up white sheets in back and waggled them for a backdrop.

He walked to work. His father never drove so Stan took him and his mom around. He was devoted to his parents. Took trips to cape so mom could buy the old glass she collected. It was all over their house

He has a sense of humor.

You tell me about the photo in the Morse theatre that is taken of him at the piano.

He would pick you up at school and off you would go to see a police chief in Mansfield or go take pictures someplace. People thought he was your father and not your uncle 'cause you were together so much. Your father was in insurance and away a lot. Your mother had reservations about you associating with such rough cut figures as police and fire people and I guess didn't want you with him as much as you were. I figure you enjoyed yourself and learned a lot. I get the feeling Stan taught you things and was patient with teaching you stuff. He seems the patient sort.

To get to the scene he relied on telephone operators to tell of some tragedy, a fire or a car accident that had occurred. Stan would give her a set of prints of the event, as a way of saying thanks.

You told me of Leslie Wiggins who was both police chief, I think and undertaker. An tough man and later in his funeral role a suave and unctuous type who charmed and was polite and how your mother marveled that someone could change roles so fully. This had to do with the idea that your mum didn't accept the rougher types in the community as being really proper.

You told me about the uncollected bills the Chilson Market had where people did not pay up. About how a shut-in would get his or her groceries delivered by Stan so the person could survive. The daily kindnesses that were common then. The way Stan and his family cared about those around them.

He had been sick as a child, a heart murmur or something and yet he lived a full life until 70 or 80. House at 84 Dean Street. Still there. A bit run down.

Father took meat to diner to eat, after walking to his place of work. The power was off a lot. Ran at night, so he took some hamburg when he went to have his lunch or breakfast. Diner . Charlie Lawrence. Across from Depot Street. Left side of alley. A restaurant now. On other side of bridge, East Central Street. Lived on Hillside Rd. near Buck's family.

Buck mentions he gave a lot of photographic material to Mrs. Metcalf who lives on corner of Dean Ave. and Ray St. which went to the Franklin Museum.

Told story of Foxboro muster and how he went with Stan and set up to take pictures along 140. Towns would send their new equipment to show it off and win prizes.

Told of when Medfield sent their new truck to Stoughton and Buck tells me it won an award for being a best among the old pieces and went back and told the outraged fire chief. In Medfield.

How Stan liked being welcomed wherever he went. People in various police and fire stations were glad to see him as a comrade and friend and co-worker.

He told me of a Franklin fire chief who allowed Stan's neatly bound work to be thrown in a corner of the station and how that is a shame. A terrible thing to do with historical artifacts. This was the exception and not the rule but it is still bothersome.

Told me story of how people then were hardly innocent. The blacksmith whom a wealthy patron wanted to buy out because he could not get immediate service one day. The barrels full of shoes were empty when the new hired man came to blacksmith at the shop. They had been nailed to the floor and only seem to have been full. The common blacksmith had tricked the nasty man who thought he owned the world and could push people around at will. The smith was back of Franklin Furniture.

These are some reactions to your help the other day. Do not be alarmed at the length of these field notes. As a former professional sociologist, it is standard practice to free associate at length. I was trained that way.

Final pass. Why did he do this massive job of documentation? 'Cause it was there, like Everest is there as a mountain to climb. He enjoyed what he did... Taking pictures. Being someone in his community and in the towns around Franklin. He thought he was documenting change. You said it and not me. That he was documenting change. He was aware of the massive changes away from the self-contained village, prewar. To suburb, places dependent on the media, tv, the Globe, the national society, federal government etc.

Please tell me what kind of music he played.

What kind of music he liked to listen to.

So a picture emerges of a somewhat lonesome man who reaches into the village to tell stories of heroes and common folk. He is deeply sensitive to human movement, deeply aware of the rhythm of daily life. He is funny. He cares a lot about the old things, machines and buildings. He respects the ceremonies that communities live for. He has a reverence and care for the past. He is quiet, unassuming, invisible. He is close to nature as his work is always bathed in trees and scenes of fields and water. He comes out of an intact family. Not a dysfunctional one like is so common today. He knows the ways of nice people who do not steal, kill or maim. He likes old things.

Received long letter of June 6,1996.

Paul,

Kay discovered your manuscript in the box of goodies for the church fair. We appreciated your thoughtfulness. I am sorry that my response was so delayed.

Your notes and thoughts are interesting and in some ways unusual, that is I would not have put "it" that way. But I think that has been my consistent reaction to your studied observations of a subject that I have lived but not given much thought.

Stan was a private individual, thoughtful, caring, with a big heart, but needing attention. He was sickly as a child and did receive a lot of attention from his mother. He was smart, knowledgeable in many areas. He was a "teacher." He often helped me with my school math problems. He was often referred to by his father as "the professor."

Stan started photography as a hobby while working at Golding Press. He kept precise records of weather, time, exposure, film and developing time as a scientist would record his experiments. He fabricated his own darkroom within a spare bedroom in the home he shared with his parents. The only store bought darkroom equipment included two enlargers and a contact printer. He made all of the sinks, processing desks and created mountings and containers for the purchased equipment. Stan designed and installed the necessary lighting and filters. He printed titles for his films on a 4"x 6" Caxton hand printing press and then filmed them. He developed the title film on a wooden reel he made to sit in a tray of developer. The film moved through the developer as he turned the handle of the reel.

Earlier Stan had hand made a battery powered "flash gun" to use the new foil filled flash bulbs thus eliminating the use of gun powder to illuminate photographic subjects at night. Stan also designed, built and installed the synchronous connection to the shutter of his Speed Graphic camera.

I am not sure why he left his job at the Golding plant. It may have been that he felt he must spend more time meeting his parents needs for transportation and maintaining the home.

Stan's music interests were before my time. I only heard about his musical talent from my mother and grandmother. Photography replaced the music. Stan also built radios from purchased parts, that operated on a six volt car battery. They later had a radio that operated on AC current, some years after power became available around the clock. I remember the battery radio. Outside of the evening news, Amos and Andy,(my grandfather liked them), the Chicago weather report with E.B. Ridoute,(we get Chicago weather the following day my grandmother would remind me) and some particular moments on the air waves, he listened only to the fire/police radio frequencies.

It is my feeling that photography was the medium that projected Stan into the mainstream enabling him to acquire friends and earn the attention and recognition he needed. He in turn was documenting, informing and entertaining the community. The values he held for man and community are, as you point out, reflected in the manner in which he recorded them.

As you have noted many times, Stan had an eye for art. I can remember riding with Stan one summer day back to Franklin from Bellingham Center on route 140. Just East the center we encountered a farmer pumping water into a trough. His big white farm horse stood waiting. The pump was located near the edge of the road. Route 140 passed between the farmhouse and the barn. Stan slowed down. He wanted to stop to take a picture of the scene. I am not sure but it was probably following traffic that kept him driving. A few days later the Woonsocket Call carried a report of the farmer and his horse being killed by a motor vehicle as they crossed the road.

You have seen certain individuals who enjoyed performing for the camera. These people and their friends always cheered the performers and offered comments as the scenes were displayed on the screen. Stan often was asked when he was going to put on another show and if a particular event would be included. I am sure these comments kept him going.

Stan was very friendly with the reporters in the Franklin office of the Woonsocket Call. He provided guidance in the purchase of photo equipment for the office and taught the younger reporter, a fellow by the name of Woodrow Abbott, how to take pictures.

Stan saw a lot of society's bad side although you won't see it in his films. He photographed murder scenes, the results of physical abuse, and cruelty to children as the official police photographer for local and state police. He also made photos, at the request of attorneys, of clients injuries, etc. for court proceedings. I saw very few of these photos and then only by mistake.

I did go with Stan to Norfolk one night to photograph an illegal still that had been raided by the federal ATF personnel. The bad guys had been arrested and removed from the property. We went to photo document the operation.

My wife and four daughters spent summers at the Chilson cottage on the East side of Lake Pearl. I worked in Medfield and would go to Wrentham in the evening, only to leave before dawn the next morning. The camp was the second built for my grandfather on land leased from the railroad. The first building was destroyed by fire in 1925. Stan enjoyed driving down to the camp and spending time with Kay and the children, filming all the action of the kids in the water. He had a boat with an outboard motor in which he provided guided tours of the shoreline. Stan never learned to swim. My mother, on the other hand, when in college, swam the entire perimeter of Lake Pearl, escorted by Stan in the boat.

Stan never married. He had no "girl friends" that I am aware of. I know that his friends in the police and newspaper office would kid him from time to time about a secretary or two that were employed in law offices for whom he took photos.

After his folks passed away, he continued to be a presence around town but his purpose and enthusiasm was not the same. As his health failed and it was necessary for him to be cared for he was placed in a nursing home. First at Franklin Health Care and then in the Sheldonville Nursing Home in West Wrentham, MA. I think those were lonely years for him. I was living in Dorchester and then in Medfield, married, working and going to Boston University. I visited when I could. He had few real friends and it is my feeling that they abandoned him, perhaps in this time of greatest need. He did not recognize me by the time he got to Sheldonville. It was a sad situation.

Again I ramble on, writing much but adding little to the understanding of this complicated individual. If there is some light herein I know that you will find it.

Sincerely,

Buck.

LETTER TO BUCK AND THEN HIS LETTER OF JUNE29

Buck,

I wonder why people record the things Stan did. I don't get it, but the scientific type eludes me anyways. I have notebooks I put things in that I have read or lines of poetry so I have that kind of personal memory to back me up too.

I don't know the story about predicting the fire as he did. I feel he did have a special knowledge of the community through his unusual skill of seeing as he did. He was a pretty good see-er. The common events around him formed a pattern he understood and probably he had no-one to tell it to, so he kept it within to himself.

I substitute cow for horse. I have cows on my mind.

I use other people who worked at the time Stan did and they too recorded everyday events and made them into art as Stan did. Walker Evans is a grand and elusive fellow like Stan, and so is Charles Burchfied of Buffalo, the watercolorist. Our country is loaded with artists who wrote or painted or did pictures of the period from the thirties to the seventies. When so much occurred here in this country.

"If I had only..." is fun to consider. The whys of peoples' lives is the issue. When you get to know some people real well, they are much more interesting, contradictory, conflicted and thus more human. Unfortunately we do not get to know many people well, even those close to us.

Chilson is an artist, first and foremost. He has a source, a place of creation, any artist does and that is what I am getting at to find. It is not a mysterious place really. Any good artist has a push to him or her.

I did a text, "Cause for Celebration, the Chilson Moment," which will air as soon as I put pictures to it. I wrote it in the last few days and it is an attempt to locate one source of his inspiration.

I argue he puts on a dance, to music he hears in his head. He has the characters on the screen before him perform a music only he hears. They attend his performances to see themselves on the screen and what Chilson sees is a dance. Something entirely different. He is a community puppeteer, a person moving figures about to create lovely and self-composed dances to a silent set of songs. He hums a village tune only he hears.

That is the thing I am trying to get at , why Stan's moving pictures are so beautiful to me. And it is because he moves his people across the screen in such a way as to be ballet.

They dance because he helps them to. He maneuvers them in a way they don't really understand in his little show. He is like a child playing with soldiers in the attic on a rainy day to pass the time. He amuses himself with his dramas and soap operas that play out in his head. He is writing and play-acting his little stories as he goes along.

Really fine stuff. A wedding or funeral, a parade, a razing of an old building. The material of novels, plays and poems of village life. Only Stan puts these daring dramas into the frames of his films to pass the time and to make a silent statement about the beauty of what he sees. It plays to the silent music in his head and the villagers go ooh and ahh over what they see of themselves on the screen and they do not see what Stan sees, a beautiful ballet of his own creation.

You witnessed history of a sort from a front seat, being with Stan. You were very lucky to be with him and not sitting all the time in a seat in a dull school in Franklin. You're right, you were lucky to be with him and it is our good fortune that you remember all you do of your experiences.

I won't bother you further. I appreciate all you have given me to ponder on Stan's life. I have a habit of being intrusive which I wish I weren't. The little things for the church are nothing. I am up at Bob's the discount house and I was thinking about the old church and its wonderful history. I go by there all the time and imagine all the stories it can tell.

Thanks for everything. You helped me a lot and hope we can be in touch some time later when you have time.

Paul Campanis, 36 Miller Hill Road, Dover, MA 02030 508-785-1008

Letter of June 29,1996

Paul,

As I read your last communication I again begin to think. The explanation and enunciation of Photo-Grapher reminded me of something. The captions Stan hand lettered on his photos for public display, he called "hypo-glifics." A modification of hieroglyphics. Hypo comes from the chemicals used in the photo fixing bath.

His notebooks were famous. Everyone who knew Stan knew that he would buy a supply of the red pressboard covered books with lined pages and round corners at Mason's Drug Store. He would buy a dozen at a time and set them up one for each month of the year. The pages, approximately 2and onehalf by 5", one for each day were lettered with the date. The second line would contain a description of the weather which Stan would carefully fill in each day.

He would rule a column down the left side of the page for the time. The time of the phone call, time of the photo, etc. Exposure, lens settings, film speed, size of the flash bulb or the size of the load of magnesium powder for illuminating the subject. Identification numbers on the film carriers of the exposed film. Details of the subject and any other information that he felt important or relevant was also entered. These books were his memory, as he would call them. The Speed Graphic camera was the one used most for activity scenes, news photos and documentation of accident and crime scenes. A magazine of film containing individual metal carries each loaded with a single 4" x 5" of Kodak panchromatic film. It had a faster film speed than orthochromatic film and was better suited for most work. The ortho film was more red sensitive and was good for fire pictures. He had several magazines that could be interchanged on his graphic cameras. Magazine capacities varied from 10 or 12 to 24 film carriers.

I may have told you of the instance when someone asked "When is the next fire due?" Stan took out his book, looked up the date of the last response by the Franklin Fire Department. "We're about due." was a common response to such a question. "Where do you think it will be?" was the next question. This is the only time that Stan ever ventured a guess about the location of a fire before it occurred. "Perhaps somewhere down around St. Mary's Church."

The following day, just before noon, an alarm was received for a building fire at the corner of Union and Beaver Streets. Directly across the square in front of St. Mary's Church. Word got around that Stan had predicted this fire only a day before its occurrence. The police department went to the Golding Press plant to see if Stan was at work that day. Fortunately he was and had an iron clad alibi. He never predicted another event again.

One correction to your note, the farmer was with a large white farm horse, not a cow, when we saw them at the pump in Bellingham.

Life is full of those, "If I had only..." I think that we have to miss a few of those to make us pay better attention in life.

I don't recognize all the names of individuals that you compare with Stan and his work. Mr. Bristol, president of the Foxboro Company in the 1930's was an avid photographer. He and Stan would meet by the fire station in Foxboro square and compare notes on film, cameras, the new photoelectric light meter, etc. Both took the same pictures on those annual parade days but I never saw any of Mr. Bristol's film or prints. Each man had his own purpose for their hobby. I have an inkling as to Stan's purpose. I don't have a clue about Mr. Bristol's.

By now I think you have a pretty good image of Stan. I think that there are many people whom we know, but don't know. I often learn a lot about individuals who I knew as hard working, but really lack luster kinds of people. Yet, by chance I would read a letter to the editor, an obituary, or an article recounting work that earned them an award of some kind. There I would see an individual I wish I had taken the time to know better. Another "If I had only..." situation.

While I have come up with a couple of anecdotes I have not answered any new questions nor added to your summation. Again I am happy to participate in the examination process and to contribute where possible. It is difficult to stand back and look at Stan's life and works having lived so close to it. The woods and trees thing. So much of that time I remember well probably because it was pleasant, interesting, educational, at times exciting, at times tragic, different from the usual view of an elementary school student.

I seem to be repeating myself, so I will stop. I am willing to continue later if perhaps you have some areas of interest or specific questions to guide my thinking I could be more productive.

Kay and I thank you for your contributions to the church fair. These donations are appreciated but not necessary to unlock the Stanley G. Chilson mystique, if that is possible.

Sincerely,

Buck

June 23,1996

Buck, I hope you will allow me to share a few more ideas on Stan, as I get ready some new vids on his work. You have lived a life, to this point, that you are immersed in and do not see as remarkable, or especially noteworthy.

You say you did not give much thought to your early life with Stan and that makes a lot of sense to me. Why would you?

I do not think much on my immigrant past in Jamaica Plain as being especially noteworthy. It was just how I came up and how it was for me. Perfectly normal. All people, it seems to me, see their lives as common and just how it was, sort of. Nothing special.

Then comes the sociologist and he says that this or that life is important to look at because..... and then he has all these theories most people never think of. That is what I do. Training from Harvard and Brandeis, I guess. The schools which marred me for life, giving me ways to characterize and simplify the world and the changes it was going through. I guess intellectuals do that and get it all wrong, as well as getting it right, some of the time.

My feeling is the artists and thinkers are our best litmus test for what has gone past us. They, and they alone, understand and have the courage, the time, and the sense to leave us a picture of the times.

I find the characters Stan puts up on the screen weird, strange, peculiar, from outer space. They are no-one I recognize, not the Irish I grew up amid in Boston, nor the Greeks in my family. But they are like the old people I have associated with and loved in Dover, my village. Somewhat. Only dressed a little different. The surroundings are different. The old Grangers in Dover, now mostly dead, I knew in the context of Dover in the seventies and eighties, while Chilson's people inhabit a village very different from anything I can imagine.

I love his vids because he populates his world with people unusual for me as types and locates them in a village I can only imagine, never having visited such a place before. All that is known to you, I guess. I mean, you lived in such places as Stan depicts in his later films. You saw police chiefs and fire fighters of the time and storekeepers etc. Went to some summer fairs that I can barely imagine and comprehend.

So there is that. That his people seem very strange and interesting to me, while to you that was just life and how the world looked. Even though some of his early work is before your time, I think your imagination is better grounded than mine because you actually saw what these towns looked like in the later decades and I did not. I hit Dover in 1968, really quite late.

So now, back to the artist. Stan. He is a documentarian. Jimmy Johnston says he saw himself as a Photo-Grapher. A foto-grafer. With the accent on the "a" after the "r". I mentioned to Jimmy that that is how the Greek runs. Foto means light and grafer means light. Stan is a "light-writer," and it makes sense that he calls himself that. One who writes in light. I don't mean to make him into a Picasso or Van Gogh. He is another kind of artist, more like the lithe and wonderful N.C. Wyeth, whose illustrations for books and advertisements are in the Needham Public Library on the wall. He is a child of Needham. He illustrates the dress and habits of his day in his work as Chilson does. The whole thing is done in a clean and powerful fashion. It is not conscious art, but comes out as art when you look at it a particular way. As I choose to.

Along the way, the artist tells us about the slower times of prewar two. Before 1945. I guess that is why I started my work on Chilson with the piece I called the "Kind Light," in which I saw the world of Chilson through the eyes of an old citizen of Dover who was born in 1913. I made believe I saw the village through the eyes of Mr. Fryer, my friend in Dover, whom I knew well. Paul came to Dover in 1946 from Thunderbird Field in Arizona where he trained pilots for the war. But he grew up in Dedham, when it was a village, and shared so much of that life with me. So I had some sense of those peculiar people I saw on the screen that Stan provided for me. It made them less weird to me and gave me some small tools to begin an investigation, a kind of love-tour of the village, any place I find it. I am a frustrated villager, and look to create community wherever I go.

I feel the current world we live in is so anti-community and pro global-corporation, me-ism, drugs, alcohol, personal aggrandisment. It is so bad, it may destroy us and all I can do is reach in the past and drag out examples of the good life I wish we could emulate.

That is where Stan fits in for me and why I have done the vids I have done to show the links between Franklin or Wrentham in the thirties and forties to the way we are in the nineties.

Stan, for a multitude of reasons, chose to tell the story of his times. Indeed, he is the professor. Jimmy says he needed a notebook one time and did not want to ask his parents for money for one, and Grace went and did ask. He just did not want to bother them or ask for something.

His self-reliance is something you mention. He is unobtrusive, a busy little bee, pollinating his world with cheer and good things. Not the murder scenes, fire scenes, accidents, child- and wife- beating photos. But the Boy Scouts and the parades and the summer festivals. Always bright and cheery.

He did need attention. You point this out. Maybe it is a failing but he is only human. I defend this need. I have done many, many vids no-one seems to notice or applaud. I get discouraged that my work is forgotten, erased at local studios. Especially the several personal memoranda on the Greek culture. My people see me as eccentric, mad, silly, foolish, crazy. They do not register that my work is a witnessing of one's immigrant past. My wife and daughter do not choose to see my work. I feel basically avoided and forgotten. Even though I spend all my waking hours doing my work. So it becomes something I do for me. That is not good enough but it has to suffice.

I don't really see myself as comparable to Chilson. We are very different types. I am totally non-mechanical. I can't walk and chew gum at the same time. I am very productive as he is though and that creates the problem of why do the work when people don't get it... the meaning in it, the sense of it as art. What an artist does, minor or major, is put his soul out there to dry, for all to see.... if they will.

Only the public doesn't bother or cannot see what the Artist sees and that is frustrating for the artist. It can kill him if the props in his life fail. If people around him that count a lot die, if he gets sick or if his world changes greatly. The will to do work ceases and the flame goes out. That is inevitable. It happens to all of us, so we must understand the nature of what any artist does. He puts his soul in the work, sees it ignored, thrown in the corner and that is not a good feeling to have.

Now Chilson loved to show his work. It was his love and his life. It was the way he expressed himself to the world. It was the only way the world could know him, as in daily life he was a private sort. His official work gave him a place in the community and validated the documentary aspect of his craft.

But that was never enough. There is in Stan an artist that sqirms and squiggles to get out. He is artistic to his fingertips, so he plays a trick only he is aware of. He goes into his imagination, and pulls out a rabbit only he can see. Here I need to take a quote from Constantine Kavafi, the greatest of our contemporary poets, in the Greek culture.

Most of the damn Greeks don't know who he is but I do, so the hell with the Greeks. The poem is "For the shop," and is about a jeweller who has a job selling trinkets to the tourists. Only he does keep the best pieces under wraps and they are kept in the safe.

Just a few lines, so you will get my drift. I hope I am not boring you, but I need to go sideways to go forward. The master speaks. Kavafi is very funny, deep and beautful. In Greek he is sensational, but he translates easily as he was fluid in English, having spent a lot of time in England.

"Whenever a customer comes into the shop,

he brings out other things to sell-firstclass ornaments;

bracelets, chains, necklaces, rings."

The good stuff, we are told, he'll "leave them in the safe," and we are told in the first line of his pome, that he "wrapped them up carefully, neatly."

A number of artists are hidden like Cavafy is. The American watercolorist, Charles Burchfield is, and so is the photographer, Walker Evans. I suppose any good artist tucks a lot of secret stuff in their work to pass the time or to get out their deepest feelings without being embarrassed. Evans loved the working populace. Especially the mountain people in his and Agee's book, "Let us now praise famous Men."

Burchfield idealized the tough people who lived in the depression in the cold and hard clime of Buffalo, New York. These folks show deep admiration without saying a word, so to speak. They just have to praise and admire. To me they are cause for celebration, as Stan is. That is why I like his work so. I cannot understand why others do not play and replay his vids. Do analysis and offer suitable recognition for his massive efforts. I simply cannot understand why N.C. Wyeth is not praised more in our everyday life, or why Chilson is not. I cannot understand why Burchfield is not more popular. These folks are singular in importance to me, if we will learn from the past how to go forward.

I find it interesting that Stan kept such good records. Jimmy told me he had a notebook of every person he met and could go back years and tell you he met so and so in the long years gone past. Jimmy saw him do this, consult his notebook of aquaintances and chance meetings. You say how he documented the photographic aspect of his work. He does what the scientist does. Wrote stuff down about fstops and all that. He is a scientist. That is what the scientist, not the artist does. He is not an artist, and has not a feeling about his subjects. He parades as a scientist, as a documentarian. He has no feeling, only a desire to write in light. Nonsense. But that is what he conveys to all, that he is but a humble servant of science and photography. I knew Ansel Adams when I was at Polaroid and he was. I never thought of him as famous, and he too made believe he was a scientist, only he was an artist. I never liked his pictures but they are pretty and I know he is an artist, maybe a great one like many people think. But he too always talked about the technical stuff of taking pictures. I did not know what the hell he was talkin about and did not care. I don't now either. My brain is in another century. I care nothing about the modern stuff of fstops and film exposure. My village has in it donkeys and you go daily to the "fourno," the oven, to get your bread. I am premodern, so my thirteen years at Polaroid taught me nothing about photographer. I cared not a damn about pictures in a minute. But back to Stan. He does more than take pictures.

He is a great artist. His secret communication to the ages is in his art. Any one can take pictures. Even me. I shoot. I am Mikey the dog. I sit and look at the world through unblinking eyes. A cabbage is as a Ford Car to Mikey. All he cares about is his food and the area he pees on to keep his own. That is my image of most of us. WE are as Mikey the dog. Seeing nothing and caring about nothing but what we need.

The artist sees what we don't. Chilson does this and does not tell anyone. Not the police chief or the matron in the parade he photographs.

His trick is this. He is like a kid playing with soldiers and stick figures in the backyard or the attic. Mostly by himself, he creates a world and tells its story. Only Chilson does it, with his neighbors. He portrays their graceful, lovely moves across the silver screen. He makes them into gods and goddesses in his films.

Then he stretches a sheet across a room's front and the citizens gather and they say, there is Tom and there is Sarah. Oh my, isn't science wonderful! Thank you Stan and then go home for supper. Only to Stan he sees something else. He has taken the village and the villager and made a little collage and story out of them.

A secret story like some kid in the attic does. Only Stan is a grown man, but he never grew up, like all great artists never go and grow up. Like Lewis Carroll, N.C. Wyeth, Burchfield, Rockwell. And on and on. These people use their everyday life to show a thing, only they can see.

What Chilson does mainly, is show how fine and wonderful people are. More than most artists I have known. His images are burned in my eyes.

The lone firefighter steadying the stream on the burning structure.

The careful adult shunting kids in the parade to form a straight line.

The men working on the lumber at the saw mill.

The joyous figures at the summer festival in Wrentham.

The marriage ceremony as it hits the steps of the church. Charming and lovely. TImeless in its beauty.

This is no mere photography. Not documentation. This is out- of- control love of humanness by a great artist. He does it for himself, because he does not know how else to express himself. He is so emotional. He is so emotional. So in love with his village, the people, his mother and father. No wonder he lost something essential, as you say, when his mom and dad died. He lost his village too, as it got up and changed. He got old and tired and was kind of alone.

How many of our great artists get old alone? Louis Sullivan, the architect of skyscrapers, died forlorn and poor and alone. How sad. I think these people just gave every thing they had to art and the world and the world just did not get it. They died frustrated and sad and alone. I really don't think people understood how sensitive and beautiful Chilson's work is. No more than the U.S. got to know what a contribution Sullivan made to the aesthetic sense of the skyscraper as a vertical art form. Until Richard Nickel, a photographer came along and took sensational pictures of Sullivan's buildings as they were being torn down. See my vid of Nickel's work, called "Mission in Dust," or the book by Richard Cahan on Nickel, "They all fall down."

So Stan is a type. Of this nature. Alone, secretive, tucking great visions into everyday life. Look at Burchfield's paintings of houses in upstate New York in the thirties, and how sad and forlorn they are and yet they persist to exist and that is what he is saying about the owners of the hovels and about himself too.

Chilson says the same sort of thing where he shows the dance of the village, the daily drama that is so common no-one sees it for its specialness, but him. He tucks it into his pictures and it makes it major art, in my view. Only no-one sees it or cares.

Buck, I better go and get on with my life now and go to Shady Oaks to get my week's milk. I just let my mind wander, based loosely on your kind letter. I may have it all wrong, but I don't think so.

Stan teaches us so much about life. Do it now because tomorrow may be too late and a good shot will be lost. The farmer and his cow that got run over. You and he were in a line of traffic and could not stop to take a picture of a farmer and his cow at the well pump at the side of 140. The farmer and the cow got killed. No picture for posterity so we could admire that beautiful thing. A farmer at the side of the road, tending his needs quietly while the world rushed past. Killed. Murdered by modernity and Stan missed the shot and how awful he must have felt when he read the story in the Woonsocket Call newspaper.

I told that story to Bob Briggs last Sunday up at Shady Oaks and the lesson for me. That we do art before it is too late and we too are gone. Stan sets such a good example for us to be humble artists and sneak in our little ideas into work that just seems to be documentary but is really a kind of personal statement on how we feel about the times.

Best to Kay and you, Paul

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